First Friday is always a reminder of how wonderful Phoenix is. To walk down Roosevelt is to be assaulted with the various disparate manifestations of the city’s artistic spirit. However, when Saturday comes we are not left in the lurch. Murals and public art surround us day-to-day in subtle reminders of this city’s artist heart. Near the corner of Monroe and Second streets stands one of the most elegant.
John Waddell’s sculptural program currently on display outside of the Herberger Theater Center isn’t borne out of Roosevelt Row’s fiercely independent amalgam of artists, but it carries its spirit.
The program is technically two sets of sculpture. “Dance” is a permanent installation and “The Gathering” is on loan, but they work in tandem to create a thematic progression throughout the Herberger’s outdoor space.
“The Gathering” is the more grounded work; it creates a scene which emphasizes a depiction of varied and non-idealized bodies in a sort of friendly or familial interaction. The figures reach out for one another, or rush to catch up. Interaction is established through eye contact and touch between individuals. There is a sense of casual movement in the organic contrapposto of the group and an excited energy in the gaits of figures depicted midstride.
“Dance” fills the same thematic space by populating the extremes. We see dramatic and exaggerated postures: dancers in the height of their artistic tension. We see details of straining muscles show through the naturalized bodies. However, some dancers appear effortless in their pose, and the Puck-like figure reclining with a flute sedates the otherwise active composition, leaving a sense of balance.
In both installations, the faces portrayed are emotive, but they bear no likeness. Each form is wrought in diverse body type and detail, but there is not portraiture in its typical sense in Waddell’s sculpture here. Neither is there any semblance of classical idealization on display. The almost chunky quality of the figures’ faces rejects such intentional polish.
Yet, the way the artist lines up eye contact and shows emotion in “The Gathering,” or establishes interaction through repeated posture in “Dance,” serves to establish connections without a specific social form and gives the audience a sense of unity amid a plethora of distinct bodies.
Technique is another unifying feature of the program. The rough, pocked texture of the bronze in both groups of sculpture does a great deal for aesthetic cohesion.
Therein is the tension of these works. The bodies Waddell presents us with are diverse and detailed, showing a broad swath of individualized forms, yet all of the faces lack such individuality.
This contrast resolves formally in a sort of humanist ambiguity, where we see these figures as nonspecific individuals defined not by appearance but by movement and emotion. In this way “Dance” is not defined by the dancers, it is defined by the motion and the interaction. “The Gathering” isn’t defined by those gathering, but the emotive sense of community among them.
This reminds me of everything I’ve learned about the Phoenix art community. It’s full of people who are not defined by their rough-hewn edges but by their movement. It is their art and the very act of their community which elevates them. To see these statues on display outside downtown’s most normative arts institution stands to me as a testament to the fact that what makes Phoenix’s art beautiful on First Friday is just as permanent an institution.
Contact the columnist at csmannin@asu.edu.
