ART REVIEW : Pieces in ‘Streetsites’ Manage Both Immediacy and Depth

If you haven’t ridden the trolley lately, or strolled the Community Concourse, you may not have noticed that Sushi’s third annual public art project is under way. So far, “Streetsites” has been a quiet undertaking relative to previous years, but this year’s selections are nonetheless provocative and well-realized.

Selected by a jury of local artists and the staff of Sushi, a downtown nonprofit gallery and performance space, the works possess both immediacy and depth, qualities difficult to reconcile but necessary for such publicly sited work to be effective.

Situated in areas of constant public passage, the installations, on display through April 9, must exert a strong visual impact to attract attention because most of the intended viewers pass by at an urban, working pace and are not there--as at galleries and museums--because of their interest in art.

Beyond the initial visual appeal must lie further meaning and significance. Works made for this arena have the potential to communicate to a huge and varied audience, to raise issues and awareness. Such an opportunity would be wasted on easy, gratuitous statements. Thankfully, each of the participants in “Streetsites” has chosen to engage the public in serious discourse about both specific and universal social issues.

The most affecting of the projects is Robert Sanchez’s “Street Bed,” near the fountain in the Community Concourse Plaza. Using the material vocabulary of the street, Sanchez has constructed what for most people is a secure domestic refuge. The mattress portion of the bed looks like a stretch of asphalt, its white dividing line running directly over a lumpy raincoat, suggestive of either a human presence or a bundle of clothing. Four heavy steel pipes support the structure, each topped by a yellow warning light and joined to each other by crossed chains that block access to the bed from the outside.

“Street Bed” is an aggressive, pointed lament for the homeless, who are “run over” by the careless traffic of the more secure. The work evokes a wealth of oppositions, contrasts between the soft security of the domestic bed and the harsh danger of the street, between the private, precious place for fantasy and the exposed, public thoroughfare, site of fear and vulnerability.

Nearby on the Concourse is David Keevil’s “Civic Shelter,” a curious red construction resembling an abandoned stage set or magician’s prop. The large, coffin-shaped box with a chair mounted on its lid is designed for use by two people, according to Keevil’s written instructions.

The one who is most in need of a safe place to sleep is to enter the shelter, while the other, more in need of a comfortable place to sit and think, is instructed to close the lid and be seated in the chair on top of it.

The drama Keevil stages demonstrates symbolically how the privileged enjoy life at the expense of the less fortunate. The person inside the shelter is instructed to quietly recite “Goodness, gracious” while the person seated above is to keep the other safely sealed inside. While relaxing in the chair--and thus keeping the lid tightly secured--the seated person, Keevil suggests, might think about attending a symphony orchestra concert or plan a vacation.

Within days of being installed, Keevil’s piece was vandalized, the chair damaged and the lid of the box split violently in two, rendering the shelter non-functional. In this altered form, the work’s message regarding the interdependence of the dominant and submissive can no longer be experienced but only imagined.

But a new dimension has been added by the changes. Keevil reinstalled the piece, he explained in a newly attached text, “to raise questions about the dialogue between Public and Art.” A hostile voice has already been heard, but there is room in this dialogue for humor, too. Prior to my visit, a representative of Universal Bathtub Liners Inc. had deposited his business card in the now-exposed shelter.

Cynthia Zimmerman’s “Cool Water,” at the 12th and Imperial trolley stop, focuses less on social dilemmas than on the positive exchange that is possible between artists and society.

Zimmerman stations herself for several hours a day at her installation, a playful wooden construction whose lightning bolts, raindrops and flames give it the flavor of a carnival or snake-oil salesman’s stage. There, she offers water and conversation to passers-by and records her observations, which she plans to incorporate into a book of comics and writings.

By using the street as a studio to gather material for her art, Zimmerman expands her own world, seeing what she cannot see in a more isolated artistic context. She also offers something to the community she contacts there: cool water for the thirsty, and participation in a vibrant installation for those hungry for stimulation in the deadening anonymity of the station environment.

She offers her acquaintances the psychic satisfaction of knowing they will have a voice in her art (and in poetry readings she is planning for the site in early April), and, for one person each night, she provides some physical comfort by leaving behind a bedroll donated by a local hotel.

A site has not yet been approved for a fourth “Streetsites” project, “Deus Ex Machina” (God Machine), by Elizabeth Sisco and Louis Hock.

In the Sushi gallery space (852 8th Ave.), nine additional proposals for site-specific works are on display through April 16.

Few of the drawings and models bridge the gap between interesting concept and powerful physical statement, but Richard Lou’s “Indigents on Ice” excels in this regard. For the work, Lou dragged “Dreamgirl U.S.A.” and “Ken” dolls behind his truck for 10 miles to transform them from ideal types to ragged indigents, and then encased each in a block of ice, leaving them partially visible but entirely trapped. Lou’s work melds artistic ingenuity with communicative skill to produce an incisive statement about the physical and societal condition of the homeless.