Art Beat: Carl Simmons installation at New Bedford Art Museum a nostalgic window to past
Several weeks ago, I reviewed a ten-artist exhibition at the New Bedford Art Museum and quite purposely neglected a singular work by artist Carl Simmons. But it was not because his artwork was any less worthy of contemplation than his nine co-exhibitors.
Rather, it was that I considered his untitled “installation” so ambitious and abundant with visual, historical and nostalgic stimuli that I felt it needed to be addressed in a focused and encompassing manner.
Installation art has any number of variable hallmarks, most notably three-dimensional elements and site specificity. It often is temporary, sometimes theatrical, and likely designed to transform a viewer’s perception of space as one traverses through it in order to experience it fully.
Simmons’s work is certainly 3-D, site specific, temporary, and theatrical but it is absolutely not designed to be walked through. In fact, it is the opposite of that, as a cable is drawn across a large alcove, prohibiting visitors from entering the area.
It is less an installation than a window to a three-dimensional world unto itself. It is much the same as one might experience when looking at the stage set in a playhouse or the manmade enclosures of animals in a zoo. It’s not an installation — it’s a complex environment.
And that environment contains not only space. It contains time. Or at least, reminders of its passage.
Simmons, a photographer, stop-motion animator and occasional performance artist, is also a local researcher and historian with a particular admiration for the 19th-century Quaker lawyer, philanthropist and poet David Ricketson (who was a close friend of Henry David Thoreau) and the swamp he had drained that would eventually become Brooklawn Park.
But Simmons’s affection for all things (greater) New Bedford knows no bounds, and the transformed alcove in the museum is testament to that. With the the able assistance of his wife Rachel Stopka, an architect, they laid a slightly raised platform and covered it with some 1970s-inspired linoleum, making a clear division between the space and the black floor of the rest of the museum.
The walls are painted a slightly nauseating shade of yellowish-green. And then Simmons, who might be described as equals parts urban archeologist, junk collector and a discriminating curator of both the treasures and trash of the past, loaded the room with old signage, newspapers, cardboard cartons, and bumper stickers to create a fascinating glimpse into what New Bedford once was.
Quite purposely, it resembles a tightly-packed and disorganized cellar, garage or storage shed, the kinds of spaces that Simmons loves to explore. Drawing from his own collection of local paraphernalia and detritus and borrowing some from others in the community, it is an indulgent and sentimental vision.
There is something rather democratic in the ordered chaos of the space in which objects are displayed, not treating any given item with more reverence than any other. A Standard-Times newspaper from 1941 (which then cost three cents) features a bold headline that reads: “Charles A. Ashley, City’s Mayor, for 32 Years, Drops Dead at Home.” It sits on a stack of other papers in an old, water damaged Virginia Dare cardboard box.
Against one wall is one of the once-familiar dark blue Moby Dick Trail signs, emblazoned with the image of a harpoon. There’s a park bench with its paint faded, cracked and peeling, perhaps once from Simmons’ beloved Brooklawn Park.
There are a number of bumper stickers, rife with local boosterism. There is a bright red one that says “New Bedford Whale of A City,” in which the whale is a too-cutesy cartoon. Another sticker refers to one of the city’s resident elephants and reads “I ❤️ Emily.” Yet another is a promotional for WBSM’s old “Cuzzin” Dave’s Chuckwagon Show.
Throughout the room, Simmons has positioned reminders of New Bedford businesses past and present. A hardly comprehensive sampling includes a red, white and black carton from the Dawson Brewery, a box from the Acushnet Process, another from Executive Coffee and Vending, and a scrap of cardboard from Harve’s Shoe Box.
And there’s so much more: the yellow sign from Cheap John’s Joke Shop, purveyor of finger-snapping gum and fake vomit; the sign from Chayce Answering Service, a longtime County Street fixture; a rusted ventilation fan from the roof of Pa Raffa’s; a SRTA bus schedule; Polaroid film boxes, a refrigerator magnet promoting the New Bedford Gas Company; a keychain from O’Hara Chevrolet…
Clearly, Simmons’ not-exactly-an-installation is largely successful because of the nostalgia factor. But that doesn’t in itself make it capital-A Art.
What does is color and composition. Simmons approached the space from the ground up, literally speaking. He arranged the elements in the room as thoughtfully as a painter setting up a still life.
He played colors off each other. He understands the visual push and pull of the environment and exploits it perfectly, getting the most from every tiny detail. That includes the gum wrapper and a green twist tie that he set on the floor. They act as visual flourishes and complete the big picture. And quite the picture it is.
Carl Simmons' untitled work is part of the “In Residence: NPS AIR + CAIR Alumni Exhibition” at the New Bedford Art Museum, 608 Pleasant Street, New Bedford up through Nov. 13.
This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Art Beat visits Carl Simmons nostalgic art at New Bedford Art Museum
