Public works
Boston doesn't have a reputation for being artsy. Other cities - New York, San Francisco, and even Providence - seem to own that title. We're the smart college town with preppy Beacon Hill types and sports fanatics. Want Irish pubs, cold winters, and good seafood? We got 'em.
Of course, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum give us bragging rights, but is art - like sports and politics - really a part of daily life in Boston?
Interviews with local artists, patrons, and art lovers suggest almost immediately that art is always with us in Boston. It's in restaurants, on the subway, on the outside walls of neighborhood markets, and in front of high-tech office buildings.
Artists from Somerville, Jamaica Plain, and the Fort Point Channel area, and students in college, art school, high school, have been busy these days. The results point to a creativity that we might not be famous for but that nonetheless exists.
What follows is a hint of the art outside our museums' walls. For every restaurant that displayed a striking modern painting, we heard about another with great photography, a college campus with sculpture worth seeing, a mural here, a mosaic there.
Even if you're not an art connoisseur, you can tell a pretty picture, a moving mural, or a haunting sculpture when you see one.
The Mural Crew
Each summer since 1991, Heidi Schork, director of the Mural Crew from Boston's Office of Cultural Affairs, can be found outside in the summer sun, alongside a wall, paint brush in hand, with her crew: a staff artist, an assistant, and 10 to 12 high school students who applied to help out the summer. (Students are paid around $7 an hour and work for 25 hours a week planning, designing, and painting the murals.) Most of the murals are in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood particularly receptive to public art.
These brightly colored, beautiful murals cover the blank or graffiti-ridden walls of supermarkets, bakeries, liquor stores, and abandoned buildings. In addition to JP, many murals can be found along the byways of Forest Hills, Dudley Square, and Mission Hill.
Leo's Grocery, at 342 Blue Hill Ave. on the Dorchester-Roxbury border, received a complete makeover last summer. In the hands of the Mural Crew, the small neighborhood mart with a nondescript mauve storefront blossomed into a striking exterior of strong reds, blues, yellows, and greens. The mural itself is a salute to the owner's and neighborhood's Dominican Republican heritage. The side wall depicts lions lounging in an African countryside, colorful roosters, and Native Americans on cigar boxes (the Dominican Republic is one of the world's largest producers of cigars).
In just a few summer months, Leo's Grocery went from an everyday store in a tougher part of town to a piece of art. And that is only one mural, on one street, on one corner, that Schork's crew has created. Other noteworthy murals:
Kings & Queens on the corner of Blue Hill Avenue and Warren Street. Boston Symphony Orchestra mural featuring Seiji Ozawa behind the stage door entrance The "Faces of Dudley" at the intersection of Washington Street and Malcolm X Boulevard. A colorful, vibrant mural that depicts the evolution of life alongside the Boston Clutchworks at 1486 Tremont St. in Mission Hill.Schork says that once a mural goes up, it will not be "tagged" with graffiti. Of the 15 or so murals that Schork showed off, some of which were completed eight and nine years ago, none had a speck of graffiti.
Students interested in working on the Mural Crew must be Boston residents. Schork is primarily interested in recruiting art students; it's not necessarily experience that lands a student a spot on the crew - but strong desire. The Mural Crew can be reached at the city's Office of Cultural Affairs: 617-635-4202.
Making Way Art
Years ago, when one of Nancy Schon's friends took her two small boys to the Public Garden for an afternoon, the boys asked - "Where are the ducks?" The friend relayed the story to Schon, a longtime sculptor who had shown her works in a New York gallery for years. The ducks that the boys referred to were from the famed children's book, "Make Way for Ducklings," by Robert McCloskey. In October 1987, Schon answered the boys' question. Her bronze sculptures of Mrs. Mallard and her waddling ducklings went on permanent display in the Public Garden.
Since then, Schon's public sculptures have had a special audience in children, who love to pat and hug and interact with her creations. Other pieces continue to pop up around the city. "Tortoise and Hare," a tribute to marathon runners, rests at the marathon finish line in Copley Square. A bronze "Eeyore and Winnie the Pooh" welcome readers at the Newton Free Library, and more recently, Schon created "A Dragon for Dorchester" at Nonquit Green on Nonquit Street in Dorchester.
For more information on Schon's popular pieces, visit www.schon.com, which also provides a checklist for making public art a reality (such as getting sponsors and approvals from different groups).
Catch of the day
Just as Schon's ducklings are a definitive part of the Public Garden, sculptor David Tonnesen's 45-foot steel fish has become a landmark along South Boston's waterfront. Boaters catch glimpses of the abstract New England cod that crowns the Legal Sea Foods headquarters.
The 2-ton stainless steel sculpture, which is raised 60 feet overhead and hinges on the corner of the building, has scales that rotate according to wind currents. The color of the fish's eyeball - a 30-inch diameter frosted globe - classifies wind speed using the Beaufort scale. For example, a violet color with one blink means wind speed can be measured at 0-1 knots and sea conditions are "glassy smooth, mirror-like." If the eyeball glows yellow with five orange pulses, the wind is blowing 17-21 knots, and boaters can expect whitecaps, foam, and spray on the ocean.
The giant fish, both art and weather instrument, isn't Tonessen's first for Legal's. Diners can also enjoy an 11-foot-tall steel fish sculpture in front of the Legal Sea Foods in Braintree, or "The Cycle of Life" sculpture in the Park Square restaurant.
Ritzy Art
You don't have to be a high roller to enjoy the modern art collection in the newish Ritz-Carlton Boston Common (10 Avery St., 617-574-7100). Guests and visitors can get a map of the art in the Ritz's main lobby and lounge and on second-floor public spaces like conference rooms and hallways - just ask the concierge.
Works by 40 artists, many of whom are local residents and students of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Mass College of Art, are on view. The collection itself, valued at $1 million, is presented in true Ritz fashion. It's elegant, sophisticated, modern, and, well, just interesting to look at. Somerville artist Randal Thurston's "Untitled," black-and-white work in fluid, striking shapes from a series called "Palindrome," is on the right as you enter the Ritz foyer.
Among the many other pieces on display are Lucy White's red "Tulips" in the lobby, Ellen Gallagher's mixed-media prints in the lobby lounge, and a variety of Stephen DiRado's pictures from his "Celestial Series" - black-and-white photographs of comets streaking across the Massachusetts night sky.
Art lovers interested in more classic or historical works can take a stroll across the Common to the original Ritz-Carlton at 15 Arlington St. This Ritz hosts an art collection of more old-school, traditional subjects - and many of the pieces have a good story to tell. Edward Percy Moran's "The Boston Tea Party" hangs near the Grand Ballroom, hand-blown cobalt blue (signature color of the Ritz) crystal chandeliers from 1920s Czechoslovakia light the dining room. "The Artist," a portrait of one of the earliest French artists, Marie Louise-Elizabeth Vigee-LeBrun, adorns the Lounge.
An Artistic End
A cemetery might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of art, but Cambridge's Mount Auburn Cemetery, which opened in 1831, was once a hot spot in the American art world. Before Bostonians could peruse the halls of the MFA, they would venture out to Cambridge and stroll through this lush, transcendental-inspired cemetery.
The cemetery ranked with Niagra Falls in popularity as a tourist attraction. The big draw, in addition to a beautifully landscaped natural setting, was the impressive works of sculpture created at that time. Wealthy Bostonians often commissioned American and European artists to create headstones and memorials for their family plots.
Today these sculptures are still on view; some of the more popular sites are the Mary Baker Eddy monument (a white marble pavilion in front of a reflecting pool), and the sphinx, a large sculpture created by Martin Milmore as a memorial to the Civil War.
Not far off at the Forest Hills Cemetery, a massive bronze sculpture greets visitors who enter through the cemetery's elaborate brick gates. Created by the sculptor of the Abraham Lincoln memorial in Washington D.C., Daniel Chester French, this piece of art depicts a young sculptor (Milmore) at work on a sphinx (in Mount Auburn Cemetery) as a large angel of death appears before him. The work, "Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor" is probably one of Forest Hill's most impressive and famous pieces.
In keeping with the Victorian idea of adding art to cemeteries as way to make death seem less harsh, the staff at Forest Hills created a sculpture path that winds throughout the cemetery - from some of the oldest plots to the active burial grounds. Visitors can admire works by contemporaneous artists, most of whom are from the Boston area. The sculptures, which were created with their shared environment in mind, differ greatly from one another.
Particularly interesting is "Poetry Chairs" created by artist Mitch Ryerson with the students from the Little House School, and poet Elizabeth McKim. These picturesque seats, carved from tree trunks and engraved with student poetry, are beside the cemetery's lake. Other eye-catching images include "Nightshirts," by Leslie Wilcox, which are painted stainless-steel screen shirts from the 19th century that flow from the trees and create an idea of friendly spirits in Forest Hills.
A life-size deer of welded steel by Wendy Klemperer of Nelson, N.H., stands frozen, as if listening, along one of the cemetery lanes. "Resting Benches" by Danielle Krcmar and Lisa Osborn of Jamaica Plain, may cause viewers to pause. These small concrete, almost cozy, Victorian-style beds play on the idea of a "resting place." Visitors are welcome to have a seat and think on it.
Maps of both Mount Auburn and Forest Hills cemeteries are available at their main gates. Mount Auburn is open to visitors every day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (from May through September gates stay open until 7 p.m.). Audio tours (CD or cassette) are available for rental or purchase. For more information on Mount Auburn, visit www.mountauburn.org or call 617-547-7105. Forest Hills Cemetery is open daily 8:30 a.m. until dusk. Visit www.foresthillstrust.org or call 617-524-0128. 