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Sculpture comes to the ’Have in circles
By DANIELLE LA ROCCO | March 2, 2006
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As of Wed., Mar. 1, Yalies need not apply for foreign travel scholarships, buy round-trip tickets to Madrid, speak Spanish, or even fear disembowelment by bull horns, to visit Pamplona. Named after a café in Cambridge near the spot where the piece was originally conceived, “Pamplona” is a new temporary sculpture installation designed by sculptor Dewitt Godfrey, SY ’82. This highly interactive piece will remain in New Haven for only six weeks, however, as part of the three-city traveling art project “Public Art/Moving Site.” This collective project, working with New Haven’s own ArtSPACE, a gallery and forum for local artists, seeks to “stretch the concept of site” by activating unused urban space to create new, temporary loci of intellect.
At its Cambridge site, the sculpture—a conglomeration of malleable, movable metal circles—sat between Bow St.’s Café Pamp-lona and the gray, nondescript building next to it. Stacked on top of each other, these circular shapes vary in diameter from two to seven feet. Bridging the gap between the two buildings, they interrupt he harsh void with playful, inviting shapes. Godfrey said that he was extremely proud of the “terrific response” the piece received at its first unveiling. Lillian Hsu, director of public art at the Cambridge Arts Council, remarked that “Pamplona” elicited a stronger response than any previous installation ever supported by the group. Though not all reactions were positive—according to The Harvard Crimson, one onlooker commented that the site was an “ugly, rusty eyesore”—the majority of responses, written on paper and collected in small boxes near the site, lauded the work. Though acknowledging that “Pamplona” is likely the most publicly accessible piece he has ever created, Godfrey seems more pleased that his work electrified Cambridge with a current of intellectual debate. Godfrey, who strives to make his work interactive at all levels, considers the piece an overwhelming success.
He looks forward to enjoying a similar reaction at the New Haven site, at the corner of Orange and Chapel Sts. Godfrey says he will arrange the steel tubes to create the “equivalent of a façade of a building.” This structure, filling the 18-foot space, will take the place of a wooden gazebo, the remains of a former municipal art project. Passersby on the Orange St. side will have to walk through the structure to get to the buildings behind it. The sculpture will fill the space left by a former building, with the implied presence of a new one.
Godfrey, excited about returning to Yale, said it would be nice “to have a different kind of presence in New Haven.” Whether he was referring to returning to Yale as a professional instead of an undergrad or to bringing a new form of art to the city hardly matters: He does both. Though they may technically be sculptures, neither the formidable kinetic sculpture of the Pierson courtyard nor the phallic-slash-militantly-feminist Morse lipstick seem to qualify as sensitive artworks; neither use their surroundings to help convey meaning. Godfrey’s mobile, rearrangeable work, however, is specifically designed to allow setting to drive purpose.
A professor of art and art history at Colgate University, Godfrey said of his Yale education that “the community of really motivated, top-quality graduate students” helped him advance his ideas as much as his professors did. Stressing the importance of a liberal arts background, he said that a solid education “is the best training an artist can get.” For him, education helps stoke the artist’s fiery curiosity.
Godfrey himself has followed his own inquisitive, creative path for 10 years to finally arrive at the shapes that compose “Pamplona.” The curiosity inherent in the work should transfer to the site itself, drawing spectators and eliciting creative thought. Spectators of this Pamplona, though they needn’t step out of the way of stampeding bulls, will need to push cluttered thoughts aside and enjoy the work with an open mind.
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