“Nothing men,” Kyle answered. “What’s up with you?”
AT THE BACKWATER Art Academy during spring and summer sessions, students who stayed on campus lived communally in the dorm. Occupied during the day with their sculpting and painting and attending class, they interacted in a collective free-for-all at night, shifting and switching rooms with no doors locked.
Mindy Koyle sketched a picture of Doran Seade inside her room. Doran posed with his tendril arms bent upward, exposing the outline of ribs beneath the near-translucent flesh of his chest. “You’re beautiful,” Mindy said. Doran smiled and held his pose. Heidi Hough squeezed yellow and green paint onto a large double-thread canvas. The paints were Winsor & Newton acrylics with polymer emulsion. A professional blend. The canvas was a Penelope, laid out in the center of the floor, filling the space between the two beds in Heidi’s room. Naked, Heidi rolled through the colors, her shoulders and hips initiating contact with the canvas. She turned onto her belly, pressing flat in a snake-like undulation while the paints beneath her streaked and converged.
Sam Lear specialized in computer-generated art, used an active matrix liquid crystal to accent the pixels; addressing the tactile and corporeal representationally through lights and shadows. The invitation to work with Heidi took Sam out of his element. Lying flat, he maneuvered his hands through the paints, reached and stroked and occasionally brushed up against Heidi while Nan Tyrel filmed.
Heidi’s plan was to have Sam take the digital material from Nan and produce fifteen separate one-inch holographic fragments using TFT LCD screens with 4GB of integrated flash memory. The screens would be inserted into the finished canvas as unique loops of action, each lasting ten seconds before repeating. The final canvas would be entered in the BAA’s summer contest, where the winner received airfare to work with Benchere in Africa.
The light overhead was a series of white bulbs. The walls a cinderblock painted beige. Heidi’s hair was colored red and green. As a student of Benchere, she had studied the Tinga Tinga paintings, Gideon Chidongo, Marlene Dumas and the Makonde sculptures. She read articles addressing the conflicts in Zimbabwe, Somalia and the Sudan. The nudity used to create her painting was explained in donnish terms as, “A way to present the innocence of the human condition as it once was in Africa a million years before.”
In close proximity to Heidi, Sam’s cock became engorged. Nan laughed and applied more paint. Heidi had her back turned, her head tossed so that her hair struck Sam’s face. Rising on her elbow, she checked the canvas in order to determine if they were done. All the paints had run together nicely, every inch of the canvas coated. The result showed the motion of shifting cheeks, chests and knees. Heidi got up while Sam remained on the floor. Unable to stand just yet, he tried covering himself but had little success. He stared at Heidi, the paint on her breasts and bush only making her nakedness more intoxicating.
“Look at you,” Heidi noticed and laughed at the extension of Sam’s cock. She came and knelt back on the floor. Sam clenched his jaw as Heidi joked about his being a stand-up guy and that she appreciated how hard he worked on the painting. When she reached for him, he shivered. A spontaneous reaction, his painted protuberance aquiver, he wound up adding a final touch to the canvas that could not be helped.
HALFWAY HOME FROM his studio, Benchere stopped at Crossroad Liquors on Bulgarmarsh for a bottle of Turkey and a bag of nuts. “Hair of the dog,” he said to Jazz as he got back in the car. Paul Simon’s The Boy in the Bubble played on the radio. Benchere had no singing voice, had not been in the mood for song in months, but the tune got him thinking about Marti’s first trip to Africa and he found himself crooning, “It was a slow day/And the sun was beating/On the soldiers by the side of the road.”
Years ago, Marti spent a month working with Engineers for Humanity, building water wells outside Serowe, assisting developers on a midsize apartment complex in Ibadan, and correcting the structural flaws of an old clothing factory in Gaborone. Benchere stayed in Tiverton with Zooie and Kyle. Inspired by Marti’s enterprise, upon her return he accepted offers to join several new groups, including PinSSE – People in Support of Social Equality – and CARR – the Coalition Advocating Rwanda Relief.
Late in the summer of 1994, Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, Jr. invited Benchere to help organize a committee looking to bring new business to Providence. A stocky, flat-faced, toupee-wearing Goldwater Republican, with populist support and conservative views, Buddy had the pale patchy skin of an onion eater and the voice of a cracked hinge. At a dinner on the upper-east side, Buddy wore a Platinum Pearlmaster Rolex and a silk Roberto Cavalli tie. He drank Glenfiddich whiskey, spoke briefly about business then changed the subject and pitched Benchere on the idea of building a sculpture along the waterfront.
“Anything you want. I leave that to you.” He offered, “Cash money. We won’t use tax dollars, I promise,” at this Buddy laughed. The sculpture, he said, would help draw favorable notice to his campaign for re-election. A supportive gesture, Buddy told Benchere, “I won’t forget this, Mike. Cooperation goes a long way. Ours is a system of debit. Favors get favored and backs get scratched.”
“Do they now?” Benchere raised up high in his chair as if to inspect Buddy from behind. Coming home, he told Marti of Buddy’s request. “Can of crap is what it is.” He tossed his jacket and untucked his shirt, repeated what he had said at dinner. “My sculptures aren’t stage props. I’m no monkey trained. I don’t perform for the highest bid. If Cianci wants promotional endorsement for his political career he can buy bumper stickers and billboards like everyone else.”
Marti lay in bed reading. The argument was familiar. Benchere’s rant ran along consistent lines each time he turned down a commission; refusing to work with organizations who sought to exploit his sculptures for political use. He quoted Oscar Wilde: “A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament … (T)he moment an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman.” On this point he was hard to move off. Marti closed her book. Whatever sympathy she had for Benchere’s resistance, she questioned his logic when it came to reducing the stage for his art, and reminded him here, “Buddy said you could make whatever you want.”
“Did he?”
“You just told me.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Think now,” Marti said. “Consider what you’re rejecting. A sculpture by the waterfront.”
Benchere went, “Bah.” He dropped his trousers and strutted around in his drawers.
Marti groaned. Such childishness, she thought. Benchere’s attitude, his firm conviction and absolute certainty as it pertained to his art, was all singular by design. Not that she didn’t find his devotion endearing. His love was the same; innocent and absolute. As an engineer, Marti’s system of faith relied on rules meant to offer security and stability, while Benchere’s favored edict was that rules could not be trusted. Between them, they effected a balance. Marti kicked back the sheets, wiggled her toes and said, “Buddy wouldn’t have contacted you if he didn’t respect you as an artist.”
“That’s a stretch.” Benchere maintained, “Buddy isn’t interested in my art. He only wants to use my name.”
“You’re being stubborn.”
“Am I?”
“An artist has to be aware of his public.” Marti asked Benchere to tell her, “What would be so bad about doing a sculpture for the city?”
“You mean other than Buddy?”
“Forget Buddy,” Marti stared at Benchere as if he was ignoring something essential. “Just think about the people,” she said. “What you need is to build a sculpture so amazing no one thinks about Buddy at all.”
Benchere walked to the bathroom, gave the suggestion some thought only to come back again and say, “It doesn’t matter what I make, Buddy will claim it.”
“So let him. People aren’t going to care about Buddy when they look at y
our work.” Marti turned her pillows upright and shifted back against the headboard. Benchere bent over and gave his back a stretch. Marti waited until he was standing straight again, his big body bear-like in the center of their room. Knowing she had little chance to win this debate, having played this game before without luck, she asked nonetheless, “What would happen if you made a sculpture in support of someone or something you actually liked?”
“Liked?”
“Liked. Like Greenpeace, or Tom Harken. Would it be so bad? What if you made one for Gerry Brown or, I don’t know, the National African Congress?”
“The NAC?” Benchere’s position didn’t change. “It would be the same regardless,” he said. “It’s still not art. It’s hype and dogma either way.”
“Art,” Benchere tossed his hands up in the air, shouted and beat his chest as if words alone could not do justice.
Marti laughed at the spectacle. “Ahh Benchere,” she hooted again and patted his side of the bed. “What am I to do with you now?”
The following spring, Marti created a duel-mass supplementary damping system for the Bloomberg Tower in New York. The system stabilized the structure’s 54 floors, its glass façade, six-story canoidal skylight and backlit mechanical screenwalls; offsetting movement caused by high winds, quakes and tremors. Proud of her effort, Marti said to Benchere, “How’s that for art?”
“Ha!” Benchere dismissed Marti’s use of the term, referred to her industry as calculated efficiency, said, “Function is a stogy old bench sitter. Art is what puts the muscle in your arm. Without art there’s no Bloomberg. Art is your leap of faith, your imagination brought to life. Art is the only thing original in all your narrow treatments.”
“Did you just say?” Marti’s amusement became something else. “There’s nothing narrow about giving people a safe place to live and work. How does art help with that?”
“Let me tell you,” Benchere turned the question around and said, “If practical concerns were all that mattered, this would not be much of a life, now would it, love?” He stepped closer, brought Marti into his meaty arms and held her tight.
AS SOON AS the front door opened, Jazz dashed down the hall to the den, from the den to the stairs, up and down again, still expecting to find Marti. A habit now, he circled through each room, cut across the wood and tiles until some buried dog memory kicked in and he remembered.
Benchere went into the kitchen and made a drink. His own habit, he stood by the island in silence and waited for ghosts.
The house was open arches, cavernous, a grand sense of space, the roof beams raised high. Marti favored earth tones and Benchere had included Brazilian cumaru wood, stone inlays cut for the fireplace, additional limestone for the patio and, terra-cotta tiles in the bath and sauna. The island in the center of the kitchen was a Madura gold granite. The table cherry wood.
On the shelf above the sink were Marti’s pills, the Anastrozole and clonazepam, tamoxifen, pain meds and digestive aids, homeopathies and hardcore pharmaceuticals; a potpourri of would-be curatives. Benchere left the meds as they were, left Marti’s clothes and books, notes handwritten and hanging from a magnet on the fridge, her slippers and soaps, magazines and voice on the message machine. “We’re not here to take your call …”
He played the message, thought how purgatory wasn’t really a property of the afterlife, where dead souls waited in the grey for a final determination on their eternal selves, but rather the paralytic pause those left behind stood and stuttered through during moments like this.
“Aargh.” Benchere kicked his left leg straight out, breathed in twice deeply, mocked himself for throwing such a pity party, then jogged around the island and back into the hall. An African mask hung near the stairs. A gift from Marti’s friend, Jev Butar. Benchere gave the mask a quick look, began walking back toward the den. He was thinking how, in Africa, the Kalahari translated as the big thirst, when Kyle opened the front door carrying two bags of Chinese and a long cardboard tube.
Kyle called for Benchere, left the tube against the front wall, brought the food into the kitchen. For several weeks now, following the fall and then the winter, in what was for everyone a period of adjustment, once Benchere convinced Zooie to go back on tour, Kyle began bringing dinner out to Tiverton each Wednesday. The gesture was appreciated. Kyle took his suit jacket off, rolled the sleeves to his dress shirt nearly to his elbows. He was, at twenty-seven, a long wire framed by lean shoulder muscle. Composed of contradictions, he was both eager and evaluating, practical and unrealistic, fully subscribed to the value of function and form yet impatient with his expectations. As a boy all the universal wonders amazed Kyle and he wound up overwhelmed by the abundance of possibilities. He developed a tic, contemplated his every move as if the slightest mistake might prove fatal; went from building castles and model cities with Marti to spending months in a sullen retreat.
When that stage at last passed, Kyle came out the other side with a renewed sense of purpose. Athletic, he won awards, was recruited for lacrosse, played and studied at Providence where he explored his interest in Marti’s work as it applied to urban planning. A romantic, though he would deny, at Maeur Development he presented ideas for rebuilding the south side. Idealistic in his application, he relied on leaps of faith, his self-buoyance and liberal determination delighting Benchere and allowing him to love his son with something bordering on glee.
They spoke over egg rolls and orange chicken. Kyle asked about Helix at Rest, the sculpture Benchere was working on at his studio, was to finish before Africa. The commission was from the Pare-Mathus Institute, the unveiling scheduled for next week. For a while they spoke of Zooie, compared notes, weaved in stories about Marti. Throughout they checked to see how the other was doing. As Kyle knew there was no chance of changing Benchere’s mind about Botswana, he no longer tried. The adventure was needed, the project a part of providing, if not closure, a final offering. Kyle had seen the design for the work Benchere and Marti dreamed up, had joked with Zooie, imagined the sculpture in the desert and said, “Goddamn.”
Benchere added ice to his drink. He asked about Cloie, about Kyle’s project on Prairie Avenue, the one he had partnered with Carla DeStefano, executive director of SWAP – Stop Wasting Abandoned Properties – to convert the old Federated Lithogra phers into a public health clinic. Inspired by the theories of Oscar Newman, Peter Eisenman, and Sergio Palleroni’s BaSiC Initiative for sustainable communities, the clinic was an extension of Kyle’s attempt to develop new housing below Broadway. In the last year, Kyle had worked with Carla and Maeur Development, among others, to refurbish no less than eight facilities for new housing projects.
A noble plan. Benchere supported Kyle’s effort yet questioned the wisdom of concentrating on housing first. “To pay for properties people need jobs.”
“Sure, but to bring businesses back to the south side we have to rebuild the infrastructure.”
“That’s bass-akwards.” Benchere enjoyed having the debate as a form of diversion from his night. “You can’t rebuild without people working,” he said.
“That’s not true.” Kyle insisted, “The jobs will come when the housing’s in place.”
“Eggs and chickens,” Benchere shot his elbows out like wings.
Kyle rolled his eyes, turned to statistics in order to make his point. “The demand for low income housing in Rhode Island is up 365 percent over the last five years,” he said.
“Because there are no jobs,” Benchere tapped the table three times with his middle finger. “Your point proves mine.”
Kyle in dissent said, “It doesn’t at all. The truth is housing will stimulate the area toward productive growth.”
“It’s wishful thinking.”
“It’s progressive planning.”
“A house of cards.”
“Not hardly. It’s a process.” Kyle was certain, “The larger companies, the regional stores and manufacturers, even the mom and pop shops will return once we rebuild.”
“If if if and what what what,” Kyle sang. “Since when did that ever stop you from doing what you thought best?” He stabbed at his chicken. Such debates with Benchere were a challenge as they required both factual support and a need to be clever. Everything was timing and delivery, when to engage and when to pull back. Kyle leaned forward and recited the developer’s edict, “You have to build things to change things. Look at Harlem, Tampa and Cleveland,” he drew comparison, provided a list of other cities that had made a similar comeback.
“What do I know about Cleveland?” Benchere conceded as much, refused to argue and focused instead on additional concerns. Experience had taught him, “Function guarantees nothing. When you build things there are lots of moving parts and people looking for ways to cash in.” Years ago, while still working at L/L and wanting to offer something back to the city, Benchere was asked to help design a project on Thurbers Avenue. The facility, a twelve-story high rise both subsidized and privately funded, was meant to offer affordable apartments to low-income families.
The complex was championed in the press, hailed as an alternative to the more dangerous projects out on Roger Williams Green and near Cranston. Naïve then, focused on completing the work, Benchere failed to take into account the back door deals, the contractors and subcontractors skimming from the budget, using cheaper materials in their work, paying off inspectors who further compromised the integrity of the design. Less than two weeks after Angle Rite Apartments opened, a six-year-old girl named Natashi Moore fell to her death when the screws mounting the fire escape to the brick broke free.
“Did I tell you she was six?” Benchere could not get over. Here was what came from putting one’s faith in function and form.
Benchere in Wonderland Page 5
