10.31.2007: Halloween, Martin Puryear

Halloween

Walking around town I have to constantly remind myself it’s Halloween.  It might explain that woman in a white gown across the street — isn’t her makeup unusually white?  And the couple in front of me as I walk to the deli — the woman sort of looks like a Raggedy Ann doll. They’re really not that far from how people normally look around here. And where’s the Birdman?

Speaking of scary…Bush’s nominee for Attorney General still refuses to call waterboarding torture, amongst many other sleazy things. He’s clearly an apologist for the policies of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush. And if the Democratic congress passes this man — who by nature of this absolution puts the US and its citizens in harms way, to say nothing of the boys in the services — they will be as guilty as he is. It goes without saying that the Bush crew does NOT support our troops, providing every justification to render our soldiers the pariahs and targets they are fast becoming.

Martin Puryear

Went to see a MoMA show surveying the sculptural works of Martin Puryear, old and new. In my opinion it’s incredible. I found his work both beautiful and moving. I got choked up.

They sculptures are all wood mixed with other materials, partly abstract but with recognizable elements and shapes too: wheels and an axle from an old fashioned cart, but giant; an old wooden wheelbarrow; baskets, upside down and out of scale; fishing nets, the kind used by native Americans; yokes, fence posts, ploughs, tools and their handles, worn into smooth biomorphic shapes with use and age. The works evoke the lyrics of gospel songs and spirituals, and the novels of William Faulkner and Flannery O‘Connor.

Ladder for Booker T. Washington
Photo by Mark Interrante

There are references to the history of Africans in the New World, to traditional African cultures, to farming, working the land and making things by hand — the way one comes to know one’s tools as if they are extensions of oneself, the way they almost come to have a life of their own.

The pieces are calm, but highly charged, both conscious and comfortable with what they are, but also aware that there are layers to get lost in.

None of this is obvious — the scale has been changed and the references are not right upfront or blatant, instead embedded in the shapes and materials, in how they must feel to the hand. (There were more “Do Not Touch” signs than I’ve seen in a long time — maybe they knew the urge to touch these would be strong).

Here is an outdoor piece that wasn’t included in the show, though there was one sculpture with one of these impossible needle like trees that seem to point to the sky just as its diameter dwindles to nothing.