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‘Commentry’ lets you speak your mind
Guerrilla artists encourage old-school communication
By JULIA O’MALLEY
jomalley@adn.com
(03/15/08 00:41:14)A week ago something strange happened to an old choke-cherry tree near the corner of Fourth Avenue and E Street.
Under cover of darkness, someone wound twine around its boughs and bungeed a mailbox filled with slips of paper to its copper-colored trunk. On the lid of the box, in tidy writing, they wrote the made-up word “Commentry.” Then they scribbled a few words on a few pieces of paper and clipped them to the line.
The next day, the comments had multiplied. Tourists with their shopping bags, polished ladies clicking by in high heels, rough types shuffling out of the 515 Club all stopped to clip something up. There were prayers and old sayings, love notes, curse words, phone numbers and nonsense that seemed snipped from an unknown script. A week passed. More notes appeared, flapping at passing traffic like little prayer flags:
“Man makes plans, God laughs.”
“My wife hates me.”
“Jesus Loves You.”
“There’s a snake in my boots.”
“One day at a time.”
“Come on, make me eat nine tic-tacs.”
The city parks department wasn’t sure what to make of it at first. Certainly, no one had a permit to adorn a tree in Peratrovich Park. Inside the mailbox they discovered a Web address, www.theelectric-company.wikispaces.com. The Web site said the Commentry was the work of a collective of guerrilla art-makers “who strive for blurring the forged boundaries between art with a capital “A” and the viewer.” The Commentry, it seemed, was a fly-by-night piece of public performance art.
Banners and things of that sort aren’t generally allowed in city parks, especially if they’re offensive, but the Commentry charmed Monique Anderson, the park superintendent. She even went down on her lunch hour and clipped up a little comment herself, though she’s not saying what she wrote. The department will leave it up at least until Monday, she said.
“Honestly, I think it’s a really engaging expression of creativity on park land,” she said. “Maybe in the future we can work with them in advance if they want to do surprise ephemeral displays.”
Matt Tegtmeier, a manager at A Novel View, a used bookstore nearby, first noticed the tree Tuesday. The comment that caught his eye said, “Hey you, nice butt.” Just who were these gypsy artists? He suspected they might be the same people who’d been drawing impressionistic chalk pictures on the neighborhood sidewalks.
“I would consider it to be fun,” he said.
A UAA art student named Jessie Brown, 22, answers e-mail for The Electric Company. The Commentry wasn’t their first project, she said. They’ve also been delivering pieces of art to strangers’ mailboxes. Visitors to the Web site can suggest a mailbox for art delivery, but that hasn’t generated nearly as much interest as the Commentry.
“It’s sort of taken on its own little life,” she said. “I’m surprised it’s still up.”
So why do it? What does it mean? Is it even art? Brown didn’t have any fancy answers. They did it to get strangers to talk to each other. They wanted to encourage old-school communication, without technology that distances people. The tree is, in a way, an anti-text message. But everyone has their own experience, she said. She didn’t want to overanalyze.
“It can be anything you want it to be.”
Sandy Jones and Gary Kreizenbeck stopped by the tree on Wednesday afternoon. They were from California, in town on grim business, having attended a court hearing for a woman who caused an accident that killed Kreizenbeck’s wife, Zoe, in 2004. Zoe was a popular elementary school teacher, Gary said.
Jones took a marker and wrote down Zoe’s favorite quote: “Dance like no one’s watching, sing like no one’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, live each day as if there’s no tomorrow.”
Her sister-in-law died on vacation. Though her death had been front page news where she lived, no one knew her in Alaska. It was nice to leave a little reminder of her behind.
Dan Chapman, a mechanic, strolled up to the tree, took a piece of paper and wrote “Take a deep breath and relax.” He’d been working 10 days solid, and it was his day off. On Fourth Avenue, a jogger passed, a homeless man, unsteady on his feet, leaned into a light pole, a mother clipped by holding her daughter’s hand. Chapman took a minute to study the tree, squinting at a fluttering slip that read, “Love yourself.” It was a little weird, he said, but reading the notes made him think about the lives of strangers.
“It gives you different ideas about what people are going through,” he said.
Find Julia O’Malley online at adn.com/contact/jomalley or call 257-4591.
More money, more problems?
When you’re out to make money, can you make art?
It’s a question that has plagued generations of artists, haunted by the fear that perhaps their creations can’t generate an income. And we’ve seen it time and time again in popular culture, moments where something truly revolutionary is watered down in the interest of appealing to the masses: break dancing, for example, or the palatable beauty of impressionist artists.
The question of what happens to art when it becomes a commodity is exactly what Jessie Brown and jsun set out to explore in their exhibit “Buy My Art,” hitting the walls of the MTS Gallery this weekend. With contributions from Craig Updegrove, Chelsey Bailey, Ashleigh Popplewell, Zak Silverstein, Alicia Silverstein, Garry Mealor, Mariano Gonzalez and Ted Kincaid, the exhibit takes a vending-machine approach to visual arts: if you cut it down to this size, and fit it in this hole, it will be available to the masses.
In keeping with that idea, Brown says that the crux of the exhibit is not necessarily the unchanging art on the walls, but the pieces that will undergo transformation before an opening-night audience’s eyes. That’s also in keeping with the MTS Gallery’s dedication to maintaining a balance between performance and visual art.
“There will be a demonstration during the opening that will illustrate for the viewer the process that art undergoes when used for profit,” says Brown. “The show will also be up for a month at the MTS as an exhibit, but the show’s essence lies in the demonstration.”
See where the art starts—and where it eventually ends—this week. 5-7 p.m. Fri., May 16 at the MTS Gallery (3142 Mountain View Dr.). Free. 274-0156
— Anchorage Press, Katie Hecker Visual Arts 5-15-2008