Art Installation, Broad Point Preserve
“Interiors” Installation by Corinna DSchoto
Its not often we encounter something unexpected on the IIT trails. Maybe you will see a new animal or plant, or perhaps a new piece of bridging, more often someones lost hat. This summer we experimented with something new and a little surprising on the Broad Point trail - a public art installation by the sculptor and artist Corinna DSchotto. Her piece, interior, fresh from its debut at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland was installed on the site of the old cabin out on the Broad Point trail looking down Gilkey’s Harbor. You may remember the old stone fireplace there, harkening back to a different time.
I came across Corinna’s work in February of this year, through my friend Rachel Romanski, who was the assistant curator for the CMCA at the time. Corinna is a professor of sculpture at Mass Art, and runs 10b, Boston’s only alternative art space, a hole in the wall lab for artistic experimentation. Living in a city where storage space is a luxury, she was looking for a home for the large steel sculpture after the show at the CMCA closed. Her request was that it could be experienced by the public in an outdoor setting. Rachel floated the idea out to a group of friends, and I was immediately interested. I was intrigued by the geometric lines of the piece. It looked like a drawing made in two point perspective rendered in three dimensions.
The sculpture is based on the architectural drawings for a widely available modular home design. It consists of a number of rectangular frames, which, when viewed from different angles, suggest the lines and planes of the proto house they take their inspiration from. In a gallery setting, these frames create an experience akin to the inverse of looking at static art on walls. As the viewer walks around the piece, each rectangle frames a different angle of the gallery and its art and occupants, shifting with the viewers changing perspective.
Only a few months into my job with IIT, I was apprehensive about bringing up the bold concept of installing a public art piece in one of the preserves, but Steve, Chloe, and Robyn received the idea enthusiastically and encouraged me to move forward. I contacted Corinna and we exchanged a flurry of emails, then met for coffee in Rockland, and finally she came out to tour some of the preserves. There were several locations that I thought could be good candidates for a sculpture. The Hinkle Preserve came to mind, with its easy access and short, neatly looping trail. Another option I thought of was putting it somewhere out on Hutchins Island. I imagined the impression of surprise and wonder it would elicit as it was discovered by hikers. But perhaps the most intriguing idea was the old cabin site Broad Point. As it turned out, this was Corinna’s favorite spot too. Coincidentally, the footprint of interiors is precisely the same size as the foundation of the old cabin that once stood there.
Once we had the spot located, the next challenge was getting all the materials out to the end of Broad Point. This was no easy task. The deconstructed sculpture was in 14 steel frames of various sizes, with the largest being 8 feet by 10 feet. We considered carrying the frames out one by one, but this would have been a considerable physical challenge. After some thought, we decided to use the IIT canoe as a kind of barge to float all the frames out in one trip. To accomplish this, we laid all the frames flat across the canoe, then gathered 4 pieces of blue dock foam from around Broad Cove, and lashed them to each corner of the stacked frames where they hung off the sides of the boat. This created a kind of outrigger craft, with the frames balanced on the canoe and held stable by the foam. Our plan was to load the canoe up near the Mill Creek bridge at high tide, and ride it out to Broad Point as the tide receded. We partially succeeded, but loading up took a little longer than anticipated, and the first part of the voyage consisted of dragging the cargo-laden canoe across the shallow mudflat until we had enough water to paddle. From there it was a short cruise to the end of the point, where we unloaded everything and carried it up the bank to the chimney.
Cleaning up the site was another challenge. The old cabin had been intentionally demolished by controlled fire, but what Corinna found when she started to dig channels for the base of the sculpture was a layer of broken and melted glass, along with hinges, door knobs, and other household hardware. We collected several buckets of glass and artifacts in the process of putting up the sculpture.
The sculpture was installed in July, and piqued the interest of many who walked the trail. On August 5th, a reception was held out on the point. Rachel Alexandrou, a local forager and food artist based in North Haven made the evening magical by preparing a feast of locally collected flora and fauna. The tasting menu included such delicacies as black trumpet jam, local oysters with lovage mignonette and pickled magnolia flower, spruce tip Irish moss pudding with chokeberry sauce, and green crab broth with wild greens. Approximately 50 people showed up to see the piece in its new home and hear Corinna talk about its genesis and journey to the preserve. In contrast to the gallery setting, out on Broad Point the lines of the sculpture become frames for the stunning natural setting. As the viewer walks around the installation, these windows hold views of fern fields, a grove of hardwoods, oak and apple trees hanging over the beach, the view down brackets channel, and our ubiquitous gaunt-but-charming spruce forests. The response from the public has been enthusiastic.