The Belle of Wave Hill

Reading poetry may be an undervalued pastime, but a show opening this weekend at Wave Hill shows how 10 contemporary artists can guide the way.“Emily Dickinson Rendered” is the first in a series of three art exhibitions reflecting on 19th-century American writers. The show runs from Saturday to May 25 at the public estate and gardens in the Bronx, which can be reached by a 30-minute Metro North ride from Grand Central Terminal. Different artists will consider Thoreau over the summer, and Poe and Twain — the one writer in the series who lived at Wave Hill — in the fall.“I loved the idea of her hiding in doorways and shadows. And I also like the idea of her body being a vessel for her words,” Valerie Hammond, who recently showed at the Cue Art Foundation in Chelsea, said on Sunday. The hands she has made out of ferns in two murals seem to reach for two female forms in a corner, out of which Dickinson’s poetry has been digitally cut. The figures are made with a Plexiglas layer, so when light hits, the outlines of the words shimmer.Ms. Hammond was delighted that her work “goes so well” with Stacy Levy’s installation in the opposite corner, a window studded with thin bunches of hair. On the sill rests the poem that inspired her, beginning with the line, “The largest Fire ever known/Occurs each afternoon.” Ms. Levy’s “Tide Flowers” will be unveiled in Hudson River Park this spring.Brece Honeycutt made copper plates on which she hand-wrote excerpts from Dickinson poems selected to correspond with flowers that grow at Wave Hill. During the peak blooms of these flowers, Wave Hill’s interpretive gardener, Charles Day, will relocate the plates outside near the flowers described, eventually returning them, weathered, to the gallery.The most biographical work in the show is Meredith McNeal’s installation of 19 items, a re-creation of the poet’s living quarters with gardening gloves, a dress, and vintage wallpaper and silk illustrations with titles such as “The family plot” and the “Road Outside the House.”Frances Cape, who had a show last year at Murray Guy, has built a desk that he described in his proposal as an effort to depict the absence of God in Dickinson’s life.The exhibition is largely absent of works dealing with Dickinson’s darker side. The poet known as the “Belle of Amherst” did love her garden and writing ecstatically about nature. She also lived through the Civil War and wrote about war and death, which she described as “zero at the bone.” Lesley Dill’s ghostlike bronze figure “Only” and Peter Edlund’s painting “Dead Bird” come closest to representing the haunted and haunting Dickinson.Still, it is not easy to find fault with a show that gives its viewers the opportunity to ponder Dickinson visually and to hear and read her work. Miranda Maher’s installation in the staircase incorporates audio of a woman reading Dickinson’s poetry, while visitors can take away a poem on a bookmark made by Mr. Edlund.Curator Jennifer McGregor oversees the art program at Wave Hill, and is responsible for its focus on contemporary art that explores the relationship between man and nature. Art has been a part of Wave Hill since it opened to the public in the early 1970s, when the grounds displayed sculpture by artists such as Dennis Oppenheim and Ursula von Rydingsvard. Ms. McGregor set out to do something different when she arrived nearly 10 years ago, with a background in public art, most notably as the first director of New York City’s Percent for Art program.“We could be showing botanical work or landscape architecture drawing … but we don’t,” Ms. McGregor said. “Our context is so different than most any other place in New York. This is not the white box surrounded by 300 others like it down the street. I’ve found it’s a great place to introduce people to contemporary art.”Ms. McGregor has made Wave Hill a destination for artists exploring nature, including landscape painters, sculptors working with natural materials such as sticks, twigs, and leaves, and artists investigating techniques that mimic the process of nature. She has also guided artists to do so (animated video artist Marina Zurkow is one example in the Dickinson show).Concurrently with the opening of “Emily Dickinson Rendered” on Saturday, Wave Hill is expanding its arts program with a series of solo exhibitions for emerging artists. The first artist showing in the series is Peter Gerakaris, who on Sunday was painting the windows of a sunroom with motifs inspired by the sisal plant.“Wave Hill is unique to New York,” Mr. Gerakaris said as he stepped over ferns, and other tropical plants. “For me, it’s a match made in heaven.”

The Belle of Wave Hill

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