(gentle string music)
- [Narrator] In all the world
there is only one Kalamazoo.
From the air this Michigan community
looks like hundreds of other small cities in America,
and yet if we look more closely,
we might be surprised to find that art is all around us.
Bronson Park is the center of the city
and is central to the history of the community.
Works of art are in the park, next to the park,
or nearby.
(gentle string music)
The Arts Center across from the park
is one of the centers of public art.
Art Center librarian Helen Sheridan
talks about one of its sculptures.
- This is a sculpture by Jerald Jaquard
titled The Passing of Colored Volume.
It was completed in 1968
and its material is 3/8 inch aluminum alloy
and it's covered with red acrylic paint.
(guitar music)
It's handsome with this marvelous sensuous red
and it's meant to be admired from a distance.
This is important to the Arts Center
because it completes the group of outdoor sculptures
by former Arts Center instructors.
We have a Dwayne Lowder, Kirk Newman, a George Rickey,
and now we have a Jerald Jaquard.
- [Narrator] Inside the Arts Center is a mobile
by Alexander Calder.
Calder is known as the first artist to make sculpture move.
He said, "just as one can compose colors or forms,
one can compose motions."
Four Lines Oblique
by former Arts Center director George Rickey
is another sculpture that moves.
Rickey explains.
- [George Rickey] Line Movement, with very few exceptions,
is powered by gently moving air
pressing against the surfaces which are often quite slender.
The essentials were a y shaped chassis,
on which I mounted four 15 foot long blades,
rotating freely in parallel planes
through 360 degrees and coming to rest
with an upward slant so that the arms
of the y and the blades, without wind, enclose a square,
and four squares within that square.
- [Narrator] Nearby at the Arts Center
is another type of sculpture,
this one appropriately called People by Kirk Newman.
- None of these are specific people
but they certainly are like many people that we know.
I think every figure here
has been based on some recollection of mine
concerning events and people.
I like this intimacy here.
I like this hat this man has on.
It's really a symbolic paper hat.
This is a party time.
In this particular piece, this man has a mask on.
It's a very strange kind of thing,
but it's a symbol to me as a mask that we all wear
so much of the time.
This small bird on this man's finger.
And of course this is kind of a small private pun also.
This lady, this lady is, you know she's really
impressing this guy and he's a little surprised.
They have to do with small social intimate contacts
and they're true really at nearly all social events
that I've ever come in contact with.
- [Narrator] Dwayne Lowder, in his studio,
tells where he got his ideas for this bronze sculpture
in the Arts Center courtyard.
- [Dwayne Lowder] The piece at the Arts Center
was initially executed in wood
and I think approximately in 1968.
The concept for the piece was based on Greek mythology.
Always having been interested in dreams,
I discovered that, when I was reading one day,
that Cadmus had a dream in which Apollo visited him
and apparently told him that he would become
King of Thebes.
And I thought that might be
kind of an interesting juxtaposition
of an Apollo-like form to a reclining
or a semi-reclining form.
And so the piece at the Arts Center
is based partly on that semi-reclining,
semi-elevated form that I think being in sleep
or being near awakeness is like.
It was a dream piece, or a part of it was,
and then some parts developed
as the idea began to be worked on.
- [Narrator] Carol Harrison has a sculpture called Seated Woman
at the Arts Center, as well as two other public works
of art in Kalamazoo,
one on the Western Michigan University campus,
where she was an instructor.
- [Carol Harrison] The Three Figures was completed in 1972.
It was commissioned for the Fine Arts complex.
And it happened that at that time
I had two other pieces I was also working on,
one which is a seated figure
for the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts
and the other which is a fountain
for the Steinman Realty Company.
They were sort of working together.
In other words, all three pieces were fairly well related.
The piece at the Art Institute is a cast piece.
I cut into three sections, made three separate molds
with Roman joints, poured the three sections,
and then Roman jointed and welded them together.
So the piece at the center, to many people may appear
to be a welded piece but in fact,
it's cast and done from sheet wax,
whereas the sculpture for the university
was done from sheet metal and welded,
and of course the seaming to me,
the beading of the seams, was very important to me
in terms of its, not only its physical visual structure,
but in terms of the aesthetic content.
- [Narrator] Another sculpture on the Western campus
is a disc shaped work by a former art department instructor.
Helen Sheridan gives its background.
- This piece is a cast drawn sculpture by Gerald Dumlao
It was completed in 1971.
The sculpture has a vitality.
It has presence.
It's very handsomely situated
on the top of this incline so that one approaches it
from the stairs.
Its orientation east and west
reinforces the notion of the sun disc.
There's a reflective character to the bronze itself
so that it catches the light of the sun
as it comes up in the east and as it sets in the west
in the late afternoon.
I think one can look at this sculpture
and simply enjoy it for what it is.
- [Narrator] Over on the Kalamazoo College campus
in Wells Hall there is an interesting mural
about Kalamazoo which professor Walter Warring describes.
- This is a painting by Philip Evergood
painted during 1940 to 1942.
But it's called The Bridge of Life.
What it does, it fascinates me so much,
is that it's the one picture that Evergood ever painted
that shows a community pull.
It puts the community together in an unbroken ring.
You'll notice in the picture that you have
the paper industry represented.
You have the pharmaceutical.
You have the laborers that do the stove.
You'll find that agriculture is represented
across the picture.
The tulip growers, the tulip bulbs, Kalamazoo celery
represented in the central background.
Education is represented.
The athletics, the sports are represented.
While Philip Evergood painted this picture,
he had advice from almost the entire campus.
The interesting thing about the picture
is that the art students from the art department
helped Philip Evergood block in some of the painting
and they were quite free with their advice too.
So he had to defend almost every portion of the picture.
- [Narrator] Back in downtown Kalamazoo stands a building
that has served as a railroad station since the 1880s.
Historian John Hodeck.
- This building was begun in 1886 and finished in 1887.
And it represents more than just a building.
In this case, a number of towns and cities in Michigan
were building impressive railroad stations
and Kalamazoo entered the race with this building,
constructed in the Romanesque style
made so very popular by Henry Richardson
with the heavy, massive arches,
the overhanging roof, the combination of brick and stone.
- [Narrator] Another historic Kalamazoo building
is located on South Street.
Historian Peter Schmidt talks about its significance.
- In the early 1970s Kalamazoo established
the South Street Historic District,
recognizing what has to be one of the most unique examples
of historical architecture in the United States.
A half a dozen separate and distinct building styles
representing the tastes of popular American culture
from the 1840s right on down into
the early part of the 20th century.
This house, the Frank Little house we call it
in the Historic District,
is one of those unique architectural treasures.
It's important partly because it seems to be
the oldest house in the village of Kalamazoo
that's still on its foundation,
still just about the way it was
when the masons finished their brick work back in 1847.
This house is significant not just because
it's the oldest house, but also because it's representative
of an architectural style that reigned
all across America in the decades before the civil war.
- [Narrator] In Bronson Park stands a soldier
and a case of mistaken identity.
Cesta Peakstock, the producer of the film,
talks about it.
- For 50 years, credit for creating this statue
was given to the wrong person.
It seems that when the Spanish-American War veterans
were raising money to buy this statue
there was a mix up and credit was given
to the wrong sculptor,
a man whose name was Allen George Newman.
But then in 1974 another name was found
on the heel of one of the boots.
That name was Theo AR Kitson.
On the other boot was found the name of the foundry
that had cast this statue into bronze
more than 50 years before.
That company was contacted and a letter came back
saying that yes, this statue had been made by a woman
whose name was Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson.
So 50 years after this statue was placed here
in Bronson Park on Memorial Day 1924,
the case of mistaken identity was solved.
- [Narrator] Nearby in the park is the older
of Bronson Park's two fountains.
Again, Cesta Peakstock.
- This sculpture has been here since 1940.
The fountain part itself has been in the park since 1927.
It was the third electric fountain the United States
and the first totally automatic electric fountain.
So in 1935
the Kalamazoo Business and Professional Women's Club
decided to sponsor a nationwide competition
for a sculpture to go with Bronson Park's fountain.
That competition was won by a young woman in Chicago.
She was a student in the studio of Alfonso Ianneli,
who was one of America's great architectural sculptors.
But ultimately Alfonso Ianneli himself
designed this sculpture that you see.
He said that the fountain conveys
the advance of the pioneers in the generations that follow,
while the Indian is shown in the posture
of noble resistance,
yet being absorbed as the white man advances.
- [Narrator] On the South side of the park
is Kalamazoo City Hall.
Peter Schmidt discusses this example
of architecture from the 1930s.
- The lines are simple, partly classic.
The columns or the end of columns that you see
at the doorway there remind us a little bit
of the depths that people hold still to the past,
to the world of Greece and Rome.
But as you look at the ornament,
perhaps on the interior as you look at the elevator doors,
the ornamental treatment of the mail shoot,
the clock in the foyer,
anyone who moves into the interior of a building like this
has a special treat looking up in the foyer,
the lobby area, looking at any of the fresco work
or any of the ornamental metal work in the building.
And that ornament is a kind of blending
of what we used to call Art Nouveau,
an ornamental pattern which derives inspiration
from natural foliage, from floral patterns.
Most notable probably of the ornamental features
are the light fixtures in the lobby.
Unlike the earlier light fixtures
it might have looked like dancing maidens.
It might have looked like great orchid ferns.
These look most like skyscrapers.
While this building in 1931 was as modern
as anything might be, it still retained enough
of the classical inspiration
so that if you look just below the line of the roof
you'll see what in ancient days
would have been the tablature on top of the temple,
wherein the ancient carvers
would have placed the heroic carvings,
of all relief statues important to their time.
So now in 1931 the city fathers decided
that they would incorporate into the entablature here
in City Hall the historic moments of Kalamazoo's past.
- [Narrator] Back inside the ornate City Commission Chamber
was painted by an artist who also decorated
another building in downtown Kalamazoo.
Bertha Stauffenberg tells about him and his work.
- My husband, Adal Stauffenberg,
he was born in Hamburg Germany in 1888
and was about 35 when he did this.
King Tut's tomb had been opened shortly before
and the design was very much in fashion at that time
was taken from the Egyptian designs.
And some of these you'll see
will be the design of the top of the columns
that they had in the Egyptian temple.
And the very frontal pose of the figure
shows some Egyptian influence
and that of course was the art deco style
that was really the high fashion at that point.
He prided himself on both this and the National Bank.
Where my husband,
Adal Stauffenberg decorated the vaulted ceiling
in 1929, the design is more flowing
than his design in the city hall.
That one has more angles but this one
still has the art deco motifs
and it has the soft and flat color
that he used a great deal.
He said when you put a little of your soul
into each of your paintings it will live beyond you.
- [Narrator] Outside, around the downtown Kalamazoo Mall
are a number of wall murals.
The first one was painted by John Metheany
- The wall was picked out
by the downtown Kalamazoo merchants.
The wall had a pretty bad surface on it
and the problem was to beautify it in some way,
could something be done with this wall?
For instance, a mural painted on it?
I figured out how much the paint would cost.
We selected a design and started to work.
The surface of the brick on all these old buildings
is hard to paint on so that limits
the kind of a design you can use.
To enlist the aid of local artists I devised an idea.
I said we'll make a competition
so that nobody will make a lot of money
and it will still be a public spirited kind of a thing.
Originally when we were in this contest, the mural contest,
I did a lot of research on ancient art,
like Egyptian wall paintings, ancient Greek frescoes,
a lot of different types of mosaics.
And I based all my ideas
loosely on an Egyptian wall painting.
So we got many designs and the first prize on each wall
was of course the privilege of executing the mural.
And it went off very nicely.
I wanted it to sort of blend in with the city,
not be completely obscure, not be hidden,
but not be startling.
- This is not gallery art.
This isn't something you put up and say what does it mean?
Is it some message of life?
It's not an advertisement.
It's public art.
It's something that everybody can appreciate.
It's the kind of thing that artists and students of art,
amateurs and local people, can get involved in
because it takes the art out of the museum and the studio
and puts the artist right on the street with the people.
It's a very public kind of art
and it gives not only the artist but the public
quite a chance to relate to art in a very fundamental way.
- [Narrator] In Bronson Hospital
there's a different type of wall,
a sculpted one by Kirk Newman.
- Part of my consideration for it
was that it be made of materials
like the materials that were being used
are the same materials being used
in the hospital construction.
I felt that it should be cheerful
and that it should be contemporary in its ideas.
This is like a cross section of a small piece of matter.
It also refers to shapes that you might see
if you were in a space capsule looking back at the earth.
- [Narrator] A few blocks away there's a building
called Carver Center,
designed by architect Norman Carver Junior.
He was asked about the name similarity.
- No, the name was somewhat of a surprise to me
and it is not named after me but after my father.
And I think it's kind of nice
that I was able to design the building
and have it named after him.
He was the manager of the Civic Auditorium,
which owns this building and had been the first manager
and the only manager for some 30 years
and therefore they named it after him
as a kind of memorial.
One of the interesting things is the core mark
in the concrete structure.
And to contrast with this we used the brick.
We used a particularly handmade kind of brick
in a very soft color.
And then we used these concrete blocks
to create a little pattern.
- [Narrator] At the Kalamazoo Public Library
in the children's room are a couple of sculptures
the young people enjoy.
They're a turtle and a snail
sculpted by former Arts Center staff member James Stark
and cast at the Richmond Foundry.
In the Library's main reading room
civil rights leader Martin Luther King is memorialized
in a bust by Kirk Newman.
And one of Newman's latest works
was commissioned for the nation's bicentennial
and dedicated in Bronson Park on July 4th, 1976.
- This was a project of the churches in Kalamazoo.
We've got nine children
taken from various walks of life in the Kalamazoo area
and one large monolithic figure down at the far end,
representing man's efforts to live on this earth.
The green color is a natural patina.
All bronzes become this color
and when they're exposed to the natural element.
Basic reason for using children
is that somehow they seem more symbolic
of the hope for the future for many people,
from many backgrounds.
- [Narrator] Many people from many backgrounds
formed this community.
Join with us in celebration of the art
that's all around us in Kalamazoo.
(lively music)
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