Lt. Walsh’s grave – celebration and pseudo mystery
The media firestorm about the secret decoration each year of Lt Walsh’s grave in the Confederate section of Oakwood cemetery was a hoot to watch, since the “decorator” is a beloved private historian who has performed rituals in City Cemetery and performed last rites for bridges quite out in the open for all these many years. I certainly won’t tell you his name. But I joined a group of almost two dozen people at 4 pm on April 13 to listen to the history and context of this particular grave marker. We heard anecdotal history and a reading of the only eyewitness account from the time: the statement of Millie Henry, a ten year old servant girl. If Lt Walsh’s celebration reaches it’s twentieth year next year, and this blog reaches its first, I will post that text next April 13.
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The Oakwood gathering segued into a wonderful party in Oakdale with freshly shelled black-eyed peas and barbeque, both cooked in cast iron over a fireplace made that day out of loose brick. There was some wonderful meeting and greeting, but rather than gossip about it I will share some more graveyard images – some favorites from City Cemetery, where my Walsh friend used to hold candlelight readings of Poe. Truly local and genuine rituals – one of the things that makes Raleigh what it is.
Grimanesa Amoros
This in my inbox – an international art fair to “give visibility to the Caribbean art world.” Participant Grimanesa Amoros was a resident artist at Artspace several years ago. She was making paper then, for a wonderful kind of seaweed documentary I will get back to sometime, but she really does whatever in the world she needs to do in order to create art in the most fantastic and sometimes unlikely venues. The one below was visible each day to certain New York City commuters, from the MTA Metro North platform, as well as people walking the Harlem streets below. Commisioned by real estate developer Eugene Giscombe for the Lee Building at 125th Street and Park Avenue, the installation was inspired by “his passionate interest in exotic, wild animals, and Harlem itself.” Check out the video to get a better idea.
The installation was created by projecting colored lights in a deliberate, looped sequence, controlled by a computer onto rear projection screens covering large windows. Over-sized silhouettes of animals made of foamboard, painted black create moving shadows in the windows. The sequence begins just before sunset and ends just before sunrise. The lighting controller calculates these astronomical events based on the location of New York City (40° 46’N x 73° 58’W) and its five time zone west difference from Greenwich /Mean Time.
June 3 – June 8, 2008
Both 205
Uferstrasse 80
CH-4057 Basel, Switzerland
Moore Square history project
I got to spend some time Thursday with that great art lady, Lee Moore, as she worked with students at the Moore Square Museum Magnet middle school. The students learn about the history of the area around their downtown school and then create art and documentation, which is displayed in local storefronts. This day they were preparing collage images for tiles, some of which will be used in an outdoor installation. I will be folllowing this admirable project ( http://www.cam.ncsu.edu/programs-educational-moore.html ) and hopefully posting at RDUwtf about Lee and her myriad inputs into Raleigh culture.
Welcome to Raleigh Rambles (under construction!)
This is the highly impulsive but long contemplated start of a personal blog after joining one as an arts writer and starting one as a nature writer. I’ve been wanting a wide open space to throw things up, and today I wanted to toss up this size 72! Epistemology, Noam Chomsky, Coleridge, SF and much much more will surely follow.
I just posted at RDUwtf about Rodney Marsh’s new space on Person Street. This is a photo that didn’t run in the post – so I had to share it here. Size 72!
Marsh Woodwinds has some very interesting spaces upstairs from the music shop.
raleighrambles.com
portrait by Guillermo Velasco
