Antony Gormley

Spring has finally made it. It's a good time to plant sculptures. In the patio, landscape or garden, Art will grow with the flowers, vegetables and trees and begin to achieve a more natural lifespan and life. Freed from climate controlled interiors, objects wear like you or I. The changing light and weather will add dimension and character to the form. With a natural backdrop of unpainted color, birdsong and wind, understanding of the work can suddenly shift from aesthetics to personal adaptive presence, defining the mutual space in private ways a Gallery or Museum cannot design.

One objective criteria of Art is how it survives in the wild, unprotected....

The above video is an illustration of an Antony Gormley sculpture installation. It's made of cast iron, and weighs about 2,000 lbs. Three stainless steel metric pins extend from the feet of the sculpture to beneath the limestone patio paver glued into holes drilled through a re-enforced concrete footer. Because the sculpture was to be installed against a wall, we had to cantilever the i-beam of the gantry and rig a counterweight of stacked palleted stones to prevent the gantry from tipping. This sculpture is made to rust. As it ages, the stains will leave it's mark on the floor and a brown trail will flow where the water goes, expanding continuously the Art's physical reach.

music except: " the Lack of Love," Ben Gage and the Art Handlers

National Geographic Museum: Terra Cotta Warriors

This week, the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC opens a wonderful show centered on the fantastic Ceramic Warriors found in China in the grave of China's first emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, 35 years ago. These objects date to the 3rd century BC, and of that army of soldiers, 15 warriors and related artifacts including a full size horse are now installed in the newly designed Museum space. It's a dramatic history lesson in clay of a buried past by an ancient culture a hemisphere and 2 millennium away. It's accidental discovery by local farmers sounds more like fiction than history, a story better suited for movies than museums. The Washington Post has a photo essay here and an article here. Looking at the figures outside their context, with little understanding of their original intention, Art and sculpture are among the only words to describe them.

I was honored to be involved in the installation. This is an ultimate project. How do you prepare or train for something like this? For an Artist/ Art Handler it's the mountain top. As a stone carver much of my own inspiration comes from what remains of Antiquity. I was eager to meet the Warriors. To be able to practice in public the work you do in private is a privilege. Friends who run a local Art Handling Company asked if I would want to be considered as the rigger for the project. The Warriors are fragile, heavy and difficult to handle. The project scope required a rigging/ sculpture specialist. They could provide an introduction. Our initial meeting with the Museum's staff in charge of the installation went well, I left with a folder of pictures, crate sizes and floor plans which I promised not to lose. Months later I found myself bringing my gantry, slings and misc. rigging tools in my pickup to the museum. This level of anxiety is fuel and I enjoyed the preparation. The degree of complexity required a commensurate response. I was warned ahead of time that there would be an official group of Chinese specialists responsible for the installation and although an interpreter would be involved, I should expect a language barrier. I looked forward to this point, I would have to speak through the quality of my presentation, tool choices and anticipation of their motives. When the first day arrived, on our introduction, I knew immediately who the Master was. I bowed and said I was in their service. After our hellos and a few unsure words I took them outside to show them the unassembled parts of the gantry. The Master nodded.

Opening the first crates felt like releasing a message in a bottle. I was unprepared for the figures individual expression and physical presence...We were asked to float each Warrior from their padded protected case to their display destination. The Chinese specialists spoke in hieroglyphs and gesture. It was like music, someone would count and on 4 we all would assist on the beat to the spot.

Some mornings I would arrive on-site ahead of the crew, meet with the museum staff, discuss objectives for the day and study the next challenge. When the crew arrived I would install the gantry in the way I saw resolved any technical problem or with everybody involved, discuss and create an alternative install solution. The Chinese Master would see immediately how much I/we understood and perhaps could not explain. Even though we had never met, we had to be great partners: the work, Art and venue deserved it. I believed the distance and difference between us in technique and troubleshooting should translate visually and we could build on that. The first break came in the middle of the project. We took the weekend off. I had a couple days to understand the scope, technical and personal, objectively. I gathered additional tools for the next week and thought they don't even know my name or who I am. If I wanted them to trust me and my approach to an International treasure in their care, they should know that. I looked up google translator and wrote out the information on my business card in Chinese. On Monday I presented them the card and each of them took the time to read the characters I couldn't. They smiled and we all nodded:

本蓋奇

美術專家，有限責任公司

大師的藝術處理程序：雕塑，繪畫，項目管理，製造
困難的項目是我們的特色：安裝 /解除安裝，索具，包裝 /裝箱

National Air and Space Museum: Boller & Chivens telescope

On September 30, The National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., opened a Public Observatory to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy. Inside, "... the centerpiece of the Public Observatory Project is a 16-inch Boller & Chivens telescope. The telescope was originally part of Harvard-Smithsonian's Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts. It was used for astronomical research until recent years, and is now on loan to the National Air and Space Museum for the Public Observatory Project."

I was fortunate to be involved in this project early, helping to prepare details for installation scope and pricing and also serving as the technical advisor, in DC, between the Air and Space Museum and the art handling company which was awarded the contract. The installation of the actual Observatory would be undertaken by a local crane company. I was to be the on-site lead object handler/ rigger for the installation of the telescope under the direction of the great staff at the Museum who put the project together. I saw that they treated the telescope as sculpture and wanted art and art handlers. Conceptually, this was close to what I have been thinking about since I found Marcel Duchamp: the re-examined object.

The telescope arrived @ the Museum in 4 major components. The heaviest was about 1000 lbs. The doorway entrance was 38 1/4" wide, the largest telescope part was at 38" wide on a pallet 42" wide. I remember going to a meeting at the Air and Space Museum where a room of experts met to discuss individual responsibility. As each of us described our parts and answered questions, I was asked to give details on how we were going to get everything in the room through the door: telescope parts, misc. tools, gantry and crew with a floor diameter of 22', as there would be many physical problems to the observatory, including an incomplete dropped floor with exposed plastic conduit which had to be surface protected. Access to finished floor height would be made after the installation. I don't remember how I answered that.

For many personal reasons this project brought to closure an adventure that began as an Art student trying to understand how to handle difficult heavy stones for sculpture. Rigging started as a studio endeavor with ropes and old scaffold and slowly progressed to slings, gantry's and cranes as I began to recognize the rules of rigging and how these rules are used to communicate safety to others in the field, especially with people you have just met on the project site. Proficiency in hand signals, strapping techniques, knots, etc.. is a shared language. Expertise is apparent immediately. Going from project to project, often in different cities and countries, with unknown contractors and crews allows all the responsible parties a way to talk. Each decision underlines how much each of us knows in the moment. For me to have been able to find myself in this environment participating in a dream project with other passionate professionals, working on a crew of best friends I taught and learned from with tools I chose and helped buy, answered many questions about the quality of my own work and direction. It also made me thankful for the hidden gifts of the Art life. Many of us are asked what are we going to do with Art when we are students. I said I didn't know and probably didn't care. To travel idiosyncratically as Artists do day to day, and then find that the life style has value is very much a surprise. For example, I am currently on a project which I'll blog about later, but it involves a Chinese crew responsible for installing large, heavy, beautiful objects with only a minimum knowledge of English. They represent a Collection which humbles me. Through mutual hand signals and techniques we're talking. During a particular difficult rigging moment, they were speaking in Chinese and I responded in English and our hands moved in similar directions. Afterwards we looked at each other and just laughed.

video music: " excerpt Digging a Hole."

Phil Clark: drums, Scott Patti: rhythm guitar, Ben Gage: Lead Guitar

Anne Truitt

photos © annetruitt.org

Anne Truitt , the great artist, sculptor, teacher, author, mentor….will have a retrospective of her work @ the Hirschhorn Museum of Art: Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection: October 8, 2009 to January 3, 2010. It gives me a formal opportunity to thank her for her help in shaping my work/ process and to share with others who don’t know about her contribution not just locally in Washington DC, but Art in general in the 20th century and beyond. The Washington Post has written 2 articles about her here and here and I just found this from Smithsonian.com.

I met her while I was a student at the University of Md. She was an iconic figure there and people, both teachers and students alike, felt fortunate to be included in her orbit. Sometimes I would carry her school bags to her car. She was well regarded not just because of what she had already done and was doing but also because she could speak personally about a profession like Art. She made Art accessible and we believed her. She was true to the dialectic. We never felt patronized. She spoke with us about subjects around and above us. Her discussions focused less on our art work and more in the quality of our convictions in the work: the technique which allowed the truth of it, not the paintbrush or chisel. She just wanted it to work.

In my last year at the University I asked her to be my thesis advisor. She said she had stopped taking anymore students and besides I already had a commitment to a point of view: stone sculpture. Would studying with her be helpful? My carving teacher Ken Campbell had just retired and I told her frankly she was the only one in the faculty who understood what I wanted to understand. She asked me about stuff and I couldn't answer her, the words just stumbled one after the other until finally I gave up. She said not to worry, she would help. What was important was that it was in the air. My job was to stay sensitive to it and that I would get it later.

De-installing Aristide Maillol

Every now and then I get a call asking if I can undertake a project asap. The Art involved is usually valuable and difficult to handle. I almost always am unable to do a site visit. The information trail is just enough to understand scope and because of the immediacy of the project, resources both in help and tool choices are restricted or non-existent. Typically, it’s difficult to create a team on short notice, and since the percentage of projects which go through based on these requests may average one in ten, I am hesitant to ask other professionals without some guarantee. It’s like crying wolf, after a while who listens. I am sensitive about asking people to change or break their schedule, especially on the proposal level. Still, I’ll go ahead and try to figure out how to do them, I love the challenge and the work.

This project involved de-installing and packing a great sculpture by Aristide Maillol. It’s cast lead and preliminary weight estimate was at 2500 lbs. I knew the piece from books. As a sculptor I took survey art history classes in school and where I could, I searched for the pieces from favorite artists in Museums all over the country while I was driving an Art truck over the road. I had even worked on a similar sculpture years ago, a different posed figure by the same artist. I was comfortable with the scope as I understood and imagined it.

The client requested the sculpture to be palletized and because of the weight, I was responsible for loading of the sculpture onto the truck. The drivers were not prepared to handle something like this. The sculpture itself was in the middle of a large yard. I had no photos to describe the installation, only an earlier photo of a previous installation. I was told shrubs would have to be removed for access and the lawn surface protected from any equipment I chose to use. Everything I would need had to be brought and built on-site, from tools to materials. Luckily, a landscape company who worked there on the grounds was offered as help. I called the owner and it was a welcome conversation: they had an all terrain forklift and operator, experience in working with the sculpture and several guys available who could assist. By Friday we had finalized the deal. On early Sunday morning I left in my pickup truck with my carpentry setup, gantry and rigging equipment. Driving 500 miles, with a forecast of heavy rain, I hoped to get to the sculpture by late afternoon to take a look at what I was up against. Finally, on-site, looking at it reclining, I relaxed. At a hotel nearby, after beers and pizza, I finally went to sleep. In the morning there was a nearby Starbucks for coffee and a Home Depot to buy pallet and packing materials. The work day was overcast, but it did not rain. Starting at 8 am, everything had to be finished by 2-3 pm. The truck pickup was scheduled to arrive between 2-4 pm that same day with direct delivery to a different city the next morning 780 miles away. The clients representative was generous and gracious. Up close the sculpture was powerful masterwork.

* Video music: " Excerpt: When Giants Walked With Us"

Jesse Meman: Flute, Ben Thompson: Xylophone, Ben Gage: Guitar

National Museum of Health and Medicine: Walter Reed Army Hospital

I began my first job as an art handler like many of us, answering an ad for art handlers posted on a bulletin board. I didn’t even see the ad; a friend called and told me about it. I had never considered Art handling as a job. I didn't know anybody who did it for a living but I was just out of art school, hanging out and thought maybe I could do this for a while. A group of four of us talked about it and decided that we’d interview together. We were all friends and unemployed and needed the money. We scheduled a meeting and after the interview, I walked out the door thinking the interview went great and I had a job. What I wasn’t ready for and what I didn't really understand was the job description: drive a climate controlled, 5 speed transmission 2 axle box truck from Washington DC to where ever: California, Florida, Maine, etc…. and pickup and deliver art. I had never driven a truck, had little experience using a manual transmission and didn't really understand what I was suppose to do when handling the art. I came in on a Saturday for a test drive. Surprisingly, the guy who was giving the test turned out to be a friend from my old neighborhood, who actually had been class mates with a sister in grade school and had become an artist. I hadn’t seen him for years. ( Mike Semyan is a great painter.) After driving around the block and going over what all the buttons and switches did in the cab all he could say was good luck: get to wherever you’re suppose to go, pickup/ deliver the Art and come back home. The next week I was headed for Texas. It was all new, unknown, uncomfortably strange, dangerous and I loved it immediately.

When I was an art student, I would work on stuff, most times I’d hit a wall and end up not knowing what to do next. I’d work and after a while my carving teacher, Ken Campbell, would come by, shake his head and say turn it over and look at it again. It took me a long time to understand he didn’t mean the stone. I’d turn the stone over and over and after the dust settled, I’d still only see a carved rock and not a sculpture. It was only later that I understood that opposite, peripheral, complimentary, perpendicular thinking is a technique like another hammer or chisel that you find in your bag with the other tools only with practice and luck. From the National Gallery of Art, http://www.nga.gov/education/american/abstract.shtm: Artists make these transformations in an effort to communicate something they cannot convey through realistic treatment. Works of art that reframe nature for expressive effect are called abstract.

Every now and then I would be involved in an Art Handling project that would make me struggle conceptually for reasonable answers. The road from idea to manufacture can be all curves and broken bridges. The problem generally would be something I’d never done before with new techniques I’d have to integrate and introduce to the client and the groups I work with. Last year a request came from the National Museum of Health and Medicine, located at the Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital in Washington DC. They wanted to move and place in exhibition a 7’ x 7’ x 7” concrete slab, cut out from the floor of a field hospital in Iraq. For the full story, here’s the link, http://nmhm.washingtondc.museum/exhibits/balad/balad1.html. The main problem: how to bring the object in through the front door, maximum width @ 54”, down the hall, past several tight turns and into the room where it would be displayed. Riggers had already been consulted but the Museum wanted another opinion. They requested the doors not be removed and that a display/ mounting solution be incorporated in the final design, weight of slab and mount approx. 2 tons.

Turning the problem in my head, with great input from the client, meant understanding how to pivot the slab on its side, at an angle where the outside dimensions would ideally be around 53” maximum so that it would slide through the front door. The final structural, engineered solution would be a handling frame to protect the slab during transit, with an integrated rigging solution manufactured in the mount to rig the object/ mount with either a gantry or forklift to the required angle, then back down to its horizontal display position and finally, also be beautiful enough for museum quality presentation.

I jumped at the chance to understand how to do that.