Valiant Flowers by Karen Cusolito. Photo by Lydia Gonzales
Market Street Blooms
Dandelion and Valiant Flowers by artist Karen Cusolito
Where: Market Street at the UN Plaza
When: May 13 to August 13, 2011
The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC), in partnership with the Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF), presents Market Street Blooms, an installation of two of Karen Cusolito’s large flower sculptures at U.N. Plaza and across the street at 1123 Market Street. Cusolito and BRAF’s Executive Director Tomas McCabe spoke with the ARTery Project about how Dandelion and Valiant Flowers, previously installed in the desert at Burning Man, can be engaging and sympathetic to diverse communities.
Interview with Tomas McCabe
What is the Black Rock Arts Foundation and how is it related to Burning Man?
The Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF) was founded in 2001 by several of the partners who produce Burning Man. The Burning Man event had created a space that was re-kindling the power of art to bring community together, to unite people in creativity and wonderment. BRAF was founded with the vision of spreading that experience to the rest of the world.
Over our 10-year history, that vision has developed into a mission to support and promote community, interactive art, and civic participation though several different programs. Our Grants to Artists program gives money through a yearly grant cycle for the creation of new interactive artwork and community art programs. Our Civic Arts Program, of which Market Street Blooms is a part, takes existing large-scale artworks and finds ways to place them in civic contexts, usually temporarily. Our Scrap Eden Program has developed out of a partnership with the San Francisco Department of the Environment and uses art to promote environmental sustainability, particularly through different ways of re-thinking our waste stream: recycling, reuse, composting, etc.
How does the Black Rock Arts Foundation bring its philosophy of environmental and social sustainability to civic installations of art?
One of the simplest ways is that we like to support art that uses recycled and reclaimed materials, like Karen Cusolito’s sculptures that make up Market Street Blooms. Not only do works like these have a lower environmental impact by virtue of being made from reclaimed materials, but they also demonstrate the beauty and utility to be found in creative reuse, hopefully encouraging others to do the same.
Composting Contraption at the Art in Storefronts launch. Photo by Roxanne Quezada Chartouni
This kind of thinking drives our Scrap Eden Program, through which we’ve built several different art projects with the goal of promoting environmental sustainability. The latest project in this program is called the Composting Contraption and is a mobile, bike powered kinetic sculpture that aims to educate the public about the importance of, and methodologies for, composting. We also like that it’s made of reclaimed materials and promotes bike culture.
What are you hopes for the Black Rock Arts Foundation’s partnership with the ARTery Project in its mission to revitalize Market Street between 6th and 8th Streets?
In May we moved our offices from the Bayview to 6th and Market. We’re a part of this neighborhood now and that makes us particularly eager to see how it can flourish. One thing that was exciting about the Art in Storefronts and Market Street Blooms opening event was the fact that we got to meet and talk to a lot of people who live and work in the area. We got a lot of positive feedback from people who were excited to see art on the streets and to have their neighborhood become a destination for the arts. So, we’d like to do more in our new neighborhood and we’re actively looking for ways to connect with our neighbors and support art and community in the area.
How does the Black Rock Arts Foundation work with artists, such as Karen Cusolito, to support projects such as Market Street Blooms?
Our role can vary significantly from project to project in our Civic Arts Program. We have a lot of experience by now in installing public art, so we have connections to a number of artists, engineers, consultants, and other friends and supporters that we can call on for a project like this. Part of our role here was essentially curatorial: the Arts Commission approached us looking for art for the location and we talked to artists in our community and found what we think are two excellent pieces for the context. Often, we negotiate with governmental entities to get the necessary permits to install art works, raise funds for the installation, and create publicity and hold events to promote the works. With Market Street Blooms, because of the close partnership with a city agency (the Arts Commission), the process was simpler for us than it has sometimes been in the past, and we hope that we get to continue working closely with them on the ARTery and other projects in the future.
Interview with Karen Cusolito
Dandelion by Karen Cusolito. Photo by Vivian Truong
You are installing two works as part of Market Street Blooms, Dandelion and Valiant Flowers. How do they fit within the body of your recent sculptural practice?
Dandelion and Valiant Flowers are two pieces from “The Infinitarium” series, built in 2010. Collectively, the installation explores scale-reversal, in that the botanical garden is enormous and dwarfs the viewer. This invites us to see the exquisite detail of forms that are usually too small to study. Additionally, it allows us to contemplate the scale of nature and our role in the environment.
My work tends to focus on the environment and humanity and the relationship between the two. As a species, humans have had a profound and devastating impact on our environment. We are a species of consumers. Consequently we produce a lot of waste and strain many of our planet’s delicately balanced systems. Working with salvage materials seems natural to me, as it minimizes my environmental footprint and allows me to capture the history and spirit of the materials I incorporate into my work, it allows these materials to evolve and be reborn in a new configuration and with new intention.
Were Dandelion and Valiant Flowers installed at Burning Man? How do you think the statement of these works will change transferring them from the Nevada desert to an urban setting?
Dandelion and Valiant Flowers were exhibited at Burning Man in 2010. The landscape of the barren desert is a poetic context in which to be surrounded with larger-than-life plants; there is an exquisite contrast and irony in seeing enormous plants emerging from the dusty desert floor. The environment at Burning Man is a study in extremes, heat, cold, blazing sun, pelting sand storms and the occasional freak rain storm. The desert is surrounded with black mountains, which can often appear to be sleeping giants, causing us yet again to consider our scale and place in the world. Being on Black Rock Desert is as humbling as it is exhilarating.
Likewise, the urban setting of San Francisco is visually overwhelming: Skyline, streets, pedestrians, whizzing traffic, car horns, wind tunnels and a wide array of demographics all sharing and moving through the same space. I was elated for the opportunity to install the organic forms of Dandelion and Valiant Flowers on Market Street for the earthy contrast it introduces. Dandelion is set upon UN Plaza, seeming to have grown up between the bricks of the sidewalk. It symbolizes strength and hope, and its massive scale dwarfs pedestrians and its curves and textures are eloquently distinct among the right angles and sharp edges of the cityscape. On the other side of Market Street, Valiant Flowers are situated among four trees along the sidewalk. These giant flowers seem part of this micro-landscape, the color of the steel blending subtly with the trees and textures.
Karen Cusolito (center) during the installation of Market Street Blooms. Photo by Lydia Gonzales
The settings of Black Rock Desert and Market Street do have some unexpected similarities. Both settings have Departments of Public Works and, most rewarding of all, both are teeming with people who are curious about the art, who want to engage with it and who are anxious to share their stories, their impressions and their visions as inspired by the art. I consider myself lucky to have been able to interact with strangers on the street and with the various agencies of the City of San Francisco in this way, the unifying element being art.
Why have you picked the dandelion and trumpet flower for your sculptures?
My relationship with dandelions is that of making wishes and blowing the seeds into the wind. I have always been impressed with their ability to grow in even the harshest environments and with their brilliant yellow petals, and their fuzzy texture when the seeds have matured. If I were to attribute human characteristics to a dandelion, I think it would be gregarious and deeply amusing.
Trumpet flowers were not part of my childhood landscape. When I moved to the Bay Area I was immediately taken with the enormous palette of tropical and desert plants that abound here. Trumpet flowers are among the biggest flowers I have ever seen. They are perfectly symmetrical, elegant and gorgeous sculptures in their own right and I was inspired by their size, beauty and disposition.
These works are big. Why do you like working on such a large scale? How do you think changing the scale of an object affects how we respond to it?
I have been working on a large scale for many years now. It’s infectious as I am able to explore tiny subtle nuances and bring them to life on an enormous scale. I feel we do respond to the scale of things, whether consciously or not, and the work I produce functions in different ways at different levels. A towering silhouette from a distance can be arresting, but as one approaches the art and can see the detail, the texture and in many cases, recognize the items from which the sculpture is built. I think it provides people with a unique opportunity to really examine our natural world. Very few of us would pause and consider a dandelion growing through a crack in the sidewalk. However when that dandelion is 20′ tall, we can appreciate the beauty of the forms, the clever design nature employed in the seeds that blow like fairies in the wind, the aggressive leaves designed to capture water and channel it to the roots.
Can you please say a little bit about the materials you use? Are they recycled?
The pieces are constructed almost entirely from salvage materials; old wagon wheels, parts of retired farm equipment, fence stakes, parts of things I could no longer identify, yet the forms had unique qualities which lent themselves beautifully and naturally to the aesthetic of the project. Working with salvage materials underscores the environmental message of the piece and challenges my resourcefulness.
