“Green Acres” model on display at Grounds For Sculpture. The work was realized in 1986 as the courtyard at the DEP building in downtown Trenton.
By Dan Aubrey
When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced in 2012 that the New Jersey would restore internationally known artist Athena Tacha’s “Green Acres” public art work — erected by the state in 1986 behind the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection building in Trenton — people around the country applauded.
There was a good reason for the decision and its reception.
The 77-by-85-foot landscape-designed sculpture represents the efforts of one of the country’s artistic pioneers who is also the subject of the Grounds For Sculpture exhibition “Sculpting With/In Nature (1975-2013),” on view at the Hamilton sculpture park until March 30. According to the Cultural Landscape Foundation in Washington, Tacha is one of the initiators of “site-specific” architectural sculpture — a significant shift in attitude that brought “land art” into a social context.
Since the 1970s, Tacha has received more than 40 national public art commissions, ranging from New York to Alaska. One includes an entire city block park in downtown Philadelphia.
Tacha’s work came to Trenton through the Percent for Art Program. Part of the 1978 Arts Inclusion Act, the measure sets aside up to 1.5 percent of construction budgets for the commissioning and installation of artwork in state-financed construction projects. Rather than a frill, the law is designed “to complement the artistic and esthetic effect of any buildings,” notes a New York Times article on the subject.
“Green Acres” is located in the red-tiled DEP courtyard on East State Street in Trenton, minutes from the Trenton train station. The work — which has shown weather and time damage that will be addressed following Super Storm Sandy repair and renovation projects — incorporates green granite tiles etched with sandblasted photo images of state wildlife, vegetation in crescent shaped planters, and designed seating areas. Its biomorphic shape is a counterpoint to the geometric architecture of the DEP building and the courtyard.
Of “Green Acres,” Tacha says, “It is a substantial size environmental sculpture that includes all of my principles — fluidity, irregularity, and complexity of step, body rhythms, etcetera — with curvilinear forms, which are the most appropriate for expressing them.”
In addition to the appropriateness of the site the work also reflects the aims of the DEP, which is saving the natural environment.
“For the first time I was able to combine hard materials expressing fluidity — for example, brick — with natural materials — plants and rocks,” she says.
There was also another innovation, and Tacha says that she was excited to “use the then-new photo sandblasting technique for further specificity of the content: 45 polished green granite slabs embedded in a subtle random pattern into the green slide pavement in the middle of the sculpture contain sandblasted photos of the endangered species of N.J. and the names of all the departments of DEP — one of which is Green Acres, which I used as the title,” she says.
She says that the piece has significance of the body of her art work. “The curved steps encircling the green pavement (which evokes a meadow or lagoon) are organic like vines, waves or sand dunes. I’ll stop here by saying that at the time I finished this work, after over a year of hard work with excellent local contractors, brick-layers, and 25 day-inspections, I was so happy with it that I said to myself, ‘Now I can die, because I said what I wanted to say!’”
“Green Acres” is a work that presents itself in a non-traditional manner and designed to physically involve people and be part of their everyday lives. “I always want to get away from typical art that goes in museums and collections. That’s why I do public art, to escape the consumerism and the contextualization of art,” says the Washington, DC, based artist. By maintaining the work, the state administration provides an example of one of America’s pioneering art movements, a work by an influential artist during a specific and innovative phase, and a design that adds to the city’s cultural heritage – one that spans the colonial to the cutting edge. The creator of this work that advances the idea of what art is as well as embraces life was born in 1936 in the Greek city of Larissa, where the attributed father of Western medicine Hippocrates died. By coincidence Tacha’s father was also a doctor, a neurologist. Far from an ideal life, the Tachas — her parents, an adopted sister, and the young artist — lived perilously, fleeing the Nazis during World War II, caught in the Greek Civil War (1943-’49), and enduring the post-wars famine.
Despite the harshness of these early days, the young Tacha, who showed artistic talent from age 10, continued to draw and study, eventually receiving a master’s in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Athens in 1959. With the support of a Fulbright travel grant, Tacha came to the United States and received a second master’s degree in art history from Oberlin College in 1961. Two years later she received a doctorate in esthetics from the Sorbonne in Paris.
She returned to the United States, served as a curator of modern art at the Allen Art Museum at Oberlin College from 1966-’73, and then joined Oberlin College where she has taught sculpture, media arts, and welding, activities that paved her way to creating public art.
As an individual who had lived in times when living was uncertain, Tacha has life on her mind and says, “I really have to understand the outer limits of reality, and you can’t stop asking, ‘Where do I fit?’ ‘What is this universe, and how am I part of it?’ Living systems are a really beautiful development of matter, and yet there is so much else. I believe everything is one whole, and I am a little part of it, like a wave in the ocean.”
“Green Acres” is located at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protect, 401 East State Street, Trenton. athena Tacha, “Sculpting With/In Nature (1975-2013),” on view to March 30, Grounds For Sculpture, 18 Fairgrounds Road, Hamilton. Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets $8 to $12. For information, call 609-586-0616
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