Donna Dennis O T S E / S S U A M R E T E P Home

Away When Donna Dennis created her earnest, Dennis’s large, early works, which plain-spoken “Tourist Cabins” at the out- resemble stage sets and heavy fortress set of her career, they had the impact of walls, reveal her roots in painting. After cultural icons. She was one of a number receiving a BFA from Carleton College in of sculptors fresh on the ’70s scene— 1964, she went to Paris, where flaking, including Alice Aycock and Jackie Ferrara— centuries-old buildings fed her imagina- who pushed sculpture toward the domain tion. One year later, she moved to New of architecture. Almost all of the artists in York City and attended classes at the Art this group dealt with structures relating Students’ League, while gradually becom- from to human shelter, but Dennis actually ing attracted to the symbolism and physi- made architecture—American vernacular cality of doorways. At the same time, she architecture—and transformed it into was deeply affected by the small habitats sculpture. Her groundbreaking work in Joseph Cornell’s boxes—and their evo- appeared in the Whitney Biennial, at the cations of “being elsewhere.” She soon Tate Gallery, and other important spaces began to shift her shaped canvases in the for the better part of two decades; she direction of façades and exotic structures. was represented by Holly Solomon for In 1972, she created Hotel Pacifico, one of Home much of that period. However, during the the first of these flat edifices, which led 1990s, Dennis began to focus almost exclu- her to develop more three-dimensional sively on teaching and public art projects. and complex configurations. Now, she has returned more vigorously to Her breakthrough Tourist Cabin Porch her work, exhibiting at national and inter- (Maine) (1976), a completely three-dimen- BY DEBORAH EVERETT national venues—including a piece at the sional bungalow with a screened-in porch, Genoa Biennale, a permanent installation recalls a time before the average Ameri- in Miami, and a solo show in New York can could afford hotel stays. Dennis has at five myles. The resurgence of Dennis’s remarked that the piece’s origin lies in her work—with its piercing insights into our childhood memories of family vacations national character—comes at a curious and the small houses that were rented O T

S point in world events, when America’s out to tourists as more Americans took E / S

S international presence speaks more to to the road. The work harks back to the U A

M Opposite and this page: Deep Station, 1981–85. our collective temperament than our pro- beginning of America’s appetite for diver- R E T E

P Mixed media with sound, 135 x 240 x 288 in. fessed beliefs. sion—especially in the form of tourism—

Sculpture June 2006 45 Left: Tourist Cabin (Pensacola), 1976. Mixed media, 78 x 52.25 x 72 in. Above: Moccasin Creek Cabins, 1983. Mixed media, each unit 78 x 52.25 x 72 in. Temporary installation in Aberdeen, SD.

but without warmth or comfort or security. A ‘place to stay’ just for one night before moving on and on, never staying long anywhere, never belonging anywhere.” These lines could be a national epigraph, since Americans define themselves as indi- vidualists, even loners, striving to stand out from the crowd and never quite at ease and suggests new outlets for the restless and frugality and refutes quality of life (or at home) in any one place. Crossing the national urge to be on the move. However, issues; stripped of decoration and com- prairie or cruising in our cars, we seek the while it points to the liberating possibili- forts, it is a modern-day descendant of freedom of open spaces, while yearning ties of travel, it also signals the uncertainty America’s roots in Puritanism. for the refuge of home. All the while, we and dislocation of being in transit. Tourist Cabin (Pensacola) (1976) shifts know these goals to be incompatible, since During this period, Dennis was intensely attention to another part of the country. home implies community and limits on moved by Walker Evans’s roadside pho- The screened porch is full length, and its personal freedom to support the common tographs of clapboard buildings in the added details suggest a Southern, or per- good. country’s heartland. Tourist Cabin clearly haps rural, sensibility. Less severe and Moccasin Creek Cabins (1983) marks reflects this influence: it is a masterpiece more homey, it seems intended for a a further development of this theme. of understatement, revealing much about lengthier habitation. Despite its title, the Modeled after the Pensacola cabin, this America’s national character. Deceptively sense of transience has changed. Rather group of three buildings takes a startling simple and unaffected, it embodies the than the temporary displacement of a no- leap into an outdoor setting. They were, classic qualities of the American disposi- frills vacation, it suggests a long-term in fact, sited on the surface of Moccasin tion—a forthrightness linked to the com- encampment—like a cook’s or gardener’s Creek in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Their mon man, a sense of working-class practi- cottage, set back from the “big house.” It mysterious location—afloat on a body cality and abstention, and a solidity con- is home to those who have no home— of water—was both enigmatic and unset- noting strength and self-reliance. The other the sometimes shelter that derives from tling. Were they houseboats? Or fugitives side of these traits, however, includes the favor of others; if conditions should from a natural disaster? How long could an almost unconscious denial of personal change, the occupants may be asked to they stay afloat, and where would they S E well-being, an individualism that often vacate at a moment’s notice. end up? Perhaps they had simply let go I V A D

leads to isolation, and a longing for reso- Dennis has said in her journals that she of their moorings. Adrift, cast-off, and N A V E lution of these frustrations. The cabin’s is interested in “a home that is not a home. unreachable, they brought a new level B : T F E pared-down style connotes pragmatism A home on a journey. A home, a shelter, of meaning to Dennis’s vagabond shelters. L

46 Sculpture 25.5 Left: Two Stories with Porch (for Robert Cobuzio), activity, each structure expresses a defini- occupied by Dennis’s buildings are con- 1977–79. Mixed media, 126 x 120.5 x 85 in. Right: tive character (and life) of its own. Perhaps nected to fictive spaces in our minds. This Cataract Cabin, 1993–94. Mixed media with this vitality results in part from Dennis’s simultaneous siting in both concrete and water pump, 144 x 144 x 144 in. attention to detail. Many pieces, for invented worlds is especially clear in instance, have a single glowing light in her surfaces—which are both illusionistic Perhaps the most atypical of Dennis’s front, infusing the work with anticipation, (painterly renderings) and actual, loaded homes is Two Stories with Porch (for Robert as though an arrival is expected at any with layers of dust, dirt, and drips that Cobuzio) (1977–79). Unlike her cabins, this moment. record the human residue of their evolu- house, as its title implies, is large and Yet despite the realistic touches, many tion over time. suggests the domicile of a settled, middle- of the specifics cue the fantasy nature of Dennis’s homes, then, embody the illu- class family. Yet the sense of loneliness and Dennis’s work. For instance, her structures sion, as well as the solitude, within Ameri- desertion remains. On closer examination, are generally about three-quarters the size can personal space—but she also found we find that it advertises for a traveler or of actual buildings. And, as critic George psychological meaning in public spaces. tenant by posting the one word that echoes Melrod pointed out, when you begin to In 1974 she began making a series of mys- O T

S its condition: “Vacancy.” Clearly, even a play with scale, you leave logic for the terious subway entrances, focusing on their E / S S

U family dwelling can be an empty shell. world of imagination. Similarly, some of contained energies and often contradictory A M

R Throughout her career, Dennis’s work has the construction in Dennis’s buildings is configurations. The portals beckon to the E T E P

: been acclaimed for its depth and complex- more evocative than real—like theatrical viewer despite the blockage of, or locks T H G I ity. Filled with psychological content, each backdrops. The planks, for instance, in on, their entrances. Like Dennis’s houses, R / E

E of her buildings has its own persona. Since most of her clapboard cabins are delicately they reveal the ambiguity of the American D S E home is the structural equivalent of self, drawn with graphite, placing them squarely character—with seemingly open, straight- M A J .

D each piece has an affecting sense of place. in the realm of metaphor. Carter Ratcliff forward exteriors masking a sealed and : T F E

L Rather than a passive backdrop for human once remarked that the literal spaces isolated core. They recall the dual nature

Sculpture June 2006 47 Blue Bridge/red shift, 1991–93. Mixed media with sound, 144 x 168 x 288 in.

booth, perched over the tracks, reveals a tiny wall clock, stopped eerily at 12:05. In the distance, a fog-horn wails on tape, tolling some dreadful loss that underlies this luminous presence. Again, Dennis has created a powerful and massive structure that stretches out before us, but she also shows its vulnerable heart— communing with resident ghosts. After Blue Bridge, Dennis continued to build imaginary scenes, but in a scaled- down size. Cataract Cabin (1993–94), a not quite life-sized cabin perched dramati- cally on a boulder just broad enough to hold it, returns to personal space and more human proportions. A more whimsi- cal work, it includes a plethora of eccen- tric details—from a vertical lifeboat, hang- ing by its own rope, to an errant drain pipe spouting water from the side of the boulder. More recently (from the late 1990s to 2005), Dennis has used small dio- ramas to invoke her dream-like atmos- of a venerated national figure, the Ameri- a maze of platforms, tracks, tunnels, pheres through curious landscapes. These can cowboy, the silent loner who saves the entrances, staircases, control rooms, and works, mostly encased in small wooden town into which he can’t quite fit. railings within a vaulted, Piranesian space. boxes, allow viewers to peer into spaces In a bold move, Dennis also looked inside As in Silver Girders, shadows—now cav- that often resemble moonscapes sur- a public structure, only to find it as lonely ernous—are punctuated by bare bulbs mounted by modest private houses. The within as without. Subway with Silver floating in the surrounding darkness. The tiny square homes, in turn, are hemmed Girders, a lofty, two-story structure with space may be a public one, but its still- in by myriad satellite dishes, or squeezed colonnades made of girders created for ness and emptiness give it an odd sense beneath gigantic radio towers—impris- the 1982 Venice Biennale, has the feeling of intimacy—like a grand ballroom in oned by the communications network that of lonely city streets after nightfall. Sud- the small hours of the night. leaves them no more connected than denly the space inside is as openly expres- Perhaps the capstone of Dennis’s public before. These works were included in her sive as the form defining it, since Silver structures came in 1993, when she finished recent show at five myles in Brooklyn, Girders allows the viewer to see into its Blue Bridge/red shift (shown that year at along with new gouache drawings that intricate spatial arrangement. Exhibited in the SculptureCenter). Modeled after old juxtapose starry skies from the dioramas semi-darkness, it evokes an oasis of human railway drawbridges, it is a colossal (24- with telescopes and hurricane fencing. presence within the surrounding limbo. foot-long) openwork of diagonal girders Another small piece shown at five myles Although not a private, domestic space, it and glittering, hand-carved bolts divided is the model for a large work-in-progress is the equivalent of home within the public down the center by a corridor and train in Dennis’s studio. The installation-in- sphere, representing a way station or rest track. The track is mysteriously lit by a row process is densely interwoven and maze- stop en route. Still, its only light comes of blue light bulbs, creating an indigo zone like, camouflaging the entrance to a roller- from a few stark bulbs, and it is a cold and that anchors the piece like a painful coaster ride at Coney Island after hours. lonely haven. memory. Two gigantic cable wheels are Its filmy, shifting texture is built of layer In a grander realization of urban alien- mounted at the sides, and two small con- upon layer of chain-link fence, railings, ation, Dennis’s next work crystallized her trol booths cling to the beams. Within ramps, track-work, and dimly lit light bulbs. O T

vision of public shelter in urban America. the tiny house beside the track, a blood- The last physical tier between the struc- S E / S

Deep Station (shown at the Brooklyn red light smolders, filling the windows— ture and the viewer is a row of bare, skele- S U A

Museum in 1987) is a work of remarkable it reads like a molten nucleus that fuels tal trees. Pale and spectral, this compos- M R E T E spatial and architectural complexity, the imposing entity around it. The other ite structure represents a public space P

48 Sculpture 25.5 Connecting, 2004–05. Acrylic paint on wood, balsa curated by Germano Celant, her work But aside from the formal achievements and basswood, museum board, rubber, plastic, was presented as part of a sweeping of Dennis’s work, it has another appeal nylon stocking, metal screen, and wood and glass overview of the ties between art and now—that of elucidating our identity at a box, 20.25 x 24.4 x 12 in. architecture. time when the concepts of patriotism and When such a resurgence occurs, one Americanism are stirring public and private turned private—a deserted, dark, and cannot help but ask, “Why now?” Cer- debates. All art, to some extent, reflects alluring night-world just beyond reach. tainly this interest in architecture-based its culture of origin, but Dennis’s work goes A wave of re-kindled interest is bringing art may be related to the current frenzy beyond that to reveal our secluded, self- new attention to the whole spectrum of over contemporary architects like Rem absorbed inclinations. When we frequently art from the ’70s and ’80s. Earlier this year, Koolhaas and Frank Gehry. It may also be find ourselves at odds with the world com- NYU’s Grey Art Gallery opened its important that the art of the ’70s and ’80s is getting munity—the embattled loner more than survey “The Downtown Show” (subtitled new attention because enough time the good neighbor—our commitment to “Scintillating Survey of the New York Art has elapsed to see its staying power. democracy and majority rule begs review. Scene from 1974 to 1984”), and one of It was a period of singular innovation, Dennis’s vernacular architecture reveals the Dennis’s works was included. This is the lat- buoyed by its high energy as the first isolationism behind our individualism, pos- est in a series of related reprises, including wave of Postmodernism. More recent ing timely questions about our capacity for Julie Ault’s recent book Alternative Art, New Postmodernist developments, on the social contracts, while offering a challenge York, 1965–1985, and the New Museum’s other hand, are beginning to strike some to the courage of our convictions. even more recent show “East Village USA.” critics as over-extended and derivative.

In addition, Dennis’s Subway with Silver In a December 2005 article surveying Note

Girders has just been placed between works the current art scene in Miami, Roberta 1 Roberta Smith, “A Carnival of Art, Money, Surf and Sand,” The New York by Frank Stella and Jason Rhoades in Smith talked about looking for an “anti- Times, December 3, 2005. a permanent installation of the Martin dote for [exaggerated] spareness (and Margulies collection at the Warehouse in hipness),” and she found it in Dennis’s Deborah Everett is a writer living in Miami. And in the 2004 Genoa Biennale, installation at the Warehouse.1 New York.

Sculpture June 2006 49