WaterFire

June 19 - 26, 1997

[Art Reviews]

Blazing glory

The elemental splendor of WaterFire

by Bill Rodriguez
WaterFire Providence got off to an auspicious start two years ago at the 10th anniversary of First Night Providence. Not only did it rival the fireworks, in a subtler visual way, before thousands at the New Year's bash ushering in 1996, but it also won first prize for creative programming from First Night International -- even though it consisted of only 11 blazes.
Joan Slafsky was among those impressed when it was lit that summer, and no one better articulates those impressions. "People can respond to it in different ways at different moments. It can be very moving, and you can become introspective when you hear some of the music and you smell the smoke and you hear the crackling of the wood and you just watch the flames," she says. "And then it seems to bring about a bonding experience. People turn and talk to people who in a way they wouldn't ordinarily. Everybody is sharing a special moment."
She was a fortunate person to be taken with the installation. A communication consultant, she was the long-time PR director of Rhode Island School of Design and has done fund-raising for many volunteer organizations. Slafsky and another captivated friend, Jeannie Sturim, got the go-ahead from the artist, Barnaby Evans, to organize an effort to raise $200,000 to perpetuate the display. The City of Providence kicked in $29,000, and while Mayor Buddy Cianci was talking last week as though the full amount had already been pledged, $162,850 had been promised as of last week, Slafsky says. Most of the money is going toward refabricating the installation from more permanent materials, such as galvanized steel epoxied and then coated with barnacle- and algae-resistant paint. The rest is to fund a total of 11 lightings this year, plus another at First Night '98. The cost of feeding the flames from dusk until midnight is about $5000. An annual membership campaign will probably be organized so sponsors can keep it burning year after year.

A profound experience

But pledges and promises are not cash in hand. By the time June 4 rolled around, not enough checks had come in to light the full 42-fire display (another 15 may ring the Waterplace Park basin fountain next year). Still, the opening lighting was as magical as it was unceremonious. One by one, seemingly without human intervention, eight of 11 piles of wood burst into flame, lined up in the middle of the river at the foot of the war memorial tower by the courthouse. Men in a small barge, ducking wind-blown sparks, lit the three misfires by hand. The flames weren't floating. Their shallow black metal braziers are on steel stems attached to square concrete pilings 14 feet apart, which once supported the widest "bridge" in the world, before the river was rerouted. The effect is appropriate: 11 bowls of flame (a 12th will be added) raised aloft, as though offered to the sky. Amplifying the mood is a composition by Sandor Bodo, 11 tracks of chanting, from looped sounds of a single repeated syllable or a fragment of Tibetan-style single-voice harmony. As you walk past the 11 fires, each of the melding sounds seems to emanate from the flames. (A speaker is inside each of the gray platforms that top the concrete pillars.)
However spontaneous the lighting appears to be, however relaxing the visual display and meditative sounds are, behind the scenes is frenetic activity. (This lighting required four hours preparation to rig wires, which trigger electric matches, out of sight in the river.) The center of the whirl is Evans, the photographer and sculptor of site-specific works who created WaterFire. A compact man with a trim salt- and-pepper beard, he was wearing a blue bandanna around his throat and a burgundy corduroy shirt under a blue windbreaker.
Two men in colorful silk shirts identified him as he knelt over a spool of wire at a railing on the street side of the river. One of them suggested it would be easier to just have gas flames. Evans's explanation wasn't at all condescending. "Volunteers are putting on wood all night. It's a metaphor for the necessity of a community to build itself," he said, but was then called away.
He was a busy man, coordinating with the men in the boat, with the sound engineer, arranging by cell phone with the city engineer to shut off the mercury-vapor lights by the monument and the street lamps across the river, which are competing with the art. They met at one of the bridges bracketing the display, trotted across to a circuit breaker box and, by trial and error, determined which lights to turn off. Eventually, switches for the riverside light will be reorganized to make this process simpler.
"We're trying to get it to be a little less labor-intensive and a little less logistically daunting," Evans said.
That was the longest sentence he could get out to me for the next hour, as he kept getting interrupted by passers-by or people he noticed and had to speak with. At one point he pulled out a phone to answer a call, but when he turned it on the ringing continued; he slapped pockets in search of his second cell phone.
At one point he told an inquirer, "It's a piece concerned with issues of the fragility of life." He eventually elaborated on that to me, after four or five false starts. "Fire and water are both seen as living entities. They're both seen as powerful forces of both good and evil in many traditions. So you've got purifying fires, you've got purifying rivers, you've got purifying springs, you've got all-destroying fires and all-destroying floods," he said.
"And to put them in this very subtle proximity, where you know they are mutually destructive, you know they are symbols," he begab to add, and then started again. "What I'm trying to do is talk about the fragility of life. Both of those lives, whether it be the stream of life or the flame of life."
Soon he was speaking about the most important aspect of WaterFire: community. The 1975 Brown University grad is, after all, the one who organized the Banner Trail, which leads tourists to various arts and cultural sites around Providence.
"One of the other elements we try to incorporate in this is the fire's need to be nurtured. They have to be constantly tended to. The Temple of Vesta in Rome was symbolic of the integrity and strength of the Republic of Rome, the larger empire of Rome. There was a fire in the temple which burned 364 days out of the year, and one day of the year they would put it out. Then they would ceremonially clean out the hearth and re-light the fire from lightning, which would be brought from a fire that had been struck by lightning in the mountains. And then everyone in the city of Rome would relight their hearth fire from that common source of flame," Evans explained.
"You need to know that the people who are out there on the boats lighting the fires are members of your community, creating this for your enjoyment and for your spectacle," he emphasized.
The day may come when Providence WaterFire is an image linked as closely to the city as the Gateway Arch with St. Louis and Mardi Gras with New Orleans. And whether it reminds people of pagan rituals or the Roman circus, they will continue to find it spectacular indeed.
WaterFire lightings are schuedled for June 21 and 28, July 12 and 26, August 9 and 23, September 6 and 27, October 17, and First Night, December 31. Heavy rains will usually postpone the lighting until the following evening. Tax-deductible contributions may be sent to: Visual Artists of RI Inc./Providence WaterFire, 101 Regent Ave., Providence 02908. The WaterFire Web site is http://www.ddatasys.com/waterfire.

A profound experience

Blazing glory

The elemental splendor of WaterFire

by Bill Rodriguez