Art alfresco The natural beauty of Wind Sea Sky 2004 BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	Newport news Thirty years ago, Newport hosted an art exhibition that a city many times its size would have been honored to present. Monumenta presented 50 public sculptures around town, on mansion lawns, in parks, on Ocean Drive, and downtown, from mid-August through mid-October. What made the event remarkable was the caliber of the artists participating. No less than Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, David Smith, Barnet Newman, and other luminaries contributed work. Conceptual artist Christo wrapped King’s Cove in 14,000 square feet of white polypropylene. Willem de Kooning’s bronze "Clam Digger" was aptly overlooking the water. Younger artists who later gained greater reputations were also represented, including Richard Fleishner, Brower Hatcher, Robert Grosvenor, and Isaac Witkin. In commemoration, Re: Monumenta is being presented through September 26. In addition to the Wind Sea Sky 2004 outdoor sculpture show, there will be an exhibit of images and memorabilia from the 1974 Monumenta show, an outdoor dance series and a lecture series. The month-long series of events is a collaboration among the Arts & Cultural Alliance of Newport County, Island Arts Gallery, Island Moving Co., Salve Regina University and Project One. Monumenta Re:Dux An historical exhibition of Monumenta is being held through September 25 at Island Arts Gallery. Monumenta Re:Dux will present photographs, sketches, press clippings and ephemera such as correspondence and permits related to the show. Opening and closing receptions will be held on September 2 and 25 from 6 to 8 p.m. Lectures and panel discussions Two lectures and a panel discussion, all exploring the relationship between art and place, will be held September 8 through 10 at 7:30 p.m. at Salve Regina’s Bazarsky Lecture Hall. The first two events will be ASL interpreted. The first talk is still to be scheduled. On September 9, the speaker will be Alyson Baker, director of Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, Queens, New York. The panel discussion on September 10 will be among participants in the 1974 Monumenta exhibition, including exhibition organizer Bill Crimmins, Richard Fleishner, Hugh Davies, Brower Hatcher, and Nancy Rosen. It will be moderated by Hugh Davies, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. Dance series Site-specific outdoor dances will be presented on September 25 and 26 at 3, 4, and 5 p.m. at Chateau-sur-Mer, Rough Point, and Fort Adams State Park. Produced by Island Moving Co., the programs will be the culmination of three days of rehearsal at each location. The performance at Chateau-sur-Mer will be a collaboration by Boston choreographer Daniel McCusker and Rhode Island sculptor Elizabeth Keithline, taking place at Richard Fleishner’s "Sod Maze," the only surviving sculpture from the 1974 exhibition. Admission to each performance is $10. — B.R.

Talk about location, location, location! Wind Sea Sky 2004, the only annual sculpture exhibition to take place on a beach in the United States, is presenting more than 50 works in Newport through September 26.

For the first time in the show’s seven years, sculptures will be displayed at Cliff Walk and Salve Regina University in addition to the one-mile length of Easton’s Beach, also known as First Beach.

More than 40,000 viewers are expected to take in the exhibition, which opened on August 28. This year it has been expanded to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Monumenta, an ambitious and prestigious sculpture show organized in 1974 by Bill Crimmins, a schoolmaster at Portsmouth Abbey. About three-quarters of the works are by artists from Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.

Several of the sculptures on the beach refer to the sea environment. The abstract steel "Shark Attack," by Ben O’Brien, hints at the predator’s shape; Kelsey Robinson’s "Urchins" plays variations on those little sea creatures; and Dan Wood’s droll "Personal Missile Defense" presents a nose cone sticking out of the sand between two beach chairs. Others are strong presences largely because of the open space they inhabit: a haunting, untitled piece by Michaelann Zimmerman has four wooden steps leading up to a doorway opening to the water and vast sky; Scott Hemeon’s "Upon Reflection" forms a large drop shape out of numerous "water droplet" mirrors.

At Salve Regina University, overlooking Cliff Walk, multiple pieces by four artists will be installed. On the walk itself, there will be works by three artists. They include Rob Lorenson’s "First Gear," a circular brushed aluminum companion piece to his "Textured Gear," a familiar sight on Providence’s River Walk.

"The realistic sculptures catch the public’s eye," said Rupert Nesbitt, artistic director and one of the founders of Project One, which is presenting the exhibition. "They can immediately relate to them. So we grab their attention with that and lure them onto the beach where they can discover things that are a little unexpected or more challenging."

One such attention-grabbing piece is a toothy, fearsome dinosaur frozen mid-sprint. Kevin Anderson’s "Raptor Deinoychus" is a rust-colored assemblage of bite-sized welded steel squares. This, the only piece reprised from last year’s exhibition, was in Nesbitt’s backyard when he discussed the show a few days before the sculptures would be installed.

The dinosaur was so popular last year that parents were perching their tykes on its back for photographs. It is being moved away from the road this year. Taking its place near the entrance to the beach is Nathaniel Doane’s "Whale of Inspiration," a 26-foot-long skeletal take on a humpback whale.

Besides making work that’s representational, many of the artists have utilized words. "There is text on a lot of things," Nesbitt said. "Text is a very, very good strategy to use on the beach, because people are convinced that they can’t understand art, but they all know that they can read."

William Allen’s conceptual piece at the foot of the Cliff Walk’s Forty Steps is simply a sign out in the water that says "WAKE UP" — a play on the "No Wake" demands boaters are used to seeing.

Nesbitt points out that the salt spray and wind-blown sand in a beach environment limit what artists will submit. "It’s absolutely a savage environment for sculptures, between the wind and the surf and the waves. It absolutely destroys pieces."

Public sculpture can invite controversy, since it’s not difficult to offend some passersby. (Nesbitt found this out first-hand this past March, designing a billboard for a Newport Art Museum fund-raiser that some objected to because it portrayed short-skirted women flirting with construction workers.) Sculptural nudity was a problem only once in this exhibition, with a piece that town officials objected to. The reason given for its removal was that it did not match the submitted proposal. Wind Sea Sky doesn’t lack appreciators every year, said Project One’s volunteer executive director, Molly Sexton, though responses can be spotty.

"We get pretty consistently positive feedback," she said. "If we were in a gallery, someone would be sitting there as people came in, recording what people said about it. But we’re on the public beach, and so it’s much harder to gauge the response."

Project One has had a busy year. The Art*o*Mat dispenser of $5 cigarette-pack-size packages of art has vended more than 1000 pieces and was placed in two dozen locations. And their banner project has continued, unfurled on utility poles here and there about Newport.

Sexton and fellow volunteer David Charboneau also went on "a reconnaissance mission," as she put it, to the only other annual beach-site sculpture exhibition. They took notes and volunteered on-site — good habits die hard — at Sculpture by the Sea, in a suburb of Sydney, Australia.

With these Project One people traveling to the other side of the world to improve the exhibition, it looks like Wind Sea Sky will be a much anticipated fixture of the Newport art scene for years to come.