THE GATES
(sans Sam)
Ah yes, The Gates. On Saturday morning, February 12th, Mary and I headed down to Central Park for the unfurling of Christo & Jean-Claude's gift to New York. For the previous week hundreds of workers installed the gates, with the fabric tightly contained in a fabric pouch at the top of each gate. The unfurling was supposed to begin between 8 and 9 in the morning. Lots of folks were out, waiting.
I sat on the Bethesda fountain, waiting for the unfurling to begin, and wished that Sam, Sonja, and Paul could be with us to experience this. There have only been a handful of days in my life that began with the recognition that it would be a day never to be forgotten. This was one of those days. To be a part of something both as solid and ephemeral as the Gates was exciting. I knew that our faraway kids and beloved grandchild would have loved it. So I sat on the edge of that fountain, clutching a backpack trying to pretend it was Sam, and remembering, with great emotion, when he and I last sat here.
Our good friend (and soon to be John's Best Man), Ben, joined us and the unfurling began. A worker reached with a pole and hooked a hanging loop, then pulled, essentially unzipping it, and the fabric spilled out. We watched it over and over, and made sure we had our photo taken just as the fabric started coming out: it took awhile, and a lot of wasted photos, but we got afew.
The fabric was stored in its fabric pouch wrapped around a cardboard tube, so that when it unfurled the cardboard tube caused it to drop straight down. The tube then fell away and was carted away by a worker. Mary asked someone if she could take one for her kids to play with. Unfortunately, everything was being recycled. One of the workers was an art teacher and she smiled at Mary and said "It just screams art project, doesn't it." I thought it a bit churlish to simpy destroy them. But then I read an article about someone trying to sell one of them on E-bay and supposedly getting a $1,200 bid (it must be a joke) for a tube, and I realized that it could become a free-for-all. First the tubes, then the gates themselves I guess. Christo and Jean-Claude are tres nice, however, and have given the workers 1,000,000 swatches of the fabric to distribute. This wasn't advertised, but word of mouth spread quickly. By this weekend, one week following the unfurling, all the swatches were gone. We of course made sure to get one to send to Sam.
Here's Ben and I reaching for a gate.
New York being New York, and thus filled with all kinds of wonder, we slipped away from Central Park as the unfurling process slowly made its way along the 23 miles of walkways and went over to the Whitney to see the Tim Hawkinson retrospective. How can I describe what he does? That Sam would love it? He certainly would. As would Paul. I mean, here's a guy who makes tiny bird sculptures out of fingernail clippings, shorts out of extension cords, and gears that revolve once every hundred years. He's a nut. He covered himself in latex, then peeled it off, pumped the thing with air and had a "balloon self portrait." I had Ben sneak a photo (we got yelled at by a guard when we first tried it) of me in the middle of a piece called "Pentecost". The catalogue describes it as "Twelve figures based on the Bathtub-Generated Contour Lace pattern [don't ask] ...suspended within the branches of a tree composed of cardboard tubes covered with wooden-deck rubbings. Each figure taps with a different part of his body on a branch of the tree. Syncopated, rhythmic patterns are generated by a found computer program."
Made a lot of fun noises, and was goofy as hell. The title was very appropriate.
But the killer was his Uberorgan, which must be the world's largest musical instrument. It was obviously too big for the Whitney, so it was installed in an atrium of the IBM building, off 5th Avenue. We sauntered down there and were met by this huge thing that looked, according to my friend Tim, like intestines snaking through the trees.
It was certainly big. Can you find Mary?
The thing was controlled by a gigantic player piano roll. The music it played reminded me of birds chirping while dinosaurs farted, and you could hear them both at the same time. Interesting.
But it was time to head back to the Park, and wander the paths, the steps, and the tunnels. With the Gates unfurled, everything was new and remarkably joyful for a grey winter's day.
ONE WEEK LATER
Yesterday was gorgeous. Spectacular. The Gates in the bright afternoon sun, with the wind catching them. Oh my. We walked along the paths surrounding the Harlem Meer, and took our photos. We were joined by Mary's best friend, Karen Soles (Ben's mom), who came down from our old homestead of Penn Yan to visit the Gates. In this photo, Mary is taking Karen's photo.
It was sort of a photo-heavy kind of day.
We met two very nice young Gates' workers who informed us that a) we had just missed Christo by about 5 minutes (Karen and I are blaming it on Mary, who was in the gift shop buying a Gates shirt for Sonja) and b) that this was Christo's favorite spot, and he and Jean-Claude came by two or three times a day. We were sorry we couldn't get a photo of both of them giving Mary and Karen big hugs, but we got one that's even better: the young workers agreed to pose with them. Their primary responsibility was to walk the paths carring big poles with hooks (safety-tipped with tennis balls) to unsnag Gates that might have wrapped around themselves when the wind gets high.
We found plenty of good opportunities for self-portraits framed by blowing fabric in the distance. Mary had the artist-eyes to see this photo (that's me, by the way, leaning against a pole, across the water).
I like it even better with the Gates removed: just the reflection. Eat your heart out Mr. Monet!
Christo has his favorite spot, and I have mine: here.
I love the contrasts, love the way the sun lights up the fabric so that it glows from the inside. At each moment, the Gates look different. The sun, the wind, the people interacting with them... Kind of takes my breath away, I do confess.
I also like the way they get thinner where the paths are narrow and wider where the paths open up.
Karen and Mary were very happy to be able to share this with each other.
The Gates are here for only one more week. Today I rode my bike down to see them, but six miles from home, and three miles before reaching the Park, I got a flat tire. It was a bit of a long walk home. Tonight it's supposed to start snowing, and 4 to 6 inches of accumulation are expected. Gates junkies like myself are thrilled, and can't wait to see them in the snow.
I'm going to miss them.
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