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Author's Note: |
The Artmaker as Active Agent: Six PortraitsCHAPTER 5: GEORGE TRAKAS
Background
It is fitting that sculptor George Trakas’ first glimpses of New York City were made from a boat in the river, since so much of his work has engaged the power of water including that of the estuary of his adopted city. Arriving as a young man, Trakas was able to take advantage of much of what the city had to offer by entering, in his words, “quiet, but open.” Trakas brought to the city a keen understanding of the power of nature and knowledge of the fundamental properties of the raw materials of construction. Having grown up in Quebec on the St. Lawrence Seaway, Trakas endured brutal winters where bad luck, bad weather, or a miscalculation of tides could strand one on the wrong side of the river and place one in danger of death from exposure. Timber was harvested there and physical and economic survival meant understanding and harnessing the force of nature, whether that power took the form of the weight of lumber or the strength of the seaway’s current. In a 1980 interview that accompanied an installation of his sculpture at the University of Massachusettes, Trakas described his early environment:
Trakas understood intimately the properties of the many types of trees he sawed at the lumber mill in his home town and would carry this understanding and appreciation into the construction and design of his sculptures.
Over the years, Trakas has developed a reputation as an artist who effectively engages diverse stakeholders in public art projects. Several of his artworks have been parts of public works projects such as subway stations and sewage treatment plants. His sense of participation and civic responsibility may be traced to a childhood in a small town where coming together as a community to build public works projects was an essential way of life.
Trakas played ice hockey as a young man and his expertise in the sport would eventually lead him to Montreal and perhaps gave him the sensitivity to the grace and strength of the human body which would become a key consideration of his concerning the reception of his sculptural work. Trakas wants to create places in which the body can be: at rest, moving through, going toward something or somewhere. His connection with physicality, nature and community has informed every aspect of the design and creation of his trademark sculptural work that brings people to the water, especially in derelict places where waterfronts are decayed, polluted and isolated. Trakas eventually came ashore in Manhattan and took advantage of the many low cost and free educational offerings the city extended at that time, studying at the New School for Social Research, the Brooklyn Museum Art School, CUNY and eventually obtaining a bachelors of science from NYU. For Trakas, sculpture has always emphasized the construction of the work “you have to build things. It’s not just books and concepts: you really have to go out there and work with the real thing, the real material” and the work needed to get made by him. So it was natural for Trakas to want to study architecture and engineering alongside drawing and sculpture. “Engineering relative to nature is something that I was very fascinated in and also rock and going into rock and pinning things, etc. and also human access into nature.” Trakas has developed his voice as an artist by exploring two constant themes: water and paths. His work as well as his way of working reflects a respect for materials, nature, the existing properties of the site, the existing traditions of the community, and the needs of the individual user of the site. An ethic of re-use imbues both the conceptual nature of his work as well as its actual construction.“I like to develop a material that is available to me and make it live through context,”(Davies & Yard, p. 54) For example, it has been important for Trakas, while working on several derelict waterfront sites, to incorporate existing bulkheads and piers into the structure and design of his decks and piers. If those existing structures are sound, he reasons, why needlessly drill into the earth, waste materials and disturb the natural life of the site and the ecosystem that has developed around these older, man-made structures? He avidly researches the natural and social history of the sites in which he works and wants to share what he’s learned with the users of the site.
Is he a “waterfront evangelist,” (Zacks, 2001, para. 4) as one journalist suggested? There is an intensity and tenacity to both Trakas’ personal and artistic style. He enters into a dialog -- both literally and verbally -- with the many stakeholders he must engage to create support for public work, and figuratively with the more anonymous audience of his sculptural work. Trakas seeks to share the meaning and inspiration he draws from the power of nature and to relate its specific power in the place at hand.
He engages our bodies with the intention of changing our minds, but not in a prescribed way. In the following passage he reflects on the capacity of his artwork to spur change through the movement of the spectator:
The Work By the late-1970’s Trakas had established a reputation as an environmental artist who developed site specific work that moved the viewer through a place, indeed, the viewer completed the artwork by interacting with it and participating in its capacity to reveal something true about this place. In 1977, Trakas had created a steel sculptural path into the woods as part of Documenta VI in Germany and had developed conceptually related pieces for various sites around the world. In 1979, Trakas was invited by art and art history professors at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, to participate in a symposium called “Intellect and Imagination: The Presuppositions of Intellectual Inquiry,” by creating a sculpture for the University’s Quad. But Trakas’ attention, intellect and imagination were quickly drawn to a more derelict and naturally powerful place on the Emory campus.
The work that led the symposium members down to the ravine is called “Source Route” and is still on the Emory campus, twenty-five years later.
The Emory ravine project perfectly illustrates Trakas’ capacity for building the rapport that leads to support for the design ideas that are attached to his broader social change framework. Looking at the then-current state of the ravine and learning of the plans to build on top of it, Trakas saw that he had an opportunity to intervene.
Trakas’ has an extraordinary ability to study the language and objectives of the stakeholders he wishes to engage and then use them to build a case that will link them to his objectives, creating new, shared objectives. In the Emory case, Trakas was able to use the stated concepts of intellect and imagination to move from the abstract goals of the symposium to the concrete reality of nature, the ravine and the physical and inspirational source of strength and ideas. He made the case to a group of powerful and influential men that the ravine is an important natural and intellectual resource and that it should be protected.
The Meaning The fact that “Source Route” was created as part of a symposium but still stands twenty-five years later, is a testament to Trakas’ commitment to creating quality work. It is this reputation that, perhaps, Trakas cultivates and values the most. It is important to Trakas that the design concept is actually made, that he build his own work, and that that work resonates within, or otherwise, serves the lives of working people. Like Pottenger and Bowers, Trakas believes in the instrumental capacity of art and that his art should be useful and accessible. Speaking of the relationships he built while making “Sword Bridge” in Thiers, France, Trakas says, “I made a lot of friends in the town cause I would very often build and work myself. A lot of communities come and say, ‘Guy’s doing it himself! Great! Come to dinner!’” Trakas appreciates that he has the reputation as the “guy [who] builds bridges in totally impossible places,” but just as importantly, that those bridges are well-constructed and able to withstand the test of time and the forces of nature. Trakas has always sought to extend his work beyond the “art historical” context.
Critic Jeff Kelley in his essay “Common Work,” maps out the broader context in which these sentiments of Trakas’ lie.
Trakas perpetually lives at the edge between work and art and is, perhaps, more comfortable with a definition of himself as a worker than as an artist. He is, as Jeff Kelley defines it in the following passage, an “artist of place” who leaves behind evidence of his work and his struggle to understand a place.
The places Trakas chooses are metaphors for work in and of themselves. Trakas is continually drawn to the derelict and abandoned former industrial sites that feature physical evidence of past work. As we learn the history of these sites, we are led back to nature and often back to the waterfront, to the source of power for the industry. Trakas wants to reveal the logic of a place as a source of work and that industry’s dependence upon nature. In reflecting upon “Sword Bridge” in France, Trakas says he wanted viewers to,
Interaction
Participation as an artist in the nation’s many “percent for art” programs -- a mechanism wherein public construction projects set aside a small percentage of the project’s budget for the design and construction of artwork -- requires a set of skills not typically associated with artists. In New York City and elsewhere, artists must present and discuss their designs of proposed work with a committee of users of the proposed site, the members of which are typically non-artists. This is a forum in which Trakas’ charisma and tenacity serve him well.
His insistence on researching the various histories of the site in question helps to establish rapport with the local users. Also, typically, his design reflects a deep understanding of, respect for and attention to the needs of the users of the site. He comes into a design presentation having done his homework. Though he enters a site as the “artist as experiencer,” the more Trakas knows about a site, the more it becomes a “place” with myriad contexts that are essential in determining the design of the piece. In describing the edge he occupies between art and work, Trakas presents himself during the public design process as the “artist as reporter” (Lacy, 1995, p. 178).
But how Trakas sees and how he frames what he sees, reflect his worldview which at its core is activist: he seeks to protect and respect the beauty and power of nature by building awareness through artwork. As in the Emory case, Trakas is generally confident that what he has to show stakeholders is of sufficient value to lead them to the correct decision regarding the protection of a site. But sometimes he must fight for his vision and he is willing and able to do this, too. Though neither his work nor he himself are overtly political, his work does live in a public realm, where issues of participation and the concentration of power greatly influence decisions regarding the development of open, public space. His activism is built into the type of projects he chooses and the degree of challenge presented by a location. Also, Trakas has recently taken on projects that involve working collaboratively with community groups to design and build work so he has given himself challenges in the interpersonal realm as well. In reflecting upon how others might see him, Trakas says of himself, “This guy’s a catalyst.” He hopes his artwork can lead people not just to and through a physical place but toward a sense of stewardship of place, as well as connection and the sense of peace that nature can offer. Audience
Trakas is happiest building in the public sphere, where his hand as an artist or any pretense of art is underplayed. His audience is general and probably unaware of the art historical context of his work.
When he designs and builds work through the “percent for art” program, he feels a particular responsibility to serve the needs of the anonymous user of the site,
Typically, Trakas designs and builds alone having digested the many contexts of the place and user of the site.
Like Pottenger, the work Trakas builds derives meaning from the context of the place as he understands it, but the actual work gets made by him alone and is not a collaborative process. Once the public has entrusted him with the execution of a piece, he occupies the “origination and responsibility” (Lacy, 1995, p. 178) ring of the audience ring model. Recently, however, he worked in a more collaborative mode with an environmental community group in Philadelphia. New*Land*Marks, the grant that brought Trakas on board, called for the community group to submit a proposal for a project in which an artist would help articulate an idea. The group was then matched up with Trakas based on the scope of the work to be addressed. They were charged with proposing a design for the restoration of a stepping stone path along a creek that flows through a gorge in a park in the center of the city. In this case, the environmental group occupied the center of the “audience” circle (origination and responsibility) and steers the collaborative process. Trakas is in service, extending his skills and experience to a group whose vision he shares.
Because Trakas’ work is physical and generally intended to be permanent, it is perhaps better able to enter into the “audience of myth and memory” (Lacy, 1995, p. 178) circle than the work of performing artists. Its role in “saving” the Emory gorge aside, “Source Route”, for example, has permanently altered the users’ experience of the gorge for the past twenty-five years. The presence of the artwork has reconfigured the context of the place and entered into the stories, memories and other representations of the people who experience that site, and will continue to do so as long as the work stands. Trakas, however, has almost no control over how that work is received and interpreted, or any semblance of a concrete relationship with those users. Intention Like Pottenger, Trakas not only wants his art to be evidence of work, but wants to specifically serve the needs of working people and to be sure that his work is articulate and useful to a non-art public.
Also, Trakas sees the types of projects he’s engaged in as providing a connective function, whether that connection goes between the formal considerations of the art world to the need for a place of peaceful contemplation in a neighborhood or between the natural world and the technical needs of civil engineers. As Trakas collaborates, he is extending that connecting capacity to his co-collaborators, providing a translating function between worlds that he has traversed and sought to understand.
Like Bowers’ work in Red Hook, Trakas’ collaborative effort in a community becomes a metaphor for potential future collaboration which may move beyond artwork into planning for affordable housing or to protect open space. It is possible that work like Trakas’ leads to an engaged citizenry. Again, Jeff Kelley provides the broader landscape into which Trakas’ work fits:
Effectiveness Trakas’ bottomline measure of the effectiveness of his work is: do they use it? Just as he insists that his work can’t exist as a concept but only as a concrete, built project, he believes that that artwork has no value until it’s completed by a user. Though his work may get reviewed in a critical context, it is built for that anonymous user to walk through or on,
He also has evidence of the perceptual change he seeks while building awareness with his co-collaborators. He is presently building a waterfront park as the public art component of a major redesign of a water treatment plant in Brooklyn. This has been, for Trakas, a multi-year process of balancing the needs of the multiple stakeholders while keeping his vision intact. He has sought to make a “nature walk” along the creek abutting the treatment plan that articulates the natural, cultural and industrial history of the specific place. During one of the many trips he took out to the site to weigh in on construction decisions that would affect his park, Trakas describes the following exchange,
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