Art for Community's Sake

About 10 years age, the men of Cambridge Fire Company No. Five began planning for a major notation of their aged Italians-style station house. Company members and in man Square residents gazed longingly at the bright new high-tech station in East Cambridge. But before city officials could call in the wrecking crews, a neighbor-hood artist named Eltary Eddy proposed an alternative. Under the auspices of the Cambridge Arts Council, Eddy designed a 30-foot-high grouptrait of Company No. Five, a rural that would reinforce community spirit and justify saving the 80-year-old building.

As a result of local lobbying, the station house stands today, and on the west wall is Eddy's work, which includes a couple of honorary company members George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.

The story of Company No. Five is only one of many examples of Cambridge's recent efforts to entertain and edify citizens with public artwork. With the help of special city funding, the municipal art council has transformed more than 85 sites in almost every neighborhood into open exhibits of local talent, ethnic spirit and community pride.

Chris Connaire, executive director of the eight-year-old arts council, says Eddy's piece ranks among the city's most popular. "What gives Miss Eddy's work special strength is both its specificity to the location and community and the general historic note which it strikes." "She adds that all pieces commissioned by the council must meet similar standards of being "site-specific."

Ronald Lee Fleming, the council's first director and another of a recent book on public art. Says the generation need not convey specific political ideas. But should instill in people certain community values through the built environment [and] rein force people's sense of being together in a place that has history, color and particular meaning."

City Councilor David Wylie, who helped form the arts council in 1974, adds that local governments have a mandate to support art that is readily accessible: "If one believes that a life is enhanced and enriched by exposure to many facets of culture and experience, then the responsibility of government in the arts field is clear. The government must bring art and artists to the people." Wylie and Fleming point out that with its large population of artists. Cambridge is an ideal place to sponsor such public projects, Says Fleming. "There are so many layers of experience in Cambridge, the people who have lived here, gone to school here and the whole colonial heritage...we have a chance and a responsibility to evoke those layers of experience in Cambridge."

In 1979, the City Council passed a landmark ordinance to insure 1 percent of each year's municipal budget for funding for public art. Cambridge is one of only a handful of American cities to have approved such a law, and it is the first in Massachusetts.

With all of this enthusiasm for art, the City often finds itself arbitrating among contrasting opinions of how a particular project should look. Willie Hills, another art council member, explains that "because the art is going to appear in a public place. We always want to get community input, but likewise we are anxious to allow the artist some freedom of expression." The Commission itself seeks what Hills calls" good, [but] not always the most well-known artists."

And things don't always work out as planned. One of the arts council's most famous failures was its "musical fence," which was installed near City Hall. The fence eventually had to be taken playing the over-sized xylophone at night kept many people from sleeping.

Generally, though, public art has had a favorable reception in Cambridge. Recently elected Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci voices his enthusiasm. "Of course it beautifies the city, which is great, but what is more, you will never see teenagers destroy this stuff. They won't destroy art, especially when they think it belongs to them."

Despite Vellucci's assessment, artist Elee Koplow took an extra precaution to insure the safety of the playground floor that she designed with David Juddleson for the Hurely St. playground. "We asked four neighborhood kids to help us build the floor, and then we included them in the design, first by depicting them roller skating and then allowing them to write graffiti around their picture." Koplow explains. The ornately decorated piece has remained intact.

The Hurley St playground floor is a straightforward, realistic work less provocative to the passerby than like the 1976 wind sculpture in Central Square, which was designed and built by local artist under the auspices of the arts council. But despite its modernist style the Central Square sculptures has received nothing but praise from residents, says John Chandler, a staffer at the arts council. "I think most people are attracted and intrigued by it," says Central Square resident Judy R. Stovell.

The brass and stainless steel work stands 20 feet high, and at its top there are parts that move with the wind Artist Michio I Hare hoped to reflect the pace of life at that busy intersection by capturing the movement and changes of light and air "I lived and worked in Central Square for many years and watched the flow of people and things through the area," says I Ihara "I hope the piece reflects a knowledge and a love of the area and of that particular spot."