November 30–December 7, 2000

art

The Center of It All

Timber!: Emile Benes Brzezinski’s Forest.

A new player in the contemporary art scene offers seven galleries and a packed exhibition schedule.

by Robin Rice

Emilie Benes Brzezinski: Forest (through Dec. 3)

Alexandra Hart: Aposematic Ornament (though Dec. 3)

Renee Marcus Butler: One Summer (through Jan. 7)

Willie Birch and community artists: Spirit House (through June 2001)

Ethereal & Material (closed)

Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, 200 South Madison St., Wilmington, DE, 302-656-6466

The drive to Wilmington was smooth, but my first glimpse of the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts’ new facility on a gray blustery day verged on disappointment. Open since September, the big angular building still looks a little raw around the edges. At least, I thought, the bleak neighborhood near the Christina River offers easy parking.

Founded in 1979, DCCA is the most important contemporary arts space in the state of Delaware. Now in an audacious new home, it can present itself as the "largest professionally curated contemporary exhibition space in the Greater Philadelphia region."

The building, designed by Moeckel Carbonell Associates, Inc. for around $5.4 million (a bargain for the 33,000 square-foot facility) is an adaptation of an old railroad car factory. An exterior sheathed in gray galvanized tin could be the gawky pomo descendent of a generic International Style box. But, happily, the ugly industrial duckling reveals itself as an airy, posh (but still pomo) swan once you’re inside. The transformation begins with the approach to the tall, glass-fronted entrance over a sidewalk punctuated with embedded lights, a typically subtle and practical detail. Dimensional Dynamics of Chadds Ford, PA, coordinated the interior design which involves lots of inconspicuous grays, lofty exposed trusses and gleaming ductwork. In the light-filled lobby, featuring a gift shop of artist-made items, little white tables are in place for a café-to-be.

Sculptor and board member Henry Loustau donated a keen mechanical sculpture as a fund-raising machine for the institution. The mountainous clockwork device surmounted by a little house and tree is dramatic enough to command attention in the open central space. If you feed it a dollar, colorful wheels turn, electric lights sparkle and fun things happen. But only for a very short time. An infusion of cash is required for more — a perfect mascot/metaphor for a non-profit arts organization.

Nearby, an auditorium that seats 100 has a giant screen with two projectors and all the latest bells and whistles for multi-media events, lectures and performances. DCCA will make money by renting this space to various organizations, in addition to using it for its own projects.

The most daring aspect of the DCCA concept is the First USA Artist Studios, in which private artists’ studio space is integrated into an exhibition venue dedicated to a mix of local, regional and international artists. To the best of my knowledge, no other program in the States has attempted this, though it seems like a practical idea. It eliminates that perennial artists’ complaint that local work is neglected by high profile institutions

The artists lease space in studios on part of the first floor and all of the second floor for $1 per square foot a month plus utilities, an arrangement which will allow the DCCA to break even. Here, again, technology was a primary consideration, with high-speed Internet access available to all, for example. The artists, who are selected by lottery for a three-year tenancy, also manage their own small gallery space, the Elizabeth Denison Hatch Gallery. When I visited, they had a straightforward group show. In addition (and here one could imagine future conflicts of interest), the artists will certainly have opinions about the direction DCCA takes in terms of exhibitions.

In the Constance S. & Robert J. Hennessy Project Space, which is dedicated to contemporary, usually video-based, exhibitions, Renee Marcus Butler’s video projections on tall scrims, One Summer, will continue through Jan. 7, 2001.

Of the shows I saw in DCCA’s seven (count ’em!) galleries, two or three were on a level comparable to exhibitions typically presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) here, though the scale of each was smaller because the galleries are smaller than the ICA’s.

The Carole Bieber & Marc Ham Gallery is the largest of the three galleries designed for rotating curated exhibitions. Dede Young, curator of every show in the facility except for the First USA artists’ shows and the Members’ shows, which are juried by a panel, organized "Ethereal & Material," the premier show (now closed) at DCCA.

Effectively fulfilling DCCA’s mission to show local artists with those of international reputation, "Ethereal & Material" united diverse work in which material is the metaphor for intangibles of feeling, memory or contemplation. From the intimacy of Lesley Dill’s Homage to Frida Kahlo, a disembodied dress from which a fragile wire-wrought quotation ("I have given my whole life to words chewed this dog hunger into a long meal.") pours onto the floor from the vanished wearer’s heart to the quasi-scientific character of Sarah Biemiller’s lighted, stacked units of sewn, breath-filled tissue paper — each work explored the show’s premise as well as other key issues in contemporary art. Other standout works by some of the 20 participating artists included Oliver Herring’s reclining fetal figure Unfinished, knitted from shiny Mylar; Mary Carlson’s She’s So Good You Don’t Even Know She’s There, a limp, empty bodysuit of netting; Ann Sperry’s very material pile of rubble and balls, Galactic Garden, Wilmington, 1999-2000; and Enrique Martinez Celaya’s spooky St. Catherine, Head with Hummingbird, a satin pillow displaying a disembodied head of pale tinted polyester resin enclosing a hummingbird. Indicative of DCCA’s ambition, the show was accompanied by a very nice catalogue.

	Willie Birch’s Spirit House.

In the DuPont Gallery I, Emilie Benes Brzezinski’s Forest, composed entirely of tall, twisting tree trunks presents the irregular aspect of a forest. Still active (with a chain saw) at 68, Brzezinski is the wife of Zbigniew Brzezinski, former adviser on National Security to President Carter. Around 27 grouped, frequently decayed and malformed trees of several varieties belie their origins as fallen unsalable timber. Carved into slightly eccentric shapes, they have the aspect of clustered personages, a dense gathering of tree people, dwarfing adults in the gallery to the overlooked status of children at a grown-up cocktail party. (Real children often embrace the trees as one would the legs of a favored adult).

A smaller gallery, the E. Avery Draper Showcase, is currently showing jewelry by Alexandra Hart under the title "Aposematic Ornament." Sea creatures are suggested by Hart’s fluid, spiny forms, which look appealing to wear, but are likely to repel intimate contact with another person. Appropriately, "aposematic" refers to the protective coloration generated by some animals.

Although DCCA is not a collecting institution, it owns one large work, New Orleans artist Willie Birch’s Spirit House, currently on exhibit in DuPont Gallery II. Birch characteristically works in polychrome papier mâche on a wood frame, often adding various found elements. Spirit House, a real little house that visitors may enter, was made by Birch in 1993 in collaboration with 103 artists from the area, including homeless people and children. Poems about the community have been attached to the side of the house which is roofed in corrugated cardboard and pierced with many small cut-out windows — some rectangular, some star-shaped. African motifs mingle with Mardi Gras beads to build the atmosphere of a festival, but it’s a somewhat solemn one. Birch came to DCCA especially to touch up Spirit House for this installation, which includes an edging of sand and offerings of bottles and roses. The house will be on display through June. After that time, DCCA may seek a permanent home for it.

The staggered exhibition schedule of DCCA means that there’s likely to be something new almost any time one visits. Currently, the building’s location down near the waterfront seems a bit out-of-the-way, but this will surely change as the area is under development. With this important new facility, DCCA has established itself as a major player among the region’s contemporary arts institutions.