The old “Dream” mural on the rail bridge that greets visitors to Northampton arriving via Route 9 from the east has lost its luster over time, and even “Dream” artist Leland Johnston wants to see something new. Now the process to replace it has almost reached an end. The Northampton Arts Council sought proposals for a new artwork a few months back, and the most surprising thing about the proposals is that, in a Valley full of artists, only 16 ideas arrived.
The proposals remain on exhibition through Friday, April 16 on the second floor of Northampton’s town hall, and offer very different approaches to transforming the rail bridge. The differences between the renderings of the proposed artworks and how they appear in more fully realized model form makes it well worth your while to drop by town hall if you’re in the area. The modest bustle of town hall may seem a prosaic setting in which to take in art, but it’s fun to imagine the small bridges as the real thing and try to envision what each piece would truly look like in place.
On the more usual end of the scale is a “Welcome” sign dreamed up in part by Tim Fisher, a member of the Bridge Street School Parent and School Committee Board. Fisher enlisted Bridge Street School art teacher Jackie Coe, and they commissioned work from the school’s fourth- and fifth-grade students. The result is colorful and plainspoken, a bright contrast to the glum façade of peeling paint and iron. Its colors become much brighter in the computer rendering, and probably echo best what the giant “Welcome” would look like in reality.
Ashfield’s Peggy Grose offered “The Heart of Northampton,” about which she said in her proposal, “All of the inherent mass movement and its juxtaposed stillness and solitary nature will be distilled in a pictorial ‘snapshot’ of the life and times (i.e. ‘The Heart’) of our city in a vision transcending the ‘pedestrian’ nature of the subject matter and elevating it to an artistic distillation of the city’s everyday reality.”
Which means that Grose would emblazon the bridge with a series of cartoon-like figures of pedestrians walking across the iron expanse, many of them familiar figures to regular visitors and inhabitants of Northampton.
Ben Westbrook and Matt Lorenz propose a phoenix taking flight from the bridge. Their creature appears rather modest in its current diminutive model form: it’s pieced together with wood, and seems rather engulfed by the space around it. It certainly bears noting that their proposal calls for an actual bird of powder-coated steel, one which would, no doubt, soar at a much more imposing height than a small model allows.
Their inspiration is itself high-flown: “We find strong correlations between this hopeful and magical story [of the phoenix], and our current state of affairs, both locally and globally. We take inspiration from ideas of rebirth and renewal as we move forward into the 21st century.”
J. Seth Hoffman, Penn Ruderman and Meera Deean propose a translucent curtain which would span the width of the bridge as well as rising a few feet above it. Theirs is clearly aimed at a subtler, more interactive notion, almost in the fashion of concept art. Theirs is the proposal most likely to be best judged only in place, because it relies, to a large extent, on what’s around the bridge, and on the ever-changing vagaries of time of day and angle of light.
Their proposal says, “The curtained proscenium provides a tangible focus to the anticipation that precedes a performance. The depiction of cloth in sculpture conceals the solid forms beneath it but also animates those forms. … It will soften views of the tops of downtown buildings, heightening a sense of expectation and discovery. It will subtly reveal the heavy steel infrastructure beneath it. It will capture daylight, and glow on sunny days, an arresting image that will cause one to pause before completing the passage into downtown.”
Sam Ostroff and Salmon Studios’ work offers a bold conclusion: “Essence of Northampton Captured in Metal.” Even if that’s a bit of an overstatement, the resultant work—a depiction of a 3-D downtown with two vanishing points and everything from bicyclists to hot-air balloons—provided the biggest surprise when seen in model form instead of through the computer rendering seen here.
The rather sterile forms in the drawn steel appear washed-out, nondescript, like those faceless building dwellers in architectural renderings. The model, on the other hand, possesses the complexity of real steel. Ostroff and crew have created a multi-layered conglomeration of metal that ups the ante in terms of its scale and its dazzle. It’s the most involved, and perhaps the most consonant with its surroundings—it even incorporates the bridge’s “11-0” sign into its scene (it’s carried by workmen).
It’s hard not to wonder what else the 16 proposals included, but it’s great that the finalist round involves plenty of input from the people who will gaze upon the result for years.
If you’d like to offer input, it’s easy: visit northamptonartscouncil.org, and you’ll find a form with room for comment on any or all of the proposals. Go to Town Hall through Friday, April 16 and you’ll find a rather charming way to offer input: a pen and a spiral notebook.