These enterprising Farmington Canal walkers, including 13-year-old Annakate Schatz and her family, were among the lucky few who will be able to visit Slovenian artist Matej Vogrincic’s transformation of New Haven’s forgotten section of canal into a site-specific art work up close. On Saturday afternoon, they walked the canal bed from Hillhouse Avenue to where it ends at Grove and Orange in one of the Festival of Arts & Ideas’s engrossing walking tours.
And what did Annakate think of the 200 cubic yards of wood chips, 70 cubic yards of clam shells, 70 cubic yards of crushed trap rock, 7,350 units of Connecticut sanded brick, and 3.27 tons of iron laser cut and powder coated all fashioned into playful boats reflecting the oystering and Erector Set heritage of New Haven, $85,000 worth of site-specific art installation, and much else?
“Cool,” she said. “Very cool.”
In fact Annakate had visited before, with her class from Edgewood Magnet School, but then had only seen the site from above, at street level. Up close, she said, was more remarkable.
However, viewing from the street level will be the way most of New Haven will be taking in Vogrincic’s transformation beginning on June 16, when the work will be officially opened and the canal walkway temporarily closed. There will be lights installed and specifically indicated viewing locations and even an audio tour. But all will be viewed from above, according to Laura Clarke (pictured) of Site Projects, which commissioned Vogrincic’s work.
“Matej would like people to be able to walk in the canal, as we’re doing,” she said, “but he doesn’t quite understand that we can’t bring hundreds of people down here. It’d be a little hazardous,” she said after showing the 25 walkers some of Vogrincic’s previous work from printed books at the tour’s launching point on Audubon Street, and then escorting them into the canal. When the paved section ends, the group traversed an almost completely dark, puddle and debris filled section, before emerging into the festive expanse of Vogrincic’s fleet. “He’ll understand.”
“Here,” Clarke said to Claudia Schatz’s, Annakate’s sister, ” and she handed the ten-year old (“my parents brought me here”), “this is work Matej did in Liverpool.” It was 50 green boats he had fabricated and lined up in one of Liverpool, England’s gothic churches. “Do we see a pattern here?”
Clarke explained, “Matej looks for a unit that reflects or expresses the basic pattern of a place. In one of his first exhibitions, he worked on a section of Australian desert. What did a desert need or how was it defined? By water, of course, so he found two ancient watering cans, fabricated thousands more and arrayed them on the sands” (pictured above).
In the case of New Haven, he combined elements into these oystering, Erector Set boats, and the result certainly charmed Joanne Saccio (pictured below on right), a license clinical social worker, who had reasons other than interest in art for being on the tour.
“All four of my grandparents,” she said, “grew up around Lubyana, in Slovenia, where Matej comes from. I was riding my bike, as I always do, back in May,” she said, “and I saw this young man working down in the canal, and then I remembered what it was he was doing from things I had read. I tried out on him the only phrase in Slovenian that I could remember: ‘Starat mat dainpenkar.’ It means: ‘Grandma, please give me some bread.’ He was working so hard, he hardly noticed. But I’m so glad I’m here. This is so much more impressive when you see it up close.”
The woman, standing beside her, Dare Burtz, agreed. She said she just loves to take walking tours and was impressed with the Erector Set elements, which make up the frame of Vogrincic’s boat. “It’s really remarkable.”
Clarke promised the walkers to take them to the place that in her estimation would be the best to view the work, especially in the evening when the site will be lit. It turned out to be at the very end of the walkable canal, where Grove meets Orange, and below, in the canal bed, where the group was standing, one is stopped by chain link fence. But above was the view, from the roof of the Grove Street garage.
“That will be the place,” she said. “From there you can see not only the boats and all they represent, but look at this wall. The slope of the stone here reflects, probably, the actual slope of the original canal built used in the 1820s and 1830s. The trap rock reflects the siding put in when the canal was converted into a railroad bed in 1847. And above that, at street level, a beautiful hundred-year-old brick building. The brick, by the way, is reflected in the brick Matej boats are carrying as well. [Architect] Alan Plattus calls this the ‘industrial archeology of the canal.’”
In addition to the prime viewing locations, the lighting of the site, and an opening party on top of the Grove Street garage, Site Projects is preparing an audio guide that walkers (from the street locations, Whitney, Orange, Park of the Arts, and Grove Street) will be able to dial up information as they view the canal. Audio tour speakers will include Doug Rae discussing New Haven’s industrial history; architect Plautus discussing the canal and the cityscape; someone describing the life of A.C. Gilbert, the inventor of the Erector Set; and Yale art historian Angus Trumble will put this work in the context of site-specific art and installation art. Vogrincic is also going to be on the audio tour, but his section has not yet been recorded yet, Clark said was too busy finishing up.
And what will be the fate of all this when it concludes, around Labor Day? “Well,” said Clarke as she stood with fellow Site Projects board member Maria Kayne beside one of the two boats out of which trees are growing, ““Karyn Gilvarg of City Plan stood up there with me and said, ‘Leave the wood chips, leave the oyster shells, and leave the trap rock, please!’ So we’re going to take out the bricks, try to sell them, along with the boats. Know anyone who wants a 21 x 4 foot Erector Set boat? We’re actually going to try to auction them off. I’m certain they will make great planters.”
Clarke said she also hoped the city would be interested in keeping the lighting intact since within three to five years Yale’s intent is to restore and pave the canal as a bike path right up to Orange Street.