Armenian Heritage Park

The Armenian Genocide Memorial

Last weekend, I toured the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway linear park in downtown Boston. The winding parkway is comprised of a series of gardens, spaces, fountains and paths that have blossomed in the wake of the depression of the Central Artery (I-93) that separated the waterfront and North End from the rest of the city. It was a beautiful afternoon and many locals and tourists were out enjoying the city.

Near the parkway's northern terminus is the Armenian Heritage Park.

The sculpture is the fascinating yet quiet and peaceful focal point. Here's the story behind its design:

The idea for the 12-sided sculpture came from a stacking geometric toy [Donald] Tellalian [chief architect and designer of the park] found in a gift shop in Rome in the mid-1960s. The shape’s property of coming apart and nesting in different configurations seemed to him a perfect metaphor for immigrants pulled from their birth communities and forced to reshape lives in a new country. To dramatize this dynamic process, the sculpture, which has 32 possible forms, will be re-configured annually. source

More information on the Memorial

Thoughts on the design of this Memorial

Catching Up

Carved Bird from a Looking Glass
06-15-13
I saw this creature at the Museum of Fine Arts while preparing my notes for a tour about early American furniture designs.

Silver Coffeepots (Philadelphia Boston, circa 1780)

The Charles River floods in South Natick
06-16-13

The Pleasant Street Bridge
06-19-13
The arches are covered halfway by the river.

The Charles River: the island below the dam
06-19-13
The island is completely submerged.

The South Natick Dam
The squiggly thing is a log which I drew in more detail below.
06-21-13

Canada Geese on a large log above the dam
This log was dislodged during the latest storms and is moving very slowly to the top edge of the dam. The geese don't seem to mind.
06-21-13

The river is still very full and flooded.
06-24-13

Looking up toward the dam
06-24-13
I drew this yesterday. For many days this stone retaining wall has been underwater. Its surface is now scoured and whitewashed with silt.

The ocean at Reid State Park in Bath, Maine
06-23-13
After driving our daughter to Camp Arcadia, we spent a few days with in-laws in southern Maine. Summer has officially started.

Lunch with St. Francis

St. Francis, Trinity Church, Boston
conté pencil
1 March 2013

I had thirty minutes or so to wait for a train yesterday, so I wandered around Copley Square in Boston looking for something to draw. I hadn't been there in a long time and the city seemed new despite the old snow and grime of March. I circled the sturdy brown confection known as Trinity Church and admired the slate roofs and carvings of Biblical personalities and Phillips Brooks above the entrances and windows.

In the back of the building complex, I saw people hurrying inside for a lunch-time organ concert and I was tempted to attend and take a later train home. But this had been an impromptu journey in the first place and illustration jobs were calling me to the studio.

Near the back entrance there was a small courtyard. Informal cobblestone paths encircled its four sides and a fountain lay covered but I could almost hear the splashing water and feel the warm rays of the Spring sunshine to come. In the center of this postage-stamp garden was a small statue of St. Francis of Assisi. It's nothing fancy —compared to the heroic bronze of Phillips Brooks giving a benediction backstopped by Jesus Christ by Saint Gaudens around the corner. No, St. Francis is even a bit mossy and a cement sparrow perches in one hand. Such is the state of things. It all looks so expected: two visions of redemptive power and authority existing under the same roof around the corner from each other. Like the two-faced Greek god. Yin and Yang. Jekyll and Hyde. Glory and humility; something for everyone. We truly are people for all seasons and inside we are, for better or worse, a union of contradictions.

I've been wondering about St. Francis lately and feel I must read a good "Life of…" He lived in a very different time. A very dangerous time I suppose and I wonder about the example we assign to Francis now: meek, loving, humble, a friend to animals. But what was the reality of challenging the powers of Rome (presumably some Romans had a problem with vows of poverty) and also founding a functioning Franciscan Order with any corporation's needs and machinations? Was Francis a bureaucrat or a Christ-like saint wafting through the middle ages like a gentle Spring wind?

Oh, religion is such a weird and sticky thing! It's the artist in me that wants to see the Spirit behind all things and it's the artist who is perpetually seeking glory in the most mundane and forgettable effects and coincidences of the things that cross my trajectory through my existence. Maybe St. Francis would have some thoughts on the matter…?

City & Suburb

Boston CIty Hall Plaza, 08-26-11

I found myself in Boston briefly yesterday afternoon and had an hour to fill while my daughter had a  rendezvous with a friend at Faneuil Hall. I could spend all day trying to draw views of the city. If I lived there, I would do topographical renderings of the buildings and spaces.  I don't think I would tire of it at all. But I don't live there. I live close to a river instead.

South Natick Dam, 08-27-11

I draw the river a lot. I was there for over an hour this morning drawing this view of the dam. I love the loud rush of the water and the occasional views of the wildlife have their business below the dam. The heron was in the middle of a circuit around the island and I also spied one of the young mergansers. They are very frisky birds that dive and hunt underwater. I wish I could have included the flock of mallards that zoomed above me to the pool above the dam. They just kept on coming. I wonder if they have premonitions of the impending hurricane?