BRATTLEBORO — Any notion of art will will do - the elegant rhythm of a dance, the balance of form, articulated by light and shadow and color of a painting.
Both reveal a story asking to be told. However brief that story, however abstract, however ancient - from a child's bedtime tale told its hundredth time to the grace of a stone wall - a story waits to be told, in collaboration with the person hearing or seeing the story.
The word labor is in there for good reason. Any art takes work - it takes bringing one's own discipline to the project. And it takes letting the balancing of the project take the lead.
Brattleboro's Public Works Department is all about the art of collaboration. The day-to-day sets the rhythm, but the grace is seen in the cooperative effort.
I learned about this watching Steve Barrett's team ease our “horizontal art” project into his department's schedule.
In three amazing hours, Fulcrum Arts - Natalie Blake and Randi Solin - created a sidewalk mosaic of splendor.
They did so with their installation team: Nick Narchese, his son, Eli (a high school student from Greenfield), and Ed Sofronovici (who moved to the U.S. from Russia in 2003).
Town workers poured the cement and then let two artists tell their story with glass and gleam, with color, with shapes.
This story took the collaboration of Natalie and Randi and their team, the Town Arts Committee, including freelance artist Garry Jones, to ask for the opportunity, Hotel Pharmacy for a generous donation and welcome - all to develop a brief pause in Brattleboro's daily life for “diamonds beneath our feet,” as Fulcrum Arts calls this sidewalk canvas.
Each played a role; each enabled the others to shine.
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What would motivate a department with a major project underway to facilitate this project? Or artists preparing for an exhibition in Beijing's new China World Trade Center to provide a few steps of their gifts?
Maybe it's the wise embrace Brattleboro has for a sense of place. We seem to insist on it.
Brattleboro's recognition of how a community works is seen in its cornucopia of projects, committees, its public concern for all manner of things. We pay attention to the story told in On the Job, Wayne Carhart and Charles Fish's beautiful book by about the “complex and demanding work needed to keep Brattleboro functioning.”
What's also needed to keep Brattleboro's community functioning gracefully is the work that quietly surfaces in the decisions of all the people involved in Horizontal Art - to help tell a small piece of the story of place.
In my work, I read of communities of all sizes, each looking to consultants, to theories, to grants to assist its revitalization, in connecting to its essential story.
So walk over to Hotel Pharmacy. You'll see something no consultant needed to tell us.