Stars & stripes & heavy machinery
His American flag makes a gigantic statement
By Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent |
July 1, 2005
PROVIDENCE -- If Betsy Ross and John Deere had a love child,
it would be artist Dave Cole. This weekend, Cole and a team of assistants will be out in
the courtyard of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in
North Adams, using heavy machinery -- two excavators -- to knit
a 20-foot-wide American flag. The excavators will hold needles
crafted from aluminum utility poles. To make the flag, they'll
use almost a mile of red, white, and blue acrylic felt.
''I'll be up on a boom lift, throwing the stitches with a
5-foot-long fishing gaff," Cole reports. ''There will be a guy
in each excavator, and I'll give hand signals to them: Angle it
up, lower it down. A lot of it is just plain fun: Just boys
playing with trucks."
He calls it ''The Knitting Machine" and aims to finish the
flag on Sunday, followed by an afternoon cookout and opening
reception, although visitors are welcome throughout the weekend.
It's part of an exhibition of his work at Mass MoCA, ''Dave
Cole: The Knitting Machine," which includes a flag made from
18,000 toy soldiers, and a fictional recounting of the history
of the knitting needle in modern warfare. When the knitted flag
is completed, it will be folded into a triangle and placed into
a box nearly the size of a
Volkswagen
Beetle.
''The Knitting Machine" comes to the sprawling contemporary
art museum as part of ''American Traditions," a collaborative
project involving many Berkshire-area institutions.
''A lot of other museums were talking about showing folk art,
and we were wondering, how can we do this?" says Mass MoCA
curator Nato Thompson. ''Then Dave brought us a maquette, and it
tickled us pink to think of this project -- a Mass MoCA version
of folk art. It had scale, and knitting, and a nice twist on a
domestic, small process."
Cole, who operates out of a studio in Providence and an
Airstream trailer that he takes on the road, has been knitting
since college.
''I started knitting hats in lectures at Brown. I'm really
hyperactive, and to be able to pay attention I'd knit," explains
the artist, sitting in his trailer recently at the Steel Yard
art center in Providence. ''I started thinking about knitting
more abstractly. Not just as a specific domestic task, but as a
trope for work, a metaphor for every kind of production."
The artist, 29, comes across as deeply thoughtful and tightly
coiled, as if his ideas are a way to route his intense,
sometimes wayward energy.
''At the time, I was also coauthoring a book on succeeding in
school with a learning disability," says Cole, who has attention
deficit disorder. ''[Knitting] ended up accurately reflecting
the feeling I had of growing up in school with a learning
disability. It's obsessive, repetitive, grinding work. So was my
trying to memorize the multiplication table. The result was
absurd and grotesque."
He smiles ruefully. ''All my work goes back to the special-ed
room."
The artist grew up in Hanover, N.H., the son of an attorney
and a bookkeeper. He struggled at school, but thrived in the
metal shop. He made his first metal sculpture at 4; when he was
11, his father taught him to weld. When he was old enough, he
got work in construction, and then he went to Brown University.
Knitting hats during class led to knitting sculptures, using
materials that echoed the harshness of Cole's special-education
room.
''I spun and knit steel wool, and knit a teddy bear from
Kevlar decommissioned body armor," Cole recounts. Another teddy
bear, made from nearly 1,500 pounds of fiberglass, was featured
in the DeCordova Annual Exhibition in 2003. Cole, who is
represented by the Judi Rotenberg Gallery, makes smaller pieces
as well.
His work is full of contradictions: cuddly yet dangerous,
feminine and domestic, yet masculine and industrial.
''It's something a girl could do, in every way a boy could
want to do it," Cole says of ''The Knitting Machine." ''It's
bigger, louder, faster, heavier, and more dangerous." But that's
not the point, he says. ''Dig deeper, and you get to the idea of
work, and of identity in work and production, and how work and
production relate to the machine, and how the machine relates to
national identity."
Cole graduated with an art degree from Brown in 2000, and
immediately began working full time as a sculptor. As he was
crafting teddy bears that could scrape and splinter your skin if
you tried to snuggle with them, Americans' sense of security was
shattered on Sept. 11, 2001.
''I spent the week after Sept. 11 in New York, doing
search-and-rescue work, helping to run a supply depot," Cole
says. ''I knew enough to know I'd never be able to get my head
around what was happening. So I went down to get my hands around
it. That's how I understand things."
A year later, the city of Providence commissioned him to
create a public-art piece to mark the anniversary of the
terrorist attacks. Cole came up with ''The Knitting Machine."
It wasn't easy to transfer the fine motor skills used in
knitting to two heavy machines. ''When does the needle encounter
force? From what direction and to what degree?" Cole asks. ''If
we do it wrong, the coupling gets sheared and the piece drops,
or somebody's hand gets crushed."
To figure it out, he went to the experts: A construction
crew.
''I have an enduring mental image," Cole says, ''of sitting
in a circle of folding chairs, teaching construction workers to
knit."
''The Knitting Machine" struck a chord, a year after the
terrorist attacks.
''What does it mean to make art in the public space, with the
preordained connection to this national tragedy?" Cole asks.
''It turned into a piece about the relationship between place,
art, and nationalism."
Nearly four years later, the same work of art has a different
resonance. ''Now, it's about nationalism, internationalism, and
colonization," Cole says. ''It's a darker piece. My feelings
about our behavior internationally have gotten darker."
But he's quick to point out that the piece is not all dark,
nor is it ironic.
''Within the same piece, you might be making one statement,
and then making a contradictory statement," he says. ''Both are
true. It's not something in between. Somehow it's both. The flag
is a symbol of hope and promise and what Army recruiters would
like you to think. And it's a symbol of shortsighted, greedy
international behavior. It always has been. I like that the flag
means a lot of things."
''In a politically charged period, Dave brings a critical
sense to an important American image," says Thompson. ''A great
art piece makes you vacillate between emotions."
As for Cole, he says he's looking forward to the weekend.
There will be hot dogs and beer, heavy machinery to operate, and
a flag to be made.
|
