In recent days, a famous piece of public art in downtown Hartford was apparently defaced. Several boulders in Carl Andre's Stone Field Sculpture had been mysteriously spray painted with bright colors, as though by utility workers.
Residents and various officials combined efforts to clean the boulders early this week.
WNPR's Colin McEnroe Show touched on the topic. Below is a transcript of the discussion.
HOST COLIN MCENROE: We’re going to tell you a story about art, and it’s a story about something that goes wrong. But it’s a story that we think is going to have a happy ending with some people doing the right thing, too.
Let me set the stage. First of all, I could probably do this better than anybody, because I’ve lived through the whole thing.
In 1977, the city obtained and commissioned a piece of minimalist art, I think we could say, about the sculptor Carl Andre. It’s called Stone Field Sculpture. It’s 36 boulders arranged in a triangular formation. It exists on Gold Street, hard against Center Church and the ancient burial ground. And they are these very large boulders -- that are what they look like -- and they’re not adorned in any particular way, which was controversial.
There were people at the time that thought that they weren’t enough of an artistic statement to warrant the amount of the commission that was given. They’ve been controversial, off and on through the years.
Although for the most part, people tend to forget that they’re there, which is what I think happened this time.
Joining us right now is Kristina Newman-Scott, director of the city of Hartford’s marketing, events, and cultural affairs division. So Kristina, welcome back to our show.
KRISTINA NEWMAN-SCOTT: Thanks, Colin. It’s great to be on.
MCENROE: Towards the end of last week, it was discovered that as workers sometimes do, some group of workers that were getting ready for something, you often see this -- that some spray paint was down, to mark where utilities are, or something. And this is what happened to the boulders.
NEWMAN-SCOTT: Yeah, we were notified by several people. One of them was Will K. Wilkins from Real Art Ways, last week Friday, who sent several pictures, saying: “Hey, do you guys know what’s happening here?”
We did not; it was not Hartford employees that did that. We are still kind of still trying to figure out why that happened. There was not work slated to be happening in that area.
So essentially, there were these red and orange spray painted areas highlighting electrical and gas lines.
We found out, and we decided to address it as soon as possible, the same way we would when dealing with graffiti, when dealing in the business improvement district. And that’s exactly what we did.
We called Mike Zaleski, who runs the BID [Business Improvement District], who helps us oversee issues such as this. And we’re bringing out special experts: local artist Tao LaBossiere, and Ulrich Birkmaier from the Wadsworth Atheneum, to help us oversee the spray-painting of the rocks.
MCENROE: We’re going to go to Tao -- I think he’s live on the scene in downtown Hartford -- in just a second.
But just to stay with you for a second on this, we just had a conversation on the previous segment on how information spreads through the Internet, sometimes deleteriously. Over the course of the weekend -- particularly those people who were looking at a Facebook page called “Dwelling in Downtown Hartford” -- there was all kinds of information being spread; all kinds of theories on what had happened; all kinds of theories on who had done this, and why somebody had done this, and was there going to be construction on where the rocks were sitting.
Or were these marks having to do with nearby construction on Gold Street? It’s still not 100 percent clear why the spray painting happened at all?
NEWMAN-SCOTT: In that particular area, yeah. We’re looking into that. Thom Deller, who runs the department of development services, is working with engineers and others looking into why exactly that particular area was spray painted, and to make sure there is a process and a protocol moving forward so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.
MCENROE: But we do know that there is some work being planned in that area. Right? There is a project that is called TIGER. There’s a project called iQuilt. I’ve never quite grasped whether or not the tiger is in fact wearing a quilt.
NEWMAN-SCOTT: The tiger is wearing a quilt. It’s actually quite fabulous.
MCENROE: I can’t wait. I can’t wait for the tiger wearing a quilt. It’s part of CTfastrak. TIGER is part of that. One of the goals is to change the alignment of the street that is right next to the street that is next to these boulders.
What we don’t know for sure, is if workers were doing that, then they’d want to know where the nearest utilities were that they needed to worry about. If they thought they were running underneath the boulders, then they would put the paint there. But we don’t know if that’s the case?
NEWMAN-SCOTT: Right, we don’t know if that’s 100 percent the case. However, you should know that we have reached out to Carl Andre’s representatives in New York. We’ll be having a phone conversation with them this week.
One of the things we want to make sure happens is: should there be issues, for instance, the MDC says: “We’re going to have to dig all kinds of things up, because we have issues with water mains, etc.,” we want to have a plan in place.
MCENROE: Before we go to Tao, let me tell you a piece of history that I remember, but hardly anyone else does, which is that in 1978, Edith Gains, who was then the superintendent of schools in Hartford, was fired, or her contract was not renewed. [It] was very controversial. The city heated up in a way that we haven’t really seen since. We weren’t that far away from the time of the riots, and it seemed that this could happen. The city was a powder keg. That didn’t happen.
But one very, very heated night, a really large crowd assembled in the North End, and marched in protest into downtown Hartford. Their goal was to arrive at those rocks, and their goal was to move one of those boulders, as a symbolic gesture -- as a sense that they’ll spend $80,000 for these rocks, but they’re not spending $80,000 for whatever, and Edith Gains is unfairly being removed, etc.
Anyway, they all went down there, and they tried to remove one of the boulders. Those suckers are a lot heavier than they look.
NEWMAN-SCOTT: Yeah, they’re around ten tons to 1,000 pounds. But we should clarify that the city of Hartford didn’t fund these rocks. It was Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, along with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
MCENROE: Right. Good point. So the other thing was that I called Carl Andre to tell him this. And he said, “Well, you know, it’s kind of good, in a way, if people want to exercise their rights, and their frustrations, and their voices. I’m kind of honored, in a way.” He might be cool with it.
He is 79 now. He might be more relaxed about this than you think.
NEWMAN-SCOTT: He might be. And you know what: it is art in the public realm. It’s all part and parcel, so to speak, for public reaction. Some are going to enjoy it. Some are going to be in between. And others are just not going to like it.
MCENROE: Alright, well, Kristina Newman-Scott, thank you so much for helping us understand this, and thanks for joining us today.
NEWMAN-SCOTT: Thank you, Colin.
MCENROE: Alright. Now we’re going to go to Tao LaBossiere. I think he’s live on the scene. Tao LaBossiere is the guy who’s going to step forward. An artist based in Hartford, the spirit of positive action, at a time when people were very upset about the spray-painting of these rocks, however accidental might be, has stepped forward to do something about this. So first of all, hi Tao.
TAO LABOSSIERE: Hey, how’s it going, Colin.
MCENROE: Good. So are you at the rocks right now?
LABOSSIERE: I am appreciating them, hopefully, as Carl Andre would have hopefully wanted me to -- I’m sitting on a rock.
MCENROE: I think he would be cool with that. That’s the reason they’re close to the street. And first of all, tell us what you see. I’ve seen photographs, but I haven’t been out there yet. Is there a lot of spray paint on them?
LABOSSIERE: Orange and red spray painted everywhere. About 15 rocks do have spray paint on them.
MCENROE: I saw you kind of surface on a Facebook thread that was discussing all this, and you volunteered right away to see if you could clean this stuff up. Why did you do that?
LABOSSIERE: I am a professional artist, and I have some restoration experience, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to be of public service, and just volunteer to clean it.
A photo posted by Amy LaBossiere (@amylabossiere) on Mar 3, 2015 at 8:44am PST
MCENROE: I know your work reasonably well. It’s much more representational than Carl Andre’s minimalism. If you had to explain to someone why this is art, why the boulder you’re sitting on is art, and why, therefore, it ought not to be defaced or accidently spray-painted…
LABOSSIERE: Well, it was thoughtfully placed here by the artist as a conceptual work. Whether many people see it as art or not is a representational perception. I think of it as art. It provides me a place to meditate. The way it’s laid out here in the state is very thoughtful. It connects to nature. To me, it’s beautiful.
MCENROE: Obviously, one of the tricks here is going to be: you’re going to clean up the rock, but you don’t want it to look bleached. Do you know how to get this orange and red paint off without it having looked like you did it?
LABOSSIERE: Yeah, removing graffiti is a trial and error process of testing emulsifiers to make sure you have the right one. You’re soaking the spray paint, and then you’re removing it with either brushes or sprays. I would do it as gently as possible. I would make sure not to leave hard edge, clean areas so that the cleaning looks worse than the graffiti. I’d feather out the edges. And hopefully the lichen would grow back in not too long a time.
MCENROE: One thing I just wanted to say was that over the weekend, people were really upset about this. People were worried. They thought maybe there was going to be construction right where the rocks are. They were worried that something really bad had already happened to the rocks, or that something bad was going to happen to the rocks. Some people even thought that maybe this was done intentionally for some reason, which seems very unlikely.
First of all, let me salute you for saying, “Hey, this is something people can deal with, something I can deal with, and I think I even know how to get these rocks clean.” So congratulations on being that voice.
But I also wonder, maybe this is part of a city, maybe the part of the fun of being in a city is getting upset about stuff, worrying about stuff, and part of having the rocks here -- maybe the whole hubbub that you seemed to quell at least a little bit is part of the excitement of living in a city?
LABOSSIERE: Oh, absolutely. Observing the thread, people were concerned with who to blame, and the mood was a little upsetting, and I thought I would try to change that by just saying we can just clean this. I know how to do this, so I offered.
MCENROE: Alright, well, Tao LaBossiere, thank you for joining us today, congratulations, I hope the cleaning goes well today. I’m sure when I go on Facebook tonight, I’ll see all kinds of pictures of the wonderful stuff you did. Thanks for joining us today.
LABOSSIERE: Take care.
Mallory ODonoghue contributed to this post.