Sculpture casts light, sparks conversation on Indiana author
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) - Russell Rock crafted the new sculpture honoring the work of Terre Haute-born novelist Theodore Dreiser.
He also drove the forklift that set the 1,000-pound art piece into place on the Vigo County Public Library north lawn.
The 64-year-old artist is quite familiar with heavy equipment, construction work and hand tools. Long before Rock and his wife, Jeanine Centuori, formed the Los Angeles public art and architecture firm Urban Rock Design in Los Angeles, he and his brother Roger worked at a fruit cannery. Rock ran a forklift on that job and was a member of the Teamsters union.
As a boy, he spent summers with his family at a remote cabin in the Canadian wilderness. Rock's dad, a high school teacher, bought the place as the family's get-away. It wasn't easy to reach. The family did its own maintenance. Rock and his brother built boat houses, too.
"We learned that we had to be kind of handy," Rock recalled Thursday morning as his brother stood by, nodding affirmatively.
That may seem like an unusual background for an artist who created the unique sculpture "Dreiser - Shadows of Meaning." It was unveiled last week in a public dedication ceremony. The piece features a powder-coated aluminum depiction of a sheet of paper filled with notable phrases from Dreiser's writings and comments, and a column similar to a typewriter platen. Among the passages cut into the aluminum is this: "How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean."
Shadows serve a significant purpose in the Dreiser sculpture. The varying positions of the sun overhead will cast shadows of the sculpture's etched passages onto its surrounding concrete surfaces. On some days, a viewer might see all or portions of one phrase. Sunlight will illuminate parts of other Dreiser quotes on other days. Curious visitors will have to study the sculpture to read it in full.
That's a fitting aspect of the sculpture that recognizes the writer who lived from 1871 to 1945.
"It's difficult to read it, and that isn't far from Dreiser's personality. He was not an easygoing person," Rock said, standing next to the sculpture he and his wife crafted. "There are bits and pieces, and people will have to work to put them together."
Likewise, Dreiser's works require concentration from the reader. His unconventional writing style is seen as clumsy by some critics. Some looked down on him because he didn't finish high school or college. Yet, most critics appreciate his blunt style's power to stir emotions.
Dreiser's unvarnished truthfulness likely stemmed from his years as a young newspaperman in New York, Chicago, St. Louis and Pittsburgh, before he started writing novels such as his classics "Sister Carrie" and "An American Tragedy." Dreiser's realistic form inspired other writers of his day and those of subsequent generations. Many admire his courage to expose social injustice, challenge censorship and tell the stories of poor and working-class people.
The sculpture, funded through donations, becomes the third by Art Spaces on Terre Haute's Cultural Trail. The trail recognizes hometown figures whose work left an impact on the nation and world. A sculpture of "Desiderata" poet Max Ehrmann debuted at Seventh and Wabash in 2010, and another honoring "On the Banks of the Wabash" songwriter Paul Dresser (Dreiser's older brother) went up at Fairbanks Park in 2014.
Dreiser fits on that trail. Few communities in America have a native son with two books on Modern Library's "100 Best Novels" list. "An American Tragedy" ranked 16th and "Sister Carrie" 33rd.
The Dreiser sculpture joins other pieces around the country created by Rock and Centuori, from several places in California to Arizona, Colorado, Ohio, Nebraska, Washington state and others. They've been collaborating on public art and architecture since the 1990s. This latest project brought Rock to Terre Haute for the first time.
The town "seems very familiar to me," Rock said as light rain fell, and masons smoothed the sculpture's wet concrete beneath a protective tent. "It's a lot like the towns I grew up in." Those include Benton Harbor, Michigan, and Kent, Ohio. Like those, Terre Haute is "a Midwestern industrial city with a river running through it, and on a rail line," he added.
Hautean construction style impressed Rock, too. "It's nice to see all the brick here," he said. Few structures around Los Angeles contain brick, because of earthquake risks.
Here, tornadoes are the more common natural disasters. Such storms shouldn't be a problem for "Dreiser - Shadows of Meaning." The sculpture measures 12 feet wide by nine feet tall, weighs nearly a half-ton, and has deep metal, concrete and epoxy reinforcements. "It's there for a tornado," Rock said.
Dreiser resisted some strong forces himself.
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Source: Tribune-Star
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Information from: Tribune-Star, http://www.tribstar.com