Feb. 25, 2012 (ShapeShiftas) -- My older daughter is gorgeous, and, endearingly, kind of a geek.
Last summer, instead of going off to soccer camp or hanging out at the lake or pool, she chose summer school, to brush up on Algebra II, and went to Robotics camp. I'm amazed how excited she can get about learning how to program. When she picked her classes for this school year, they were all honors this and AP that, physics, pre-calculus -- and she is only a sophmore and ahead a year bursting with pride. I had to insist that she also take something "easy and creative." Although I well know that there is nothing "easy" about it, I made her take Studio Art.
I believe that learning to express yourself creatively is a fundamental skill just as important as learning multiplication tables and good grammar. Politicians and parents are always stressing the importance of the STEM curriculum (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and de-emphasizing and de-funding the arts. But you can't make scientific breakthroughs without thinking creatively, and having creative outlets is essential to mental health and happiness. You need both your left brain and your right.
My girl J. wasn't that into her art class at first, but then they learned about Cubism and started work on their first painting. Next thing I know, she wants to go to an art museum that her teacher told her about, the Currier Museum, in Manchester, NH, one day on her spring break. (YES!!!) "They're supposed to have a good Contemporary collection, Mom, and there's a nice place to have lunch. We can have a fun day together!" With this I was sold, even though it's a 2-1/2 hour drive from home.
And so I came to reconsider and be reintroduced to Mark di Suvero. The Currier has this recent acquisition in the front courtyard, Origins, built between 2001-2004.
In college, my sculpture professor, her sculptor husband, and many of her students idolized Mark di Suvero. This was around the time that he was badly hurt in a building construction accident and, perversely, began to make the huge pieces in building construction materials, particularily I-beams and sheet metal, that he has become famous for. Back then, he insisted on constructing them himself, welding the pieces together on site, as he felt led. Even I, a "soft" sculptor, thought that was cool. Everyone in sculpture classes was learning to weld, and even the "Jocks" took sculpture 101 and made manly di Suvero knock-offs. I made a few pieces back then that used steel rods, although I combined them with draped fabric; this was the height of Conceptual Art for me, and thankfully, my professors bought it. Somewhere I have slides of these pieces, from my BFA portfolio, but the actual work is long gone. I bet my mom used the fabric for dust cloths.
I hadn't really thought about Mark di Suvero very much since then. When you live in a big city like New York or Chicago, and you come across one of his pieces, surrounded by skyscrapers, you tend to go, "yeah, right, a di Suvero". You need to see them on acres and acres of cleared fields, like at the Storm King Art Center, or startlingly alone, like Origins was, in a somewhat residential area. They must have looked magnificent on Governors Island last year, just around the tip of Manhattan Island from the Twin Towers site. Intentionally or not, the pieces made a moving tribute to the Towers, steel once again growing against the sky of New York City, bold, strong, and defiant.
His piece above was in the news recently, as it Occupys a corner of Zuccotti Park. For a while, it was barricaded from the protesters, and some called it "corporate art" and a "weird red thing."
Little did the Occupiers know. It turns out that Mark di Suvero is a pretty decent person. He has won awards for mentoring aspiring artists, and he established the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City. Back in 1966, he and lots of other now-famous artists created the first "Peace Tower," to protest the Vietnam War. I saw the recreation of the Peace Tower at the 2006 Whitney Biennial (where I somehow missed Mike Kelley) protesting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and there have been a few more recreations recently, in Chicago and LA. Protesting war unfortunately is never out of fashion.