International Sculpture Center

re:sculpt
Grand Arts: Visions that Provoke and Disrupt
December 7, 2016

Rosemarie Fiore, process photo, The Good-Time Mix Machine: Scrambler Drawings, 2004.
Acrylic paint on vinyl, 60 x 60 ft. (Photograph courtesy E.G. Schempf)

Art creation takes more than time and money: it takes research, focus, and many kinds of support/
teamwork. That’s one main message in Grand Arts 1995 – 2015 Problems and Provocations. When
Glenn Harper assigned me to cover the Grand Arts opening of Pattie Cronin’s Memorial to a Marriage– a Carrara marble, Hosmer-inspired mortuary sculpture in Kansas City, Missouri around 2002, I
had heard of Margaret Hall Silva’s arts foundation from artist Jeff Aeling (1996 awardee), but I didn’t
realize until I read this book how messy and blindly optimistic Grand Arts was to commission work
as revolutionary as Cronin’s Memorial and Sanford Biggers’ Blossom – a piano “born” from a tree,
which, on its own, plays a soulful version of Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit.
Grants Arts Sculpture

The book cover, Florence Coyote, 2006 by Filip
Noterdaeme, shows a coyote staring into a
microphone as it paws an unsolved puzzle – apicture of Velazquez’s Las Meninas, which displays
the dwarf’s head but not the dog beside her in theforeground. The inside covers illustrate green
blueprints of the site plan, and a few Grand
Arts projects by Anthony Baab, William Pope.L,
John Salvest, and The Propeller Group (AK-47fragments).
This huge book is jammed with illustrations,
memos, and photos that take us behind the scenes
for 31 of the 92 art projects listed from 1995-2015.
It also has five essays and a Questions section
probing risks and next steps for artists and artsorganizations. It offers a free-thinking model forartists and arts foundations – one far beyond
support money and/or space. Also, like Sissel
Problems and Provocations. Edited by Stacy Switzer andTolaas’ SmellScape project, 2012, some projects
Annie Fischer. 2016: Grand Arts: Kansas City, MO. 448
don’t “look like art” and even pictures can’t deliverpages. ISBN: 978-0-692-62553-8. $49.95. Publication:
all sensations. The Grand Arts vision begun inNovember, 2016.
Kansas City, Missouri has been transferred toa new group, Fathomers, which is based in Los
Angeles, California. Stacy Switzer, formerly artistic director at Grand Arts, and now executive directorof Fathomers, calls it “a philanthropic research institute born of Grand Arts.”

As Ian Kerr points out on page 373, “The way ofoperating Grand Arts began to shift around the time
Stacy Switzer joined as the new artistic director, in2004. The most important and relevant shift forthis discussion was the reframing of what Grand
Arts did – from supporting artistic practices tosupporting research creation.” Kerr points out that
Grand Arts was already moving in this direction.
Cronin’s Memorial, 2002, and Biggers’Blossom,2007, are good early examples of research creation.
Patricia Cronin’s Memorial to a Marriage was a
two year project starting in 2000. The idea was tocelebrate her union with Deb Kass at a time whengay marriage was not legal in New York by creatinga larger-than-lifesized marble mortuary sculpturein the neoclassical style of Harriet Hosmer showing
two sleeping women in a post-coital embrace.
Cronin’s research & execution included travel toPatricia Cronin, installation view, Memorial to afamed French cemeteries and to Carrara, Italy toMarriage, 2002. Carrara marble, 83 x 40 x 27 in.
select the marble, fabrication at Johnson Atelier
in New Jersey, and hand-finishing the marble. The eight pages on Cronin pack in over 22 images,photos, correspondence, maps, etc. including an installation photo at Woodlawn Cemetery and thenews that Cronin and Kass officially married in 2011.
Grand Arts SculptureSanford Biggers, Lotus, 2007. Steel armature and etched glass, 84 x 3⁄4 in. 1 AP.

Part of what stuns me about Sanford Biggers’ Blossom, 2007, is that I’m still awed by seeing andhearing it. How did this piano grow out of a tree? What does that mean? Strange Fruit reminds methat black people/cultures are still oppressed and still sing. Just as the aesthetics and significances ofBlossom—including its unexpected title – continue to resonate, the process views show a few of thehundreds of decisions that went into its making.
The 31 projects featured start with The Propeller Group’s A Universe of Collisions, 2015, a projectthat includes “capturing” and documenting collisions of M16 and AK 47 bullets and other weapons inmid-air. The project ends by having the guns destroy each other.
Grand Arts Sculpture

The Propeller Group, process detail, The AK-47 vs. the M16, 2015.
Fragments of AK-47 and M16 projectiles encased in ballistic gelatin.

All listed projects are complex and seem impressive, and the artists named whose projects are notfeatured, such as Teresita Fernández, seem equally provocative. I called one of these artists to ask
about his experience. Jeff Aeling, whose project The Layman’s Guide to the Passage of the Millenium,
was funded in 1996, told me: “Margaret Silva and Sean Kelly came into the discussion one and ahalf years into my project. Grand Arts gave me the shop space and the money to execute large threedimensional pieces. Margaret made it possible for me to complete something I’d wanted to do. Thatshow got national advertising and made it possible for me to get into galleries. This, in turn, helped
me to become a full time professional artist. It was a total dream situation.”[i] The Grand Arts dream
book has closed, but visionaries are encouraged to write to yes@fathomers.com and to hop aboard
the new organization moving the vision to its next outpost.
By Jan Garden Castro[i] Phone conversation with Jeff Aeling on 10.30.16.

find this article : https://blog.sculpture.org/2016/12/07/grand-arts/