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what is art? what is carmen? September 7, 2002 |
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One should never watch backhoes knitting on an empty stomach, so the first order of the day is breakfast at Downcity. For a change of pace I have huevos rancheros instead of the breakfast burrito and I pass on the Portuguese cornbread toast. I am satisfied with my huevos rancheros, and end up sharing Nancy's toast for the complete Downcity experience. Then it's on to Parcel 12 for the knitting backhoes, by way of the newly opened Intermodal Transportation Center (really the bus station with delusions of grandeur), which itself features art - this being Providence after all. As you enter the station from the side facing City Hall, you're greeted with a scene of a rowboat in a tidal cove inlaid in the floor, appropriately titled Tidal Cove. The piece de resistance, though, is the ceramic tile mural on the wall in the center of the station. It's got buses and sea shells and sailboats and mermaids and cats and buildings and people and amazing stuff all done by Very Special Arts. Way cool. Crossing from the bus station, umm, Intermodal Transportation Center, through Burnside Park we notice a sculpture that looks like a tiny Stonehenge, but we're now totally focused on getting to Parcel 12 to check out those knitting backhoes. Nothing else about Burnside Park registers in our brains. Two backhoes and a cherry picker are enclosed by a chain link fence. The artist, Dave Cole, is up in the cherry picker looping white material (Kevlar?) over giant knitting needles attached to the shovel part of each backhoe. The needles look to be about 20 feet long. Rolls of red, white, and blue Kevlar (if that's what it is) are stacked up next to one of the backhoes. Cole loops the material over the needles with what looks like a giant crochet hook and directs the backhoe drivers which way to move the needles. The first time I see a needle actually pick up a stitch and transfer it to the other needle I am awed. And they keep doing it. In the time we watched I only saw them drop one stitch. Inside the enclosure the equipment is surrounded by attendants wearing blue work shirts with "The Knitting Machine" and a picture of the thing silk-screened on the back. Well, them and two dogs wearing bandanas. Outside the fence, an older guy improvises on a keyboard music appropriate to large ungainly things knitting. I pick up snatches of familiar jazz standards and tangos and even some rock n' roll. He just keeps going and going like the Energizer bunny in the hot midday sun. Eventually some of the attendants bring him a beach umbrella for shade and a jug of water. The midday sun and intense heat started getting to me and not having a beach umbrella, I looked around for some shade to watch from. I spotted a woman knitting in the shade of a sculpture but there wasn't room for us there. I realized we could still see the action from Burnside Park, so bought myself a Del's lemonade and found a spot under a tree in the park from which to watch. From a couple of hours of watching the knitting machine and taking photos of it, my visual appreciation centers must have opened up because I was seeing art everywhere in Burnside Park. They've moved the equestrian statue of General Burnside from wherever it used to be to the park and it's all packaged up in scaffolding and yellow caution tape from the move. General Burnside's horse peering out through the scaffolding is suddenly full of visual interest. As are the shadows on the walkways, the arrangement of pigeons, the homeless people sleeping, the fountain... everything in Providence seems even more alive than before. I started taking tons more pictures. Check out this gallery of Knitting Machine photos. Pay special attention to General Burnside's horse.
We stopped in at the used bookstore where the owner still remembers us as the couple who bought her Uncle Robert's old Viking book. Sometimes she calls us the Viking ladies. She has a new dog now, the old bookstore dog having passed on. The new dog is way yappy today and she keeps telling it to be quiet. We chat with her on the sidewalk outside the shop while the tuba people unload their instruments from a pickup truck. We settle in on a park bench in the shade. The tubas begin to play: a little Sousa (predictable), some Beatles, some patriotic tunes, some Bach (surprisingly good on tuba), and am I imagining a little Rolling Stones? Sun glints off the shiny brass in all directions. Tubas are visually stunning as well as aurally mesmerizing. Can you tell we like tubas? The concert is transporting. It seems like no time has passed at all and yet we're watching them pack up their instruments again. Even watching them pack up is stunning. I take a few pictures and the disk is full. I dash to the drugstore for a box of floppies and dash back in time for some good shots. Check out this gallery of Wickford tuba photos. Dinner at the restaurant where Peaches used to be - I think it's called Fendi, but last time we did the Wickford tuba thing it was called Seaport Tavern. The waiter was intrusive and the guy at the next table ranted to us about the dangers of blood transfusions and West Nile virus as we ate mushroom brochette and feta cheese pizza by the water surrounded by three species of gulls and two mute swans. Mushroom brochette disappointing. Those were not wild mushrooms. They had no flavor whatsoever. The pizza was incredible though.
As we're sitting there, a guy from a show called Chowdah on Channel 3 asks if he can interview us. Sure. Why not? He asks where we're from, how we heard about it, whether we knit ourselves ... and then: Chowdah guy: Is it art? I tell him art is what makes you see things in a new way. I start in on how I've watched my mother knit a hundred times, maybe a thousand, and never really saw what went into it. Nancy tells him about how we look at everything with new eyes after viewing really good art. She tells him about General Burnside's horse. We talk with the guy about what is art for several minutes, just like the old times when my friend Mark and I would stay up all night drinking cappuccino and trying to answer "what is art?" After the interview, we sign release forms and I remind the guy to go check out General Burnside's horse. The keyboard guy is trancing out on some tango rhythms still going strong since this morning. Over the keyboard we hear some vaguely operatic strains drifting from Burnside Park. Nancy thinks it must be time for the 15-minute Carmen that sets aside the artifice of the opera house or whatever it advertised itself as. We amble over and discover it's a dance piece by Island Moving Company, but that Carmen is coming up in about 10 minutes. The fountain is brightly lighted and the Providence skyline even looks like art as we find a spot and wait for Carmen to start. The actors arrive in front of the fountain, running around putting on costumes and makeup. "You think you don't know Carmen?" they ask. "You do know Carmen." They run around asking the audience "What is Carmen?" Answers are all over the place: a lover, a whore, works in a tobacco factory, loves Don Jose, romantic... and Nancy belts out "inappropriate" which gets the biggest laugh even from the actors. They mime scenes of the bullring, the tobacco factory, a fancy dinner, a subway (a subway - there's a subway in Carmen?) at top speed. Carmen sings her aria. She's damn good. It's fun. It's art. And yes, it's Carmen. Check out the Carmen photos in with the night knitting ones. Providence is cool. Where else would I find myself being asked "What is art?" and "What is Carmen?" on the same day? |
Today's Bird Sightings (besides the pigeons in Burnside Park) Wickford, RI herring gull This Year's Bird
Sightings
Today's Reading This Year's Reading |
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Copyright © 2002, Janet I. Egan |
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Convergence,
an annual art festival, has taken over downtown Providence.
This is a must see every year, and this year they've got a
guy who knits with backhoes. Backhoes knitting? I'm
there!
All
that and the Wickford tuba event too! Yes, besides
Convergence, today is the day tubas from all over Rhode
Island gather in Wickford. The first time Nancy and I
stumbled upon the Wickford tubas we fell in love with tuba
music. There is just nothing like an all low brass ensemble
playing great music on a summer afternoon. Of course, now we
go to every tuba event in Rhode Island (Tubarama,
Octubafest, A Tuba Christmas). So we tore ourselves away
from the knitting machine and drove down to Wickford.
Back
to Providence with Convergence in full swing, just to check
on the Knitting Machine again. At least so we said. The
white panel he was knitting this morning is now hanging on
the fence. He's got several rows of red and white up on the
giant needles now. This is even more fascinating to watch at
night. We plunk ourselves down on the concrete pedestal of
another Convergence sculpture to watch for
awhile.