“We wanted to take art outside of our own four walls,” says Carinda Swann, director of the Garrison Art Center. She is speaking of “Current,” the center’s sixth survey of contemporary sculpture, at Boscobel in Garrison. The show runs until October 10.
Completed in 1808, Boscobel has one of the great Hudson River views—looking out on West Point and Constitution Island. Its house is considered a premier example of Federal architecture. The grounds comprise 45 acres. “A lot of people questioned it initially: ‘What do you mean you’re going to put modern sculpture on the grounds of Boscobel?’ But it’s been a happy marriage. People love it,” observes Swann.
Walking through Boscobel’s lawns and gardens, visitors stumble upon artworks unexpectedly, as if upon trysting lovers. Serendipity improves art; in a sense, serendipity is art.
“For the artists in our show, it’s fantastic exposure, because probably 40,000 to 50,000 people come through there in the summer,” notes Swann.
As a nod to the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, which is held at Boscobel, Judy Sigunick created two ceramic portraits of Shakespearean heroes: Viola and Cesario from “Twelfth Night.”
Al Landzberg’s Double Cee is a minimal steel work that—as the title hints—looks like two letter Cs joined together. Both ends are pointed, suggesting the horns of a bull. It’s a miniature treatise on symmetry, reposing beneath a low tree.
Martha Posner sculpted 15 site-specific dancers out of twisted honeysuckle vines. The larger-than-life figures prance by a pond, beneath a stand of birches.
The Garrison Art Center has been pursuing Cal Lane for several years. The reclusive sculptor carves lacy patterns into found metal materials, such as shovels, wheelbarrows and dumpsters, with a welding torch. “Current” includes her oil tank with a map of the world incised into it. Lane has said she feels like a “guilty bystander” while our nation fights wars for oil. She recently received a commission to cut a pattern into a 62-foot submarine, in Tivat, Montenegro.
Spheres by Grace Knowlton resembles five deflated soccer balls, made of steel and copper. The pieces sit near a tall geyserlike fountain. Spheres has a profound silliness. The title is ironic; Knowlton often uses the motif of the crushed sphere.
In fact, absent spheres recur in the show. Cal Lane represents the earth as a flattened map. Balance at 45 by Alex Kveton is like a red stylized hand holding an absent sphere. Mother and Child by Jennie M. Currie implies that the Earth is the daughter of the sun—two spheres (though both represented by circles). Posner’s dancers—might they be playing ball? If I were titling the show, I’d be tempted to choose “Memory of a Sphere.”
All the sculptures are for sale, with proceeds going to the Gillette Scholarship Fund, which allows any adult or child in need to attend classes at the Garrison Art Center. Each summer, the organization offers a three-week program for young children, then another three weeks for high school students. Both programs focus on the visual arts.
“Current” will be exhibited at Boscobel, 1601 Route 9D, Garrison, until October 10. (845) 265-3638; www.garrisonartcenter.org.
This article appears in July 2011.
