The Umbrella House of Loisaida, New York City
Imaginative, public sculpture on the cheap
Oct 13, 2009
The public's response to art in their name has always been mixed and the question of funding never far from their lips. The new sculpture at St. Helens, Lancashire, Jaume Piensa’s Dream, will no doubt affect the locale as Gormley’s Angel of the North did. It is similar in situation and there to be gasped or grizzled at by passing motorists. It is being funded as a part of Channel Four’s Big Art Project; a project running rich with its intention to stimulate public response to accessible art works. Funding here does not seem to be an issue coming as it does from a public, private, charitable and lottery combination. And anyway with sculptures of this size who would grumble. You can see where the money has gone. They seem significant.
Big Art
Channel Four’s headquarters at 124 Horseferry Rd has also taken part in the project. They commissioned a Big 4, literally a large number four, to be built outside the studio in 2007. Like the ones you see on the commercials. At the moment the sculpted digit is covered with 1,000 multi-styled, lost and found umbrellas. The whole thing is reminiscent of a large billowy North American quilt. It is impressive and colourful and strange, and looks like the big advertisement it is. But then art does need patrons, if only to shelter the artist from the splatter.
The umbrellas are like a professional reworking of a project that can be seen in New York in the summer months.
The Umbrella House
21-23 Avenue C is an apartment block that is well cared for in a uniform terracotta colour. The lower shop-front window is bricked in and the fire escape’s blackened span crawls, unpeeling, all the way up.
Hanging off this ready-made wrought iron trellis, seemingly to dry all summertime, are many umbrellas that stretch to the roof. They are painted with shapes and slogans in vivid colours and form a loose jaunty pattern.
It is impressive in its efforts however homemade it is in appearance.
The effect, in that neighbourhood, is one of an immediate difference. In the Lower East Side murals are popular. They advertise shops and restaurants or make political statements or serve as elegies to friends. They are bold and proud and eye catching. Within this street-frame then, the umbrella installation is uncommon. People stop and look up and wonder why someone has chosen to affect their environment in this way.
The residents of Umbrella House decorate in a kind of celebration and remembrance, a well dressing of a come spring. For a price they have been granted permission to live in their building after years of squatting there.
Abandoned people in a disused shell have made use of what authorities had given up on.
All the renovation was done by residents for themselves to make it habitable. For a time the roof leaked which meant everyone inside carried umbrellas. So the umbrellas are a kind of outside in-joke. It is reminiscent of a masonic rebus, a puzzle to be got or not, but one which makes the public think. It is public art by the public for the public. And, looking as cheap as it is, the question of funding does not come up.
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