Gloucester Daily Times
Lifestyle –Friday, June 2, 2006
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/
'Gloucester on Gloucester
Program features beauty of
harbor, city's fishing and poet's
words through work of local artists'By Seeing seARTS
Dom Nicastro, Times Editor
Seeing seARTS
The life of internationally renowned Gloucester poet Charles Olson, the Gloucester Marine Railways — the small shipyard that is the oldest continuously operational railway in the country, the fishing industry and its parallels to arts in Gloucester.
All explored by Gloucester artists.
This is seARTS' Partner with an Artist Program in a snapshot.
Throughout this month and beyond, the Cape Ann arts organization presents the works of Gloucester artists Chad Carlberg, Paul Cary Goldberg and Henry Ferrini in collaboration with Gloucester area businesses.
Photographer Goldberg is showing a series of abstract color photographs of sites in and around Marine Railways, a Rocky Neck staple. Also, Goldberg has a sister exhibition at the Maritime Heritage Center, where he shows his photographic light boxes and a sound installation in a waterfront shed located on site.
Filmmaker Carlberg has created a short film touching upon the parallel existences of the fishing industry and the arts in Gloucester.
Ferrini, also a filmmaker, will debut a film poem, a two-minute loop of his upcoming film, "Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place." The film is a celebration of the work of Olson and includes found footage of schooners at sea.
Times Editor Dom Nicastro caught up with the Gloucester artists for a question-and-answer session about their projects:
Paul Goldberg: Passion for Gloucester Harbor
Nicastro: When did you come up with the idea for this project on Gloucester Harbor and why?
Goldberg: I have wanted to show images of the Gloucester waterfront somewhere on the Gloucester waterfront since I produced my first collection of harbor photographs in 2002. The concept of seeing the work in context — where it was photographed — adds another level of excitement for me. A discussion of partnering with the Maritime Heritage Center probably began in 2003. The current project, "Gloucester's Harbor," was agreed upon in the fall of 2005. The partnership with Gloucester Marine Railways came about this past year.
Nicastro: What are you trying to communicate?
Goldberg: The exceptional beauty, mystery, vulnerability and resilience of Gloucester Harbor. The importance of being able to see this beauty. To protect this resource. To keep it real and vital. And, by extension, to pay attention to the beauty and fragility of the world around us. To be able to relate more intimately. The importance of developing a healthy humility in the way we live.
Nicastro: What kind of reaction would you like to receive?
Goldberg: Positive, of course. I hope people will be glad to have taken the time to look at the images. I hope they will experience feelings of pleasure. I hope they will see and appreciate the waterfront in new ways.
Nicastro: Why are you passionate about the subject of the work?
Goldberg: The harbor has become a muse to me. I am fascinated, humbled, amazed, saddened and thrilled by the colors, shapes, textures, materials, lights, shadows, sounds and smells — a total visceral experience. Different every day. Every hour. The profound interrelationship between nature and humankind is so dramatically revealed on the waterfront.
Nicastro: How successful do you think this piece is — how do you "rank" it in your body of work?
Goldberg: I think the Gloucester's Harbor installation at the Heritage Center is a successful piece. It fits the space well. It looks like it "belongs" where it is. It allows me to show work I don't often have the opportunity to show. I see this piece as having a pivotal place in my body of work, by which I mean that it is leading me in new directions as an artist. I am excited by the use of illumination as a way of showing my images, and I am excited by the addition of an audio component to my work.
Henry Ferrini: Find out for oneself
Nicastro: When did you come up with the idea for this project and why?
Ferrini: This project is a part of a larger project that started in 1995 when the city honored the poet at its first Charles Olson Festival. Kenny Riaf and I took that opportunity to interview several people who were coming to Gloucester to participate. I always knew that a film on Olson was predestined. I heard about him when I was a kid around the holiday dinner table. A 6-foot, 8-inch, Harvard educated, New Dealer, Black Mountaineer,* larger-than-life poet, there were a lot of stories, plus this, I like working in Gloucester, you can save a lot in gas.
*In the late '50s Charles Olson was the rector of Black Mountain College, the very influential art school outside Asheville, N.C.
Nicastro: What are you trying to communicate?
Ferrini: This piece is excerpted from the film, "Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place." Olson had a love for Gloucester and the industry it has supported till today. He came here when he was 5 years old in 1915 at the end of the age of sail. Researching the film, I found that he attributes listening to Captain Lou Douglas talk and his particular use of language made him want to be a poet. Gloucester, her landscapes, seascapes and fishing history informed his poetry.
I came across this footage that Sterling Hayden had gifted to the Cape Ann Historical when he was in town during the '80s. I knew that combining this footage from the fisherman's races with Olson's reading "3rd letter on Georges" would be exciting for the ear and the eye. Like these great fishing schooners, Charles Olson's poetry is an Adventure.
Nicastro: What kind of reaction would you like to receive?
Ferrini: If people want to see the completed film, that would be all I could expect.
Nicastro: Why are you passionate about the subject of the work?
Ferrini: One method Olson used is called "istorin." It is a Greek word meaning to find out for oneself. It is the root of the English word history. It's been my M.O. over the course of making the film. Istorin was my way of finding out about a man I had heard about all my life but hardly knew. It was also a way of exploring my town through the words of a poet who felt everything was knowable. Gloucester was his laboratory. His passion for his place fueled mine.
"3rd Letter on Georges" success is a double wammie. Not only does it bring Olson's voice back to life but it gives this magnificent footage a place where many people can get to appreciate this part of Gloucester's history.
Nicastro: How successful do you think this piece is — how do you "rank" it in your body of work?
Ferrini: As far as ranking goes, I'm sorry, but I don't much go for hierarchies.
Chad Carlberg: Fish and organ in harmony
Nicastro: When did you come up with the idea for this project and why?
Carlberg: A while ago I was trying to think of an interesting way to show directions to a difficult-to-find location for one of my commercial clients. Having worked for Manex Entertainment of Matrix renown (one of the company's tech gurus was responsible for the bullet-time camera effect where still photography is used to capture a moment in time while flying around the subject), I thought I'd try to do some video time lapse sequencing using a still camera with a fast shutter. The client never went for the idea and so, until this project, I had no reason to buy one. This was the impetus for the idea of FISH/FISK. (Pragmatic excuse to buy a decent digital SLR, the Canon Rebel)..
Nicastro: What are you trying to communicate?
Carlberg: At first, my intention was to shoot both audio and video at C.B. Fisk Organ Co. But the grant required that I use a downtown business partner, so I chose the display auction since I was heart-set on Fisk, and fish is but a letter away. My real goal was to create something that did nothing more than explore the possibilities of the medium. The images on a video monitor were quite beautiful. What I discovered, however, was this odd sort of harmony that lives inside this captured moment during a series of gloomy, wet days in early May..
Nicastro: What kind of reaction would you like to receive?
Carlberg: I didn't think about the reaction. It was very freeing to work on something whose audience couldn't alter its outcome. My work is never this way. While I may have a lot of creative control of every project I work on, I don't have the final say. In this case, I did. So my reaction was all that mattered to me, and I enjoyed the result immediately with very little editorial alteration needed..
Nicastro: Why are you passionate about the subject of the work?
Carlberg: I love to fish. I love to eat fish. I love the uniqueness that our fishing industry lends this community. I love music. I love old crafts. I love that it takes a year to make an organ and a year to set it up and tune it to the hall where it stays. I love the juxtaposition of the two seemingly disparate skill sets (building organs and separating fish) and how they can come together as a pair in an awkward and somehow perfect dance..
Something that I thought of only after finishing FISK — FISH is that these two age-old industries have very tenuous livelihoods today. Everyone knows about the fishing industry. We also know what the age of expediency does to art forms like Fisk's. And yet these two things still exist, and exist here in town. Cool..
Nicastro: How successful do you think this piece is — how do you "rank" it in your body of work?
Carlberg: This piece was very successful. I will do more and more just like it. Hopefully some time lapse sunsets on the bridge and in the harbor this summer. I think I'd give it seventh place in my body of work — right behind six other things.
"Seeing seARTS" is an occasional Times feature featuring the work of seARTS members or those who participate in seARTS events. The Society for the Encouragement of the Arts is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to re-establish Cape Ann as a world-class center for working artists in balance with the unique character of Cape Ann as a maritime community.
If you go
What: seARTS' Partner with an Artist program
Who: Gloucester artists Chad Carlberg, Paul Cary Goldberg and Henry Ferrini in collaboration with Gloucester area businesses.
What: Goldberg will be showing a series of abstract color photographs of sites in and around Marine Railways, a small shipyard on Rocky Neck that is the oldest continuously operational railway in the country; Goldberg is also having a sister exhibit at the Maritime Heritage Center, where he shows photographic light boxes and a sound installation in a waterfront shed located on site.
When/Where: Marine Railways in the second-floor office, 81 Rocky Neck Ave. The photographs will be on view through June 30. Goldberg's photographs at the Heritage Center, 9 Harbor Loop, will be showed through Sept. 4.
What: Filmmaker Carlberg has created a short film touching upon the parallel existences of the fishing industry and the arts in Gloucester.
When/where: Carlberg plans to have it on view at C.B. Fisk Organ Co. at 21 Kondelin Road in Gloucester.
What: Ferrini, also a filmmaker, will debut a "film poem," a two-minute loop of his upcoming film, "Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place." The film is a celebration of the work of Olson and includes found footage of schooners at sea.
When/where: The film loops will debut tomorrow from 4 to 4:30 p.m. at Doyon's TV and Modern Home Sales & Service at 11 Rogers St. and from 4:30 to 5 p.m. at Winchester Fishing Co. at 18 Washington St. The film will be on view at both locations through June 30.
Biographies
Chad Carlberg
Discipline: Filmmaking
Age: 33
Film background: Visual effects
Worked in: "Bless the Child," digital compositor; "Romeo Must Die," digital compositor; "Noah's Ark," digital compositor; "Doctor Dolittle," compositor, VisionArt; "Godzilla," digital compositor.
Works in Gloucester: Runs the Bait and Tackle ad agency on Center Street
Henry Ferrini
Discipline: Filmmaking
Age: 53
Start: Completed his first documentary under a CETA grant in 1978 when he worked in the Gloucester Arts and Humanities program. "The Light the Quality, the Time the Place" is a 30-minute meditation about environmental responsibility.
Award-winning documentaries include: "Poem in Action: A Portrait of Vincent Ferrini," "Radio Fishtown," "Witch City," "Lowell Blues," "Last Call" and "Polis is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place."
Where: Work has been exhibited in museums around the world and broadcast on PBS.
Lives: At 5 Wall St. with his wife, Susan Steiner, and his 4-year-old son, Isaac.
Paul Cary Goldberg
Discipline: Photography
Born: New York, N.Y., 1950
Recent solo exhibits: Pucker Gallery, Boston; Cape Ann Historical Museum; Southern Light Gallery, Amarillo, Texas
Recent selected group exhibits: The Art of Essex County, Great House on the Crane Estate, Essex; Ocean View, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly
Some awards: "Photography Quarterly," Photography Now 2004 Call for Entries, Paul Kopeikin, juror; Best Photography, Members Juried Exhibition, Concord Art Association, Judy Ann Goldman, juror; First prize, 2001 Georgetown International Fine Arts Juried Competition, John Winslow, Professor of Art, The Catholic University of America, juror