Thursday, February 4, 2010
Around Town Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Artist Runs Afoul of the Piano Preservation Patrol
Posted by Jack Silverman on Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 3:00 PM
The following dispatch comes from Scene correspondent Russell Johnston:
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If you've been to Scarritt-Bennett Center's gallery F, you've probably noticed the piano that dominates a good portion of the front room -- it's been there since before Scarritt-Bennett converted the former president's house into an art gallery and gift shop. For the gallery's current show, Talcum Fables, Nicole Baumann decided to treat the instrument as ally rather than obstacle. The result was one of the show's most whimsical and charming pieces, "A Busy Bee Sat on a Bushel of Blossom," in which the piano was decorated with an array of colorful stickers that had been custom-made to prevent damage to the instrument's wood finish.
The operative word here is "was." Though the exhibit is on display until March 6, Baumann's piece is no longer on view, at least not in the way she originally intended. Apparently the titular "Busy Bee" got in somebody's bonnet, and Baumann had to reframe her concept at a more decorous distance from the grand old Steinway.
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Folks who made it to the show before Jan. 23 got to see an incongruous burst of color emanating from the piano's bass-side leg, thinning out as it radiated toward the back of the body and up the open lid. At first glance it looked like something you might find on the school notebook of an unusually cheerful 11-year-old, a dense array of stickers mainly in the shapes of flowers, but also of strawberries, rabbits, acorns, airplanes, and ... hmm, an occasional skull-and-crossbones? Baumann applied them with artful attention to detail, such as the stalk of bluebells growing up the piano leg. These stickers clearly aren't from Walmart's back-to-school aisle.
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Actually, Baumann laid out a few hundred bucks to have the stickers fabricated to her spec, and it's a pity she had to take them off when the Scarritt-Bennett administration got worried about damaging the piano's finish. I would understand this concern better if I hadn't tried peeling back one of the stickers myself. I'm not certain there was even any adhesive involved. There's plenty I don't know about high-gloss wood finish, but I would have been fine leaving these stickers for a couple months on my dining room table -- the one my granddad built.
OK, we get it: Grand pianos aren't cheap. So the Scarritt-Bennett overlords concluded, "Better safe than sorry." Baumann moved her stickers onto the floor to form a reverse silhouette around the instrument -- maybe suggesting a crime scene's body outline? A deft parry, but the wonderful contrast of the stickers against formal black is lost. This time the lemons were better than the lemonade.
The show runs through March 6 and features some other terrific work from Baumann and the artist collective Off the Wall -- look for a review in next week's Scene. On Monday, Feb. 8, at 7 p.m., the artists will be on hand for informal discussion of their work.
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