Artist John Grade will return to Mystic Seaport March 20-21 to add pieces to his kinetic sculpture Murmur: Arctic Realities, currently on exhibit in the Collins Gallery at the Museum.
Grade will add panels to two of the steel spines that support the piece. Murmur: Arctic Realities is an intricately carved sculpture (15’ x 38’ x 42’) that represents a pingo, a hill of ice that grows over centuries in the Arctic’s highest latitudes, then collapses, pockmarking the tundra. This sculpture simulates a pingo in Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve that Grade saw when he was exploring the tundra two years ago.
Just as a pingo grows over time in the natural world, so Grade envisioned his piece would evolve as it toured museums and galleries before its final stop at Anchorage Museum. And even there, Murmur will again change as it will hang upside down from a ceiling in a gallery, offering visitors an entirely different experience.
“Evolution and change are what interest me most with my projects rather than arriving at a static state of completion or finish,” Grade said. “Rather than aiming to preserve a sculpture in an ideal state, I am also more interested in witnessing and understanding how it might change through interaction with time and the elements. As a project is exhibited in multiple venues, it is important to me that it relate to each space in a different and site specific way each time, ideally changing its configuration or orientation in some significant way as well.”
The evolution of the piece was part of what attracted Mystic Seaport to the idea of staging the exhibition in the Thompson Building, said Nicholas Bell, senior vice president for curatorial affairs at the Museum.
“When John set out to create his own Arctic landform, he knew it would evolve over time as it moved from museum to museum,” Bell said. “Visitors to Mystic Seaport have already enjoyed the installation’s international debut. Now they will be able to see the monumental sculpture change before their eyes when he returns this month to apply new wood panels to the form’s kinetic steel spines.”
The piece is carved from salvaged Alaskan yellow cedar. Grade will be adding panels to two of the eight spines that hold the piece. The top of the spines open and close, powered by hydraulic and pneumatic cylinders, to also mimic a pingo’s growth and collapse.
Murmur: Arctic Realities is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Thursday-Sunday, through March 23. From March 24 to April 22, Murmur is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week.
Mystic Seaport, in partnership with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, has developed the world’s most comprehensive whaling history database and it is now available for all to use at WhalingHistory.org. Researchers, genealogists, students, teachers, and history buffs alike will find it to be the most robust and useful repository of whaling history documentation and scholarship.
The data presented combines many sources including logbooks, journals, ship registers, newspapers, business papers, and custom house records. Users will be able to find and trace whaling voyages and ships to specific logbooks, as well as the list of crew members aboard most of the voyages. The foundational fabric of Whaling History features three databases that have been stitched together – the American Offshore Whaling Voyage (AOWV) database, the American Offshore Whaling Log database, and an extensive whaling crew list database. All data is open to the public and is downloadable for any researcher to use with other tools and systems.
“We are so pleased to have been part of this project and so proud of the end result,” said Paul J. O’Pecko, Vice President of Research Collections at Mystic Seaport. “This information, gathered over decades, is invaluable to scholars, students, genealogists and others. And the fact that it is all available on one site with data that can be downloaded and manipulated is unprecedented in the world of maritime history.”
The American Offshore Whaling Voyage (AOWV) database, which was spearheaded by Judith Lund, scholar and former curator at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, includes information about all known American offshore (or “pelagic”) whaling voyages from the 1700s to the 1920s. It does not include the modern factory ship voyages of the mid-20th century. Information is most complete for the 19th century. The voyages included in the database sailed from, or were under the registry of, what is now the United States.
Extensive records of American whaling in the form of daily entries in whaling voyage logbooks contain a great deal of information about where and when the whalemen found whales. The second part of the database’s foundation is the American Offshore Whaling Log database, which includes information from 1,381 logbooks from American offshore whaling voyages between 1784 and 1920. These data were extracted from the original whaling logbooks during three separate scientific research projects, one conducted by Lieutenant Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury in the 1850s, the second conducted by Charles Haskins Townsend in the 1930s, and the third conducted by a team from the Census of Marine Life project lead by Tim Denis Smith between 2000 and 2010. The data file includes 466,134 data records assembled in a common format suitable for spatial and temporal analysis of American whaling throughout the 19th century.
The third database from which Whaling History is built is extensive whaling voyage crew lists from more than 5,300 voyages. Crew lists for whaling voyages recorded at the customs houses in Fall River and Salem, Massachusetts, and in New London, Connecticut, have been compiled as part of various projects and from various sources over the years. Crew lists for New Bedford voyages have been compiled using records kept by the chaplains of the New Bedford Port Society from 1840 to the end of whaling in New Bedford. These crew lists are now in a single searchable, sortable database.
In the next phase of the Whaling History Database, museums’ and other institutions’ collection items will be able to be linked to the database, giving researchers the ability to see a robust and dynamic picture of whaling history and artifacts.
“The future phases that will put linked objects, maps and images at the researchers’ fingertips, will give them the chance to find a particular voyage or person and read journals or view images and sailing routes directly linked to that particular person or event,” O’Pecko said. “The information gathered here will be an obvious boon to research in social and business history, but also for those studying in such fields as climatology and anthropology.”
Dawn Riley, the first woman to compete in both the America’s Cup and in the Whitbread Round the World Race, will receive the 2018 America and the Sea Award from Mystic Seaport.
“Dawn Riley’s impact on international sailing speaks for itself, and this award gives Mystic Seaport the opportunity to call greater attention to the extraordinary accomplishments of this courageous woman,” said Mystic Seaport President Steve White. The prestigious award recognizes those individuals and organizations whose extraordinary achievements in the world of maritime exploration, competition, scholarship, and design best exemplify the American character.
Riley stands alone as the first woman to compete in both the America’s Cup and in the Whitbread Round the World Race, two of the pinnacles in the sport of sailing that prior to her had been all but closed to women sailors. Riley also went on to become the first American, male or female, to sail in three America’s Cups and two Whitbread Round the World Races.
Riley trains premier-level American sailors for future Olympic, America’s Cup, and other world-class level sailing competitions, and leads a movement to reinvigorate the sport in this country. One nexus of this movement is Oakcliff Sailing Center in Oyster Bay, N.Y., where Dawn serves as Executive Director. A high-performance training center for sailors who have progressed beyond traditional coaching methods, Oakcliff’s vision is to “Build American Leaders through Sailing.” Riley’s leadership and the quality of the programs she oversees were recognized recently by New York Yacht Club’s Belle Mente Quantum Racing, which is currently preparing a challenge for the 36th America’s Cup. This syndicate is partnering with Oakcliff to recruit and train members for their America’s Cup Team.
Riley pursued an impressive racing career on the water punctuated by unprecedented accomplishments such as her role as the watch captain/engineer on Maiden, the first all-women’s team in the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race; pit person for America3, winner of the 1992 America’s Cup and first woman to have an active role on an America’s Cup team; skipper of Heineken, the only all-women’s entry in the 1993-94 Whitbread Race; team captain of America3, the women’s team in the 1995 America’s Cup; 1999 US Sailing’s Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year; America True CEO and Captain in the 2000 America’s Cup; and winning skipper at the 2002 IC45 World Championships.
A black tie gala will be held in Riley and Oakcliff Sailing’s honor in New York City Wednesday, October 3, 2018. This affair is the premier fund-raising event for Mystic Seaport. Past recipients of the America and the Sea Award include philanthropist and environmentalist David Rockefeller, Jr.; oceanographer and explorer Sylvia Earle; historian David McCullough; legendary yacht designer Olin Stephens; President and CEO of Crowley Maritime Corporation, Thomas Crowley; philanthropist William Koch; former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman; WoodenBoat Publications founder Jon Wilson; yachtsman and author Gary Jobson; maritime industrialist Charles A. Robertson; author Nathaniel Philbrick; and Rod and Bob Johnstone and their company J/Boats.
The world-famous Budweiser Clydesdales will be at Mystic Seaport March 22-25, in a special stable on the Museum’s Village Green, in advance of their appearance in the Mystic Irish Parade.
The horses will be available for public viewing during regular Museum hours March 22-25.
To prepare for their return to the Museum (they stayed here when they marched in the parade in 2008), we brushed up on our Clydesdale trivia. Here are 10 things you need to know about Clydesdales:
How long have Clydesdales been bred?
In the early 19th century, farmers living along the banks of the River Clyde in Lanarkshire, Scotland imported a few Great Flemish Horses and mated them with local mares. This was the birth of the Clydesdale.
Can any Clydesdale be a Budweiser Clydesdale?
No. In order to join the World Famous Budweiser hitch, a Clydesdale must:
stand at least 18 hands high (6 feet tall)
be a gelding and at least 4 years old
have a bay coat, four white stockings, a blaze of white on the face, a black mane and a black tail
weigh between 1,800 and 2,300 pounds
How much does a Clydesdale eat and drink?
Each hitch horse consumes as much as 20 to 25 quarts of whole grains, minerals, and vitamins, 50 to 60 pounds of hay and 30 gallons of water per day.
How big is a Clydesdale horseshoe?
Clydesdale horseshoes measure more than 20 inches from end to end and weigh about five pounds – more than twice as long and five times as heavy as the shoe worn by a light horse.
Do the Clydesdales have names?
Yes, the Budweiser Clydesdales are given short names like Duke, Mark, Captain and Bud so that it’s easier for drivers to give commands to the horses during a performance.
Where is the official home of the Budweiser Clydesdales?
The official home of the Budweiser Clydesdales is an ornate brick and stained-glass stable built in 1885 on the historic 100-acre Anheuser-Busch Brewery complex in St. Louis.
Where are all the hitches located?
The traveling hitches of the Budweiser Clydesdales are based in St. Louis, Missouri; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Merrimack, New Hampshire.
How do the Clydesdales travel?
Ten horses, the famous red, white, and gold beer wagon and other essential pieces of equipment are transported in three 50-foot tractor-trailers. Air cushioned suspension and thick rubber flooring in the trailers ease the rigors of travelling. And the team stops each night at local stables so the gentle giants can rest.
Do the Clydesdales have a special harness?
Yes. Each harness is handcrafted with solid brass, patent leather, and stitched with pure linen thread. The harness is made to fit any Clydesdale; however, collars come in various sizes and must be individually fitted to the Clydesdales like a finely tailored suit. Each harness and collar weigh approximately 130 pounds.
What does it take to drive a hitch of Clydesdales?
Driving the combined 12 tons of wagon and horses requires expert skill and physical strength. The 40 pounds of lines held by the driver plus the tension of the horses pulling creates a weight of over 75 pounds. That’s why the hitch drivers endure a lengthy training process before they assume the prestigious role of “Budweiser Clydesdale Hitch Driver.”
His sculptures, for example, are massive. They don’t weigh just pounds, they weigh tons. They can be hundreds of feet long, or tall. They can made from wood salvaged from a 115-year-old schooner, or harvested from a long-dead forest in southeastern Alaska. They can be created to last forever, or to be eaten by termites.
And so it makes sense that Grade, who lives in Seattle, would eventually find his way to Alaska. Three years ago he was invited by Anchorage Museum to join its Polar Lab program, an immersion-type residency that would bring an international variety of artists to Alaska to be educated and inspired and then to create. His initial idea (again, extreme) was to find the northern-most tree in the U.S. It was to go along with the oldest tree (4,000 years old and atop an 11,000-foot mountain in Nevada) and the most banal (a hemlock in the Cascade range in Washington state).
After doing research and talking to Inuit hunters, he narrowed down the location. He and his wife Maria were dropped by a plane in Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve. They rafted about 100 miles down the Noatak River, and then hiked to find the tree. And there it was. The old Inuit hunter had told him “There will be a tree where it shouldn’t be” and that was, in fact, the case. The 18-foot tall poplar was easy to spot because, Grade notes, nothing on the tundra grows taller than about a couple feet.
There was also, as the hunter warned there could be, a grizzly bear at the tree, using it as a scratching post. They had to wait about 24 hours before that bear had every itch scratched, and left the area. When they got closer, Grade saw that the bark of the tree was coated in beautiful, thick, cinnamon-colored bear fur.
Once they were bear free, Grade laid plastic all around the base of the trunk, and then covered the tree in tin foil so he could make a plaster mold of it. When the mold was hardened, he broke it into pieces that would fit in the raft, and brought it home to create the third piece of his oldest-most northern- most banal tree concept. That project is still ongoing in his Seattle studio, one of 12 pieces he is working on simultaneously.
What’s that? A pingo.
While they were trekking to the tree, Grade said he noticed these large earthen mounds randomly poking up across the
John Grade on “his” pingo in Alaska.
tundra. “I was curious,” Grade said. “They were pingos (pingo means “small hill” in Inuvialuktun). I wanted to learn more about them. They are so old, and so slow growing, and outside of the Inuit people, few people know about them.”
Pingos occur where the ground remains frozen for years at a time, in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Siberia. There are two types — an open-system pingo occurs when artesian water pushes up near the surface and freezes into an ice lens that forces the topsoil upward as it continues to grow. A closed-system pingo occurs when a former lakebed or dry river channel refreezes and develops a pressurized ice lens that pushes on the tundra. Most pingos along the lower Noatak River are closed-system pingos. Over centuries, pingos may grow as large as 2,000 feet across and 180 feet tall.
“I knew I wanted to work with a pingo very directly,” Grade says. “I wanted to marry what I studied empirically with what I experienced personally. They are two very different things.”
He found a pair of scientists who are inventorying pingos, and they shared aerial photos of hundreds of them with him. There was one particular pingo in this inventory that Grade was particularly drawn to, and he made it the background photo for his computer monitor so he could look at it often.
Then back he went to Noatak Preserve, this time by helicopter, which allowed him to spend time over various pingos, getting a deep “bird’s eye view” of each one, and its relationship to the landscape around it. He mapped the area using photogrammetry, which is the science of making measurements from photographs, especially for recovering the exact positions of surface points. Grade’s goal was to determine which pingo he found most compelling, to use as the basis for his sculpture.
He discovered later, back in Seattle, that the one he chose was the same one that served as his computer desktop photo. He liked this pingo because it was “a little off kilter at the top. It spoke to me. Is it growing? Is it collapsing? Is it somewhere in between? Sometimes they have foliage on them but this one was relatively bare. It was compelling.”
The pingo, from memory
As soon as he was back in the studio, Grade re-created the pingo from memory. He wanted to be able to combine his personal recollection of the area with the categorical information he had from his photogrammetry. “I didn’t want to make a piece of science,” he said. “It’s historic, it’s a barometer of time, it’s a measurement of this landscape in time. But it’s more than that. It’s so slow. I wanted to juxtapose that with a murmuration of birds, which is so fleeting. That was an ‘a ha’ moment for me. In the Arctic there are these strange topographical shifts, the tussocks, the bog. You can really only see these differences from a bird’s perspective.”
“Murmur: Arctic Realities” by John Grade. Andy Price/Mystic Seaport photo
And so Murmur: Arctic Realities began to take shape in his mind, and in his studio. He assembled a team of 20 who worked straight through for five months to make a deadline for the debut exhibition at Mystic Seaport. It involves carved Alaskan yellow cedar, fabricated steel, computer assisted design, computer programming to make it move, hydraulics and pneumatics and an air compressor to give it life.
And he knew it would be big, although the sculpted pingo is about half the size of the real life pingo, which rose about 30 feet from the tundra floor and was about 100 feet long. “I want people to feel something viscerally,” he said of his broader work, and “Murmur” specifically. “When it’s bigger, it’s on its own terms. It’s not a metaphor. This piece helps us see history as something alive, evolving, and current. And it’s messy. It’s not one thing. It’s layering, it’s multiple vantages, it’s two things at once.”
The team he assembled to move the piece from concept to reality was just as layered. “There are so many threads of expertise in this project,” Grade said. “I’m there sitting with the structural engineer and the metal fabrication people, talking about the design and how it can all work together. The biggest distinction between my work now and my work when I started is that 20 years ago I worked in complete solitude and now I am surrounded by a social dynamic. Now I would say it’s half solitary and half a total social immersion. But the key to me is, all these people and all these special skills, they bring their ideas and their input and it makes the project that much richer.”
The Shipyard’s new aluminum work boat VOLUNTEER on the shiplift. (All photos unless noted by Zell Steever)
One thing about wood: It’s not shiny.
Sure, you can sand it and varnish it and make it all smooth and shiny. But it doesn’t start out shiny.
Aluminum, on the other hand, is shiny. From minute one, it’s smooth and shiny, and if a ray of sunlight falls on it, it even sparkles.
The other thing about aluminum is that it’s trickier to cut than wood. And of course, while wood compresses when you attach one piece to another, aluminum doesn’t give, a factor that must be accounted for when making the complex calculations so all of the parts will fit together.
But other than those sort of minor details, building a boat out of aluminum is strikingly similar to building one out of wood. Walter Ansel, senior shipwright in the Museum’s Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard, has spent the last two years overseeing construction of an aluminum garvey push boat that will be added to the working vessels at Mystic Seaport this spring.
Slated to be named Volunteer, the “little tug boat” will be launched during PILOTS weekend May 5-6. Ansel’s ability to design and build this boat is thanks to a grant he received from the Museum’s PILOTS Fellowship Program, which provides funding for employees to receive extra training in specialized areas. Ansel is halfway through a four-year Yacht and Boat Design program at the Westlawn Institute of Marine Technology, studying design using all hull structural materials.
So her name derives from her creator’s funding source, but also from the fact that Ansel was assisted over the last two years by volunteers Wayne Whalen and Zell Steever. And while Steever drives over from Noank to work on the boat, Whalen drives up once a month for three days from his home in Cape May, N.J. And they wouldn’t have been able to do it without him, because he’s the fabricator and welder on the team. Steever is the patternmaker and ship fitter.
The present garvey, MAYNARD BRAY, was built by the Museum in 1976. Here she helps maneuver the MAYFLOWER II in 2016. (Photo by Mystic Seaport)
Volunteer will work alongside the Maynard Bray, a garvey push boat designed and built by Ansel’s father, Willets Ansel, 40 years ago. Maynard Bray is a beloved icon along the Museum waterfront, with her distinctive “pudding” of rope along her bow, which acts as a bumper.Volunteer will have a similar pudding, made by the shipyard’s riggers.
Volunteer will have twice the horsepower of Maynard Bray. She will be used to wash down Museum vessels, pump out water from boats that need it, and push and pull boats and floats into place. If signature vessels like the Charles W. Morgan, Joseph Conrad, or L.A. Dunton need to be moved, Volunteer will be there.
It has been both an education and a labor of love for these three men, as they have worked with Computer Assisted Design (CAD) to shape and cut the parts. The boat is made of marine-grade aluminum, measures 20-feet long and eight-feet wide, powered by an 85-horsepower diesel engine that came from Museum Trustee Barclay Collins’ sailboat. It was refurbished by the engine restoration team in the shipyard, led by Scott Noseworthy and volunteers John Seravezza and Jim Cream.
Ansel recruited Whalen and Steever to volunteer in the shipyard through his teaching at The WoodenBoat School. He met Whalen 12 years ago at the school, and mentioned to him that the fishing boat Roann was about to undergo a major restoration. Whalen had experience with a similar boat in New Jersey, and so he drove up once a month for three days to work on her. That lasted six years. He has since stayed involved with projects that were in need of welding or fabrication.
Ansel said the experience of building the aluminum boat has been similar to building a plywood vessel. “The welding can be a challenge,” he said, “but sawing the pieces has been relatively easy. The welding had a steep learning curve. And what we learned when we were putting pieces together was that, unlike wood, aluminum doesn’t compress, so we had to adjust the measurements just a little to accommodate that.”
They took advantage of having a high-tech friend in nearby Groton, Peter Legnos, whose company LBI can do precision metal cutting using a water jet. They took their CAD drawings and the aluminum to his shop and he cut it for them, saving them weeks of work if they had done it by hand. It also was far more precise than hand-sawing.
“This has been a total learning experience,” Ansel said. “It’s been exciting to do something completely different.” And if the Museum had purchased a boat like this, it would’ve cost considerably more than the construction has.
They will paint the bottom but they won’t paint the rest of the boat for at least her first year, and Ansel hopes never. “It will be at least a year because we want her to cure and corrode a little,” he said. “When she’s out in the weather, she will turn dull.”
Mystic Seaport is proud to offer Yoga in the Pingo in its new exhibition, “Murmur: Arctic Realities” with world renowned yoga instructor Coral Brown.
The first class will be at 8:30 a.m., Saturday Feb. 10. The second class will be at 5 p.m., Saturday, March 3. Each Vinyasa class (suitable for all-levels) is 75 minutes. Tickets are $18 for members and $20 for non-members. Mystic Seaport general admission is not required to attend the yoga class. Pre-registration is required due to limited space, call 860.572.5331 or visit http://bit.ly/PingoYoga.
“Murmur: Arctic Realities” is a huge kinetic sculpture created by contemporary artist John Grade. Using salvaged Alaskan yellow cedar, Grade has created an intricately carved sculpture (15’ x 38’ x 42’) that represents a pingo, a hill of ice that grows over centuries in the Arctic’s highest latitudes, then collapses, pockmarking the tundra. The steel spines that support the sculpture rise up above it. The 12 spines open and close to mimic the life cycle of a pingo.
“Yoga in museums and galleries has become very popular, and we regularly have requests and suggestions from visitors that we hold yoga classes on our beautiful property,” said Arlene Marcionette, public programs project manager for Mystic Seaport. “So when we were getting ready to open ‘Murmur,’ with the way the sculpture not only embodies an element of the natural world, but also moves, we thought yoga in the ‘Murmur’ gallery was a perfect fit.”
Brown, who makes her home in Rhode Island, is a licensed mental health counselor who draws on her extensive experience in yoga, philosophy, and holistic counseling to provide fertile, open space for the process of healing and transformation. She is a senior Prana Vinyasa Flow teacher and has also trained in the Iyengar and Jivamukti methods. She leads teacher trainings as well as retreats and workshops worldwide.
She also grew up in Alaska.
“I lived in a community called Bird Creek, a peaceful, off the grid commune that my parents and some friends founded,” Brown said. “My parents lived off the land in a very simple way, with a mindful, yogic-like life philosophy, which in the 1970’s was known as being a hippie. When my parents separated I moved to Rhode Island with my mother, but I would go back to Alaska frequently to see my father.”
This will be Brown’s first time leading a class in a museum gallery, and she loves the idea of a sculpture of a landscape as the focus of the room. “It’s pretty phenomenal,” she said. “It’s great to bring the outdoors indoors. For centuries, Yogis have explored the mind, body and the deeper mysteries of life by going out into nature where there are no distractions. A naturally inspired, peaceful environment encourages us to foster the relationship between human nature and nature itself.”
For about a week now, Reilly Donovan has been walking around the Collins Gallery at Mystic Seaport, with a modernistic-looking contraption on his head, carefully stepping over various steel beams, hydraulic pistons, and discarded bubble wrap strewn across the floor.
The careful observer will see the 33-year-old Donovan occasionally point his finger in the air, then point a finger on his other hand, then make a motion as if he were playing with an imaginary sock puppet. He can be overhead saying “Show pingo” every now and again. Then he returns to the laptop he has set up on a folding table in the gallery, and starts tapping away at the keyboard.
This is art — specifically sculpture — in the 21st century, where modern technology meets carved wood and fabricated steel. The result is an interactive experience for the museum visitor like never before. When “Murmur: Arctic Realities” opens Saturday, January 20 at Mystic Seaport, visitors will not only be able to walk in and around an intricately carved simulation of an Alaskan pingo created by renowned contemporary artist John Grade, they will be able to see and hear the flora, fauna, and wildlife that lives around that exact land form created using mixed reality technology.
New media artist Reilly Donovan is constantly refining the Microsoft HoloLens Mixed Reality experience visitors will see in “Murmur.” Photo: Andy Price.
Donovan has been working on the virtual aspect of Grade’s project for just about a year, although it looked far different when the two artists began collaborating in January 2017 then it does now, less than a week before the opening. In its nearly finished form now, “Murmur” utilizes Microsoft’s HoloLens technology to provide the mixed reality experience. As visitors walk in and around the sculpture, the HoloLens headset will show them holographic images of the summertime Alaskan tundra, including grasses, flowers, and bodies of water. They will hear the summer breeze, bird calls, and mosquitoes buzz.
Grade’s massive sculpture (15’ x 38’ x 42’) is kinetic — the upper portions of it collapse down and move back up to replicate the lifespan of a pingo, a hill of ice that grows over centuries in the Arctic’s highest latitudes, then collapses. The steel framework is covered over with sheets of carved Alaskan yellow cedar, large pieces along the bottom and sides that gradually grow smaller as they reach the peak. Grade drew the inspiration for the piece when he traveled to the Alaskan Arctic three years ago as part of Anchorage Museum’s Polar Lab residency for artists, and discovered pingos on the tundra.
For Donovan, this is the latest step in his evolution as a sculptor, photographer and filmmaker. A graduate of Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, where he makes his home with his wife Cyrena and their two young children, Donovan has been working to combine his mediums for many years.
“This is a form of sculpture,” he says of his work in Mixed Reality. “It’s just not a physical sculpture. It’s a sculpture made of light and sound. From the beginning, I have been interested in going outside the traditional structures to create. I’m more interested in the overlap of these mediums, where one informs the other.”
Sculptor John Grade, left, confers with New Media artist Reilly Donovan. Photo: Joe Michael.
Donovan became interested in virtual reality about eight or nine years ago, when he was creating motion graphics (computer animations). He taught himself to write code, and then began creating interactive experiences. He was fascinated by the ways that the technology allowed him to be able to “create things that are very uncommon, that are not of this terrestrial world. For me, I was very hungry to create unique things to see; things that are very out there.”
When the first Virtual Reality headsets arrived on the scene about five years ago, Donovan said it was a “natural evolution” for him as an artist. When he and Grade began working together on “Murmur,” it was to have been a virtual reality experience, but then Microsoft released the HoloLens. “We decided that was the right direction to go,” Donovan says. “HoloLens is mixed reality, when the virtual content co-exists in the physical world. It was the right fit.”
Just as a canvas is the path for a painter’s self-expressions, Donovan sees the HoloLens the same way. “It is a tool for self-expression,” he notes. “It is a medium. It’s a canvas. The holographic content is the aesthetic thread, the interplay, between (Grade’s) physical form and my objects.”
Donovan thinks this is the first time that a physical sculpture has been so tightly wedded to mixed reality, and he looks forward to the relationship between the piece and the technology evolving as the technology is refined. Just as an iPhone user needs to update software to have the best experience, so too will the HoloLens change as time goes on.
“We will continue to push this,” Donovan says, noting that there could (and likely will) be a time when the HoloLens headset and sculpture share information with each other to change the visitor experience; that the piece will have “network-based sharing” so that users can integrate with each other in the exhibition; and finally that there would be a telepresence, so that if the piece were in two locations, users would share the experience. “It will be a never-ending project,” Donovan says with a laugh. “As the technology evolves and updates, the project will update.”
As the group enters pre-opening crunch time, Donovan looks back on the last year. “It’s been a lot of fun,” he says. “It’s been great working with John and his team — they are a great group, so talented and collaborative. We are all pushing our skills as hard and as far as we can. For me, this is really exciting. This is the beginning of what the future will have for us to express ourselves with.”
The story takes place in 1943, the same year that the Danish lighthouse tender Gerda III was smuggling Jews from Denmark to safety in Sweden. Gerda III belongs to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City and is on display at Mystic Seaport. In 1943, the boat was used by Henny Sinding, the 22-year old daughter of a Danish Navy Officer who commanded the country’s Lighthouse and Buoy Service, and a four-man crew, to rescue Jews. The refugees were brought to a warehouse along Copenhagen’s waterfront and smuggled aboard Gerda III, hiding in the cargo hold.
The little vessel then set out on her official lighthouse supply duties, but detoured to the coast of neutral Sweden. Although the vessel was regularly boarded and checked by German soldiers, the refugees were never discovered. Gerda III rescued approximately 300 Jews, in groups of 10 to 15. Of the 300 boats that participated in the evacuation, Gerda III is believed to be one of only three that remain afloat.
On Saturday, January 27, the event will start at 2 p.m. with an introduction and remembrance by Jerome E. Fischer, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut. That will be followed by a short presentation on Gerda III’s story by Howard Veisz, a Mystic Seaport volunteer who has exhaustively studied the boat’s history. Veisz is the author of “Henny and Her Boat,” the story of Gerda III and the rescue of 300 Jews. Tickets are $20 for Mystic Seaport members, and $22 for non-members. Tickets may be purchased in advance by calling the Museum’s Central Reservations at 860.572.5331, or at the door the day of the event at Mystic Luxury Cinemas.
On Saturday, January 20, Mystic Seaport will host the international debut of an exhibition that heralds in a new era for the Museum — the Era of Exhibitions. Murmur: Arctic Realities is the product of one of world’s leading contemporary artists, John Grade, and with it, Mystic Seaport becomes a leader in the introduction of mixed reality technology in a museum setting. This exhibition showcases the Museum’s vision for engaging visitor experiences, a vision that will only expand throughout 2018 and beyond.
Staged in the Collins Gallery in the Thompson Exhibition Building, visitors will encounter upon entering what appears to be a natural land form — a mound (15’ x 38’ x 42’) intricately carved from Alaskan yellow cedar. This vast sculpture represents a pingo, a hill of ice that grows over centuries in the Arctic’s highest latitudes, then collapses, pockmarking the tundra. Grade’s work replicates a pingo in Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve, mapped by the artist using photogrammetry. Visitors will not only witness the pingo’s impressive scale, but will also be able to enter inside the sculpture as its walls open and close, mimicking the pingo’s life cycle at a time when this is accelerating due to unprecedented environmental change.
Grade and New Media artist Reilly Donovan are collaborating on Murmur, as Donovan brings the use of Microsoft’s HoloLens Mixed Reality technology to the experience. They have mapped fragments of Noatak’s landscape into the gallery so that visitors wearing a wireless HoloLens headset will see themselves within a holographic representation – one using visual images and spatialized sound of a precise geographic location 80 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
“The opening of Murmur is a thrilling moment for this museum,” says Nicholas Bell, senior vice president for curatorial affairs. “The inclusion of giant steel and wood kinetic arms and a holographic experience immediately removes us from our comfort zone. But that’s exactly where we should be as we enter this new Era of Exhibitions – challenging the limit of how we engage with museum space, and what we can learn from such unexpected encounters. Murmur affirms the role of Mystic Seaport as a place to come together, not only to understand our past, but also to anticipate the future.”
The title Murmur evokes both the sound of Arctic wind and the shapes made by flocks of Arctic birds in flight. The installation will provide an experience in which people can virtually explore the interior of a pingo’s ice core and the unusual textures, flora and fauna of the land form. By allowing visitors to traverse an Alaskan marsh in Connecticut, Murmur will revolutionize the public’s grasp of what a museum experience can be.
Murmur: Arctic Realities is being staged in collaboration with Anchorage Museum. Grade has been working on the pingo project for three years, after Anchorage Museum invited him to spend time in the Arctic as part of its Polar Lab residency program. According to his website, “Inspired by changing geological and biological forms and systems in the natural world, John works with his studio team to create large-scale site-specific immersive sculptural installations. Impermanence and chance are often central to the work along with kinetics and relationships between the natural world and architecture.”
Museum President Steve White notes that the opening of Murmur: Arctic Realities kicks off a busy and exciting year. “John Grade’s work speaks to our vision for exhibitions at Mystic Seaport,” White says, “to bring exhibitions to the Mystic region for which people would ordinarily have to travel far to see, and to provide content that appeals to people accustomed to compelling museum shows.”
Murmur, which closes in late April, is followed by two major exhibitions both opening on May 19: The Vikings Begin: Treasures from Uppsala University, Sweden and The Vinland Map. The international debut of The Vikings Begin will bring one of the world’s finest early Viking-age collections to Mystic Seaport. This exhibition represents the first instance most of these artifacts will have ever left Sweden. For the Vinland Map exhibition, it will be the first time in more than 50 years that the document is on public display, allowing those who have followed the saga to see its primary evidence for the first time. Mystic Seaport will engage historians, archaeologists, scientists, and other leading experts to share the Map’s story, and discuss its out-sized role in modern American history.
In addition to the exhibition itself, there are scheduled talks by both Grade and Donovan, the opportunity to take a yoga class with renowned instructor Coral Brown within the exhibition, and other programs related to the piece. Visit our online calendar for the full schedule. Use #wearethemurmur #arcticrealities on Twitter and Instagram.
