"Growing up with Bertoia Sculptures"

Guest Writer Series

"Growing up with Bertoia Sculptures: With excerpts from Implosion: A Memoir of an Architect's Daughter"

By Elizabeth Garber
www.elizabethgarber.com

The stone fireplace wall was painted a gritty white. Suspended from the ceiling, a cable hung down to attach a three-foot-long black metal framed sculpture with wires attached to the top and bottom that held squares painted bright colors. It was a model for a screen that had been built life-sized for the St. Louis airport. Our dad had seen the model gathering dust in Harry's studio on a visit, and convinced Harry to sell it to him.

My father asked me, "Do you remember why Harry chose this set of colors for one side and these for the other side?" Hanging from the cable, he swung the sculpture showing me the side with red, orange and yellow squares. On the opposite side the squares were painted blue, purple, black.

“Of course, Dad.” I rolled my eyes. “You taught me this when I was almost a baby! They are 'hot' colors on one side and ‘cool’ on the other.”

"Just wanted to keep you on your toes, Sugar."

I grinned, “Don't worry about me, Daddy!”

In my childhood when we lived in an old Victorian, the sculpture sat on the bookcase, and twice a year we would turn the sculpture. In winter my dad said we needed the 'hot'colors to face out to warm us up, but in summer we needed the ‘cool.’

When we moved to the modern house my father designed and build in 1965, the maquette slowly turned in the spotlight, casting shadows across the stone wall behind, and we could see all the colors as it moved.

The Bertoia Maquette is now owned by the St. Louis Art Museum and can be seen on-line. Click here to view.

Growing  up in the1950s and 60s, Bertoia's name and the presence of  Bertoia  sculputures was part of our family's daily life. Sculptures  appeared  mysteriously when my father came home from trips to the Bertoia shop in  Bally, PA. My father, Woodie Garber, has been described as "Cincinnati’s  most extreme, experimental,and creative Modernist architect." (Patrick  Snadon, UC Emeritus Professor)

After he saw Harry's first sculpture show in 1950, he immediately commissioned a sculpture for a children's garden at The Cincinnati Public Library which was under construction, the first post war modern library in the U.S. This was the beginning of a long creative friendship for my dad and our family.

I wrote about Bertoia sculptures numerous times in Implosion: A Memoir of an Architect's Daughter. I include in italics scenes that show Bertoia’s work as part of the life of our family, and how my father incorporated his sculptures in his buildings.

From 1966-67, our family camped out in an unfinished modern house with everything we owned stored in the basement, while we worked together to finish the cabinetwork and trim.

Finally the cabinets were installed, finish floors laid, walls painted. We could move into our room and unpack our books, records, fill up the kitchen cabinets, and most importantly, put up paintings and set sculptures into place. Our dad's "masterpiece, his dream house, was coming together.

The finale was unpacking Bertoia sculptures from wooden crates, like opening heavy bronze Christmas ornaments to set around the house. My dad commissioned sculpture by Harry Bertoia on several of his buildings. Every time our dad visited Harry's studio to talk about their work, he brought home a new small sculpture for us.

There were two made of short bronze rods of equal length welded to a central hub to form a 'bush.' We set the larger one on the Eames coffee table and the smaller one on the dining room table where the light from above made silhouetted patterns through the rods onto the table.

My father played with the tall sound sculpture, made with three foot long bronze rods welded in a grid attached to a 10 in square base. He grasped the rods together and then released them all at once, so they swayed and collided against each other, making a cacophony of sound. Placed onto the piano, the bronze rods clashing rumbled through the body of the piano.

We also had one of Harry's 'Tree’ sculptures, a heavy molten standing piece that my mother was afraid would fall on our bare feet but never did. It stood outside on our porch as if welcoming visitors. We sometimes put our spare key under the sculpture in case we were locked out. We’d leave a note on the door saying "Bertoia will let you in."

My mother's favorite was a delicate little hanging sculpture we called "A Jungle Gym for Spiders."

The Cornell Library Design

A Major Collaboration between an Architect and Sculptor

For years when my mother ran errands downtown, she would drop me off at dad's office in a tall brick house …near the University. I’d enter the bright white drafting room where angled tables, like boats with sails, flew above my head.Long wooden T-squares, clear triangles, and mechanical pencils littered vast sheets of paper, covered with lines, tiny arrows and careful printing in pencil. I’d sniff the sharp ammonia from the blueprint machine in the next room.

In my father's conference room, there were architectural scale models of his newest projects. I walked around the model for the proposed Cornell University Library on a large table next to the window. My father came over and crouched down so he could look at eye level with me. I peered in the little windows and doors, touched the pretend trees and scratchy bushes. Tiny faceless people walked on sandpaper sidewalks looking like they knew where they were going.

Two long walls were covered by an attached sculpture by Harry Bertoia, a jigsaw puzzle of colorful panels. My father pulled shades down over the windows and turned on a light inside the model. I imagined being a student going to the library at night,looking through the trees at warm window light glinting through the red, blue,and yellow panels on the sculptural wall.

My father explained to the students standing next to him. "They loved the design but they didn't want the sculpture attached to the length of the building. But that Bertoia sculpture was absolutely key to the whole design. I told them, 'No way. You take it as it is or you leave it.’"

I turned to look up at him as his voice grew more forceful. “Never!” his voice punched and his eyes pierced. I was a little afraid because he sounded so angry. “Never capitulate or change your concept to meet design-by-committee!”

Their collaborative library design was never built by Cornell. Another architectural firm was giving the contract.

Proctor Hall - University of Cincinnati's School of Nursing and Health

When my dad designed Proctor Hall for University of Cincinnati School of Nursing and Health (completed 1968) he commissioned a Bertoia 'Cloud' to be hung over a spiral staircase in a large hall for students. Fortunately we babysat the ‘Cloud’ for a year or so until the building was finished.

Unfortunately I don't have a good photograph of it. This seemingly-weightless floating assemblage of small bronze rectangles caught in a meandering web of wires reflected and transmitted a golden light. Sitting in the living room at night it would shimmer as it slowly turned, and was reflected in the darkened glass walls behind. We were sad to see it go.

Here you can see it installed at Proctor Hall between the hanging lights in a student dining area.

Visits to the Bertoia Studio and the Sonambient Barn

In my teens my family visited the Bertoia family and studio.

We continued to Boston to see Harry's magnificent sculpture behind the altar in Saarinen's MIT Chapel. Architect's children go on pilgrimages to buildings and for us, Harry's sculpture as well.

When I was in college writing a paper for an Art History class on Modern Sculpture I drove to Bally in 1975 to photograph Harry's work in progress in the studio. I also went to NYC to see the vast sculptural screen at Manufacturers Hanover Trust on 5th Avenue and 43rd. (I was devastated years later to hear it was dismantled and then relieved that it was restored and re-installed.)

After Harry died in the 1978, my father and I went to Barto in 1982 to visit with Harry's widow, Brigitta, extended family and friends. In the last decade of my father's life, he and I had a magical afternoon in the Sonambient Barn, making sounds and enjoying the aesthetic feast of Harry’s lifetime of work.

Thank you Celia and the Bertoia Foundation for inviting me to share my family's connection with Harry's sculpture.

Elizabeth Garber's memoir focuses on how her family was caught in a collision between modern architecture, radical social change, and madness in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s in Cincinnati.

Implosion: A Memoir of an Architect’s Daughter, release date June 2018, from She Writes Press.

Find out more and contact me through www.elizabethgarber.com