The first mistake is to think of mankind as a thing in itself. It isn’t. It is a part of an intricate web of life. And we can’t think even of life as a thing in itself. It isn’t. It is part of the intricate structure of a planet bathed by energy from a sun. If we do nothing at all…..the ecology will die and man will die with it. Isaac Asimov, The Case Against Man.
Ever since I saw Deborah Masters and her work at Storm King, last week, I have been designing a personal rescue kit for the day when…. Starting with vitamins, carbon purifiers, pliers, tweezers and knives, sketchbook and a thousand pencils, my laptop complete with photo and word files and a good pair of running shoes, I wrap it all up with Chocolate, darkest chocolate. Oh, but how to survive without family and friends? And their rescue kits? maybe the computer (ugh) and the vitamins could….go. hmm. tweezers? what about tics? Homelessness. Is this possible? …(Darfur, tsunamis, Iraq, West Bank, New Orleans. Did they… know? ) Deborah narrates. She preaches a little, but overwhelmingly, her massive cast and colored concrete figures are proud stanchion like portraits of big people - carrying things. The history of Gypsies, Jews, Katrina victims. immigrants and other displaced persons in exodus, running from something…into….hellishness. NOT ONLY THAT. “We’ve learned nothing” she asserts and rhetoric flows in steady stream: “environmental racism”(not rebuilding flood walls, for example), toxic dumping and molds, abusiveness, the powers of women, devotion to gods and objects and religion, i.e., Masters laments “the vapidity of a society that lives without ideals and faith.”
Overwhelmed by big ideas, I humbly (at least my best attempt) toured Storm King Art Center on the trolley with Deborah, Liliana Malta, an artist friend who flew in from Rome for the opening reception, her friend, Cheryl Kaplan, an accomplished film producer, and a group of women from Orange County who do interesting things together once a month and wear red hats. At the end of the ride was a refreshing glimpse of one of Deborah’s pieces, Tamashi, sited at the hill’s precipice, a free spirited representation of a woman’s head, just waiting, like mountain laurel, for nothing, anticipating nothing bad, neither fleeing nor encamped. You cannot ignore her. You don’t even want to. She is our everyday lovely woman. She comes and she goes and she never ever blames us, for anything.
Back to (gulp) reality, and the three looming figures in the park, and the people and things needing honorable mention and all of the victims of political or social injustices. Accidents, too. Like the little boy who fell off a roof in Brooklyn, after which Deborah created (sculpted) a circle of friends for the ailing mom, cast concrete, oversized, formidably sympathetic, how women typically are with each other (the piece is showing in a multi cultural art center in Haverstraw, NY.) Back up. How does one land a show at Storm King, anyway? - the “highest honor for me” Master’s claims. She also suggests serendipity, like the art park director seeing her work at a time he was looking for an artist, but I’ll let that go, because we suspect it doesn’t really happen that way.
Anyway, more interesting is the throttling aspect of “nomadic people” on their way to rebuilding their lives. You can have Hope if you want it, you can sign on to doing things that will change our world, which seems unlikely that you actually might, unless you board the train, take a ride or walk your dog around the neighborhood ( like Deborah every morning for a couple of hours) and then ‘do stuff’ there, such as tagging your buddy (or eye contact, take your pick) in a game called “hope” as daily refuge from hopelessness. (When Y.M. Barnwell wrote the song, no mirrors in my Nana's house. is it possible to see the beauty… in everything…cause the beauty in everything was in her eyes. Could it be that … I never knew that my skin was too black…that my nose was too flat…my clothes didn't fit…things that I'd missed )
About the Stuff You Do: After the towers collapsed, Deborah distributed high quality paper masks to pedestrians, fire fighters, squad teams, etc. She also worked at the New Town Creek Sewage Treatment plant, between Queens and Brooklyn an environmentalist, “making sure they did things safely”. (and “got them to address toxicity by covering 200 tanks”) Her opinion is that “nobody cares about sculptors”. But, clearly, she wants to “rise to the top” - a way towards earning passage into continuous and uninterrupted work.
As readers may suspect, there is this revolution in the art world today, charged by progressive technology, popular and divided cultures, with a trajectory into who knows, possibly a black hole. Deborah’s large, complex figures, based on 30 second sketches, each requiring 5000 lbs of clay and typically two years of work, recall our history and it’s People, “picking up and moving on.” A personal and slightly sardonic interpretation of the “cast concrete family” is obvious, in the cumbersome, even humorous baggage strapped to the middle of (strong ) Mom , with merely a sheep around (hunter) Dad’s neck, and the (dreamy) Daughter’s fish and bird, like stuffed animals, to comfort her as she enters a new phase of her life. Deborah’s materials-infused art bales you out of black holes, blending cultures, probably informed by her life in Mexico, Texas, and New Mexico with travels to South America as a youngster.
Oh, yeah, what about Families and economic inequality, political injustice, wars and brutal immigration practices. Why resist politics in art despite differences and gallery requirements to turn profits, a familiar risk to Eeo Stubblefield who exhibited Who Cares? in Ellenville, NY last summer. Are we actually willing to forget?. Why didn’t we take our kids to the (free) Shadowland screening of Thomas Harris’s, Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela, a son’s tribute to unsung heroes? How about reading Louise Doughty’s “Fires In The Dark” one of Master’s favorites written about European Gypsies of Romany caught up in Hitler’s reign of terror? You can still experience the grip of Deborah Master’s Travellers and Big Head (Tomashi) exhibit this summer (www.stormking.org) tracing a unique vision and remembrances. Visit her website: (www.deborahmasters.com) and click on Walking New York, a painted relief mural measuring 8’ x 350’ in JFK’s terminal 4 at the Immigration Hall for which she won the Best Public art of 2001 award in NYC. Deborah Masters lives and works in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Since the mid 1970’s she has earned numerous awards, public and private commissions, and exhibits nationally and internationally.
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