Bells in Winter

The Bells Ring for Thee has been enjoying an extended stay in the North Burial Ground. Even the tough winter weather has not kept the Bells from tinkling away, and the recent blanket of snow has created a new landscape of sound. Drop by and enjoy if you are in the neighborhood.

Rain Date!

Same time, same place, next weekend, October 4. The monsoon rains have pushed events to next weekend.

Curtains for Cryptic Providence

September 27th is the last day to view all art installations for Cryptic Providence. Please join me and fellow artists Robert O Jones, Nancy Austin and Caroline Woolard for special art and history tours, and performances. I will be leading a special tour that will end at the Bells Ring for Thee (Take Away If You Please), where visitors will be able to take away parts of my installation. I hope that this will provide a way for my installation to live on, and when anybody asks about the "Bells" in someone's yard or a vase, they can tell the story of the Potter's Field, and everyone buried there will be remembered again and again...thank you to everyone who helped, inspired,visited and cheered me on to make this installation.

Read below for more information. Please join us!
Saturday, September 27th, 2008, Noon-6-PM North Burial Ground, Branch Ave. & No. Main St., Providence, R.I.
Enter at the intersection of Branch Ave. and N. Main St., 1/3 mile north of Whole Foods Market. All tours begin at the Welcome Tent at the cemetery entrance.

1:00-2:30 PM
Final Passage/Final Repose
A Historical and Artistic Walking Tour
by Cryptic contributor & architectural historian Robert O. Jones

Explore the North Burial Ground (founded 1700), one of Providence's oldest surviving Euro-American artifacts and the city's oldest municipal facility. This tour will examine the complex interweave of natural and man-made elements in NBG, the cemetery's evolution in response to changing attitudes toward death and burial practices, and select historical and artistic features, including the graves of the famous and those-who-should-be-famous, and the aesthetic character and symbolism of funerary art. The latest edition of the self-guided tour flyer that Jones created for Cryptic Providence and NBG will be available for distribution. The tour will end at the Jones family plot in time for the Tea Party.


3-5 PM
Footnotes: a tribute to Albert J. Jones
the forgotten founder of R.I.'s first Art Museum
A Performance and Installation by
Historian Nancy Austin (Newport, R.I.) and
Artist Caroline Woolard (Brooklyn, N.Y.)

At the Jones Family Plot in the North Burial Ground
Linden Avenue near Central Avenue
directions at the Welcome Tent, or follow the tea cup signs

Join us for this event, planned in dialogue with the opening of the new wing of the RISD Museum of Art. The RISD Museum, Rhode Island’s first, was founded as a direct result of a bequest to the people of Providence by native Albert J. Jones, the New York Times's neoclassical and public sculpture critic in Italy for twenty years. This still-timely, but sadly forgotten story of the Jones Bequest illuminates much about the ecology of culture in R.I., from past to present day.

Beginning at Noon, a cast sugar "neoclassical" bust of Albert J. Jones will be installed on a pedestal at the Jones Family plot in the North Burial Ground, amidst a "room" of mirrored tea tables spiked into the ground and at various heights, from 2-4 feet. Nineteenth-century shoes will be thrown into the tree branches spreading over the site, to mark the territory for Albert J. Jones, who started out as a shoe salesman at the Arcade. From 3-5pm we will conduct a tea party, in homage to RISD founder Helen Rowe Metcalf. The tea is the kind that was served at the bookstore/tea cafe run by Helen Rowe and her orphaned siblings after they moved to R.I. from N.Y. around 1850. A tea party was the first fundraiser of the women who put up the seed money to fund RISD. One of Mrs. Metcalf's teacups is buried in the cornerstone of a RISD building. These are a few of the associations we draw on for the collective performance of a tea party at the Jones site.

Between 3-5pm on Sept 27th, join us for a tea party among the graves. We invite you to add sugar to your tea from the cast sugar bust of Albert Jones. Thus, over the course of this performance, we will consume him in our tea.

For more information, see: www.EcologyofCultureRI.com. An exhibition catalogue with essays written by historian Nancy Austin will be available for sale.



4-5 PM
Cryptic Providence Art Site Walking Tour/
The Bells Ring for Thee (Take Away If You Please)
by participating artist Rebecca Siemering

Tour the Cryptic Providence art sites as Siemering discusses the installations, living in the neighborhood of the North Burial Ground, and the experience of making public and site-specific work. The tour will end at her installation, "The Bells Ring for Thee," where visitors will have the opportunity to take a piece of this installation with them on this closing day of Cryptic Providence. A suggested donation will go to the North Burial Ground.

Betty

When originally setting up this piece, I never met anyone who had a relative buried in this section. This past week, when re-setting up after the vandalism, a woman parked at the edge of the field. She came out of her well-polished, and clean Suburban looking car slowly and held the Cryptic Providence map tightly in her hand. She was a well-dressed African American woman, looked like she was on a lunch break, maybe at the cemetary to appreciate some art and solitude.

I greeted her and asked if she was there to view the art and she replied that she was trying to find her baby's grave. She was off from work and said she wished her day off matched when the grounds manager was there. She could not remember which numbered grave was her baby's. She pointed to the middle section and said she thought it was there. That was about where she remembered standing in the rain, 20 years ago.

We spoke for a while about her life, then and now. She said she had her baby girl young and she died an infant. Betty was 18 when this happened, but now she owned her own home and had two teenagers. She was here to see if she get her baby girl out of the field, to re-bury her properly now that she had the money to do it. Betty wanted her children to know(and it sounded like one son in particular) that suffering can happen, to be mindful of the world and what it has to offer. I said I was sorry for her loss, but very glad to meet her, and left her to go and have some privacy.

I am glad me met as it re-affirms to me when making this piece that a person's life can change drastically from bad to good, good to bad...to be mindful of my days. These numbered graves have a life attached, however brief, and a mother who probably hoped for the best.

The Bells Return

The Bells will return by August 12th. Thank you to everyone who has expressed concern over the vandalism and for volunteering to put them back up.

Temporarily Down

The project is temporarily down due to vandalism and for site maintenance. When creating this project, I expected to replace some bells every week, because of sticky fingers. Objects are taken from graveyards all of the time, and it is also oddly flattering that someone would want to keep a piece as a memento. With close to 1,600 separate pieces, I can see how a person could say to themeselves,"Oh it's just one, it won't be noticable." A little can turn into a lot very quickly.

I returned to take down my project for site maintenace by the crew a few days ago and from a distance I thought it looked a little thin. When I got to the middle of the project I was shocked to see ten whole rows missing, close to 300 individual pieces gone. This shocked me. This would have taken a while to do( to take that effort), I thought it must have been noticable and noisy. When I returned again to take it all down, I noticed a shiny bundle in the woods next to the canal. It turns out someone or several individuals, took the rows and wadded them up into little nests and put them at the edge of the canal. At least I do not have to replace every single piece, but there is some damage and I have to unbend them all.

So, stay tuned for the return of the "Bells" in August.

Visitations, Natural and Otherwise

Rhode Island, specifically on the Pawtucket/Providence city line , experienced a freak hail storm last week. I am originally from Nebraska, and I know bad things happen when a cold front and a warm front meet(i.e. massive tornados). I had been on the phone with a friend when I thought I heard a very heavy rainfall coming. My cat knew better, and with a swift trot, made a beeline for under the bed. In the next moment it was as if Mother Nature dumped an ice chest over my house. The street became a river of ice,when only moments before it had been reaching 80 degrees inside. Big and little pellots of ice. It lasted for about 20 minutes. I went outside afterwards and even my car was dinged a bit. The ice stayed in the yard until a warm rain in the evening.

So you can imagine what I thought happened to the little tin bells at the the North Burial Ground. I feared the worst, but I had made extras for natural and human disasters. I went the next morning to check on everything...and almost everything was fine and tinkling like normal! Just a few blew around here and there. What I found very curious were the human interventions. One bell was wrapped in knots and replanted, half its size. In a few spots someone gathered surrounding bells an planted them together. In the very back there was some vandalism and I started to think of the movie "Yellow Submarine." Have you seen any Kinky Boot Beasts in the area?

The bells also naturally (or maybe supernaturally) catch onto each other, forming pairs. Maybe some companionship has formed underground and is reaching upwards?