BY AMY GRIFFIN
St. Anthony’s Church has seen a lot in its 108 years. Once an active, vibrant church and center of the community, it closed its doors in the wake of the construction of the Empire State Plaza just up the street. Several failed attempts at revival later, the church is now home to Grand Street Community Arts and the building itself is being restored. Although the organization is active, running Youth Organics, a garden project for teens, and Youth Film Experience, a teen film program, and working to launch an arts-focused radio station, WCAA, later this year, the building is in the middle of renovation.
That doesn’t mean they can’t still show art, as an installation on the outside of the building by artist Thomas Lail demonstrates. His long-term public art piece, “Crowd,” is installed on all the former street-level windows of the former church. Thousands of pieces of cut paper, copies of found photos of crowds, fill the nine window niches along Madison Avenue. The repetition of imagery creates patterns that vary from panel to panel. From a distance, it’s clear something’s going on — each panel is distinct from the others and yet they appear as part of a larger whole and draw viewers in for a closer look. Up close, images of crowds of people, united in protest, strengthened by their numbers, become apparent. The work will be up indefinitely, depending on the renovation schedule and how the panels weather.
Last month, Lail, associate professor of art at Hudson Valley Community College, asked me to write a short essay for the catalog he produced to accompany the work. I did, and then I asked him a few questions for this Q&A. That conversation follows:
Q: How did you conceive of this project?
A: Some years back, Grand Street Community Arts did a series called “Boarded Up” where artists were invited to make pieces for the street-level niches of the boarded-up windows that run along Madison Avenue of the historic St. Anthony’s church. We talked about my doing a piece, but honestly I had no idea what I would do, so it just never happened and the ‘‘Boarded Up’’ series wound down in the interim. Somehow, the idea resurfaced for me last winter, when I thought that maybe the collages I’ve been doing — and particularly the crowd images — might work there, but as one piece on all the windows. I contacted Victoria Kereszi, who is on the GSCA board, and floated the idea. They were gracious enough to host the piece.
Q: Why crowds?
A: My work has been circling around ideas of utopian dreams and experiments for the last several years. So images of utopianism, ideal architecture, domes, communes, etc., have been used in the collage pieces I’ve been making, while constructed domes and utopian maps have been used in sculptures like the two sited at Omi International Arts Center in Ghent. Images of crowds had just been creeping in recently, as the kind of catalyst or impetus for these utopian strivings … sort of the generative moment. This is the first large crowd image piece. I thought it made sense for a piece at street level and for a community- based organization like GSCA.
Q: The crowd imagery varies in legibility; it doesn’t always read as crowds but sometimes more as texture or pattern. Why did you want that variety?
A: Well, the images are all xerographic prints — photocopies that have been copied and recopied — so there’s some degeneration there. But for me this is less about an implication of worn tropes and threadbare tactics than the “pass the word” quality of photocopies like street fliers or posters circulated and re-circulated. I’m interested in the persistent hope of such strivings for change and betterment, even if they often fail to reach their goals. The incremental change is, I think, important. The site along Madison Avenue affords a close view and a far view to the piece where different qualities are emphasized. The driving view is quite different and more abstracted than the walking view.
Q: Have you heard from people in the neighborhood about the project?
A: When we were offloading the panels to install them — they were still just leaning on bumpers against the church wall — two ladies from the neighborhood stopped to look at them and ran their hands over the surface. They asked if the panels were for the church windows. When I said they were they both smiled and thanked me. I thought that was a pretty nice welcome.
• Reach Amy Griffin at 1amygriffin1@gmail.com
If you go
‘‘Thomas Lail: Crowd”
• Where: Grand Street Community Arts, St. Anthony’s Church, Madison and Grand avenues, Albany.
• When: 24 hours a day, indefinitely.
• Cost: Free
• Info: grandarts.org