Times Union, Albany, NY
UALBANY SCULPTURE DEPARTMENT CARVES OUT NEW CAMPUS SPACE
Sunday, October 20, 2002
ALBANY The window above Chris Cassidy's studio space is smeared with printer's ink, residue from his recent habit of tracing on parchment the arcs of birds that fly by the glass. It's not the kind of stuff you would expect from a sculptor, but then Cassidy, a University at Albany graduate student in art, never expected to be working in a building with windows, much less a brand-new, high-tech facility dedicated to the fine arts.
The $4.2 million Boor Sculpture Studio is just that. It sits on the eastern edge of UAlbany's uptown campus, replacing the off-campus digs that housed the school's sculpture department for the past two decades.
``This building means a tremendous amount for us,'' says JoAnne Carson, who became chair of the school's art department in September. ``Our old rented space on Railroad Avenue was hardly state-of-the-art. It was also far away, and it always felt somewhat marginalized and temporary.''
The 20,000-square-foot Boor is anything but temporary. It features individual foundry, woodshop and bronze-casting facilities, in addition to classrooms and group studios, a media suite, a conference room and a multiuse gallery and presentation space that art professor Edward Mayer, who heads the school's sculpture department, calls ``a test lab for art.''
``It's fantastic what they've done here,'' says Cassidy, a 35-year-old graduate assistant from Philadelphia. Cassidy, who assists Mayer and studio technician Roger Bisbing while working on his own projects, spent plenty of time in the former annex. He says the improvements built into the Boor, including the heavy safety systems and the plentiful natural light, are impressive.
CROSSING OVER
According to Carson, Cassidy's dual interests in traditional, figurative sculpture and more esoteric forms of expression make him the perfect resident of the new space.
``The face of contemporary art is changing dramatically to include a lot of interrelated, crossover disciplines,'' Carson says. ``Artists are jumping from painting to computers to video to sculpture. The way that the Boor building is functioning now already facilitates the students' ability to work in a number of different media.''
``I can't wipe the smile off my face,'' says Mayer during a tour of the Boor, which took two years to build and had an original budget of $3.8 million, almost a half-million dollars below the final tab. ``We're not sharing space with Staples anymore,'' he says, referring to the Railroad Avenue digs.
The creation of the Boor was instigated by Mayer and Bisbing. Mayer, in particular, had a vision of ``a signature building'' that would be safer, cleaner and more suitable for the department's 200 students than the hard-to-get-to annex.
According to Mayer, funds for the building designed by Manhattan-based Perkins Eastman Architects, which has an extensive background in academic buildings, and built by Clifton Park's David Christopher Inc. came predominantly from a university capital campaign and the State University Construction Fund.
The building itself has ``an industrial look,'' according to Mayer, and he's right: Despite its spiffy zinc paneling, it could easily be mistaken for a boiler plant. Much of the work that Bisbing oversees in the foundry and outdoor work yard is industrial as well, and Mayer's woodshop is heavy duty.
The entire building is also wired with high-tech data jacks, and individual areas are fitted with appropriate hook-ups, such as compressed air lines for air hammers in the work yard.
LIGHT AND NEW
Mayer and Bisbing stressed to the architects the value of natural light to artists, so skylights illuminate the foundry, the woodshop and other workspaces. Large windows ring the upper reaches of the one-floor structure at least one of which is now smeared with ink from Cassidy's art-making.
Some equipment, including bandsaws, joiners and lathes for the woodshop, and various modeling tables and platforms, was brought over from the annex, but much of what fills the Boor including the computer systems in the media suite is new.
Faculty and graduate-student offices flank the north and south sides of the building. Bisbing's already has a mezzanine he crafted for himself with tools from the metal shop.
Throughout the studio, the focus is on safety, with up-to-date ventilation systems decorating every major workspace and drawing off hazardous sculptural byproducts, including saw, stone and clay dust, and wax, welding and paint fumes. Some amenities such as student lockers are still on the way, but, according to Mayer, the studio, in operation since the beginning of classes on Sept. 3, is completely functional.
A HAPPY BENEFACTOR
The Boor Sculpture Studio is named for Loudonville sculptor Terri Cosma Boor, who made a generous but unspecified donation to the project.
Boor started her association with the university in 1980, beginning classes two years after the death of her husband, Edward Milan Boor, a former director of the state Department of Motor Vehicles. She became artist-in-residence at the school in 1983, and her gift continues that association.
On Friday, UAlbany President Karen Hitchcock was host of a grand opening in honor of Boor, which included the unveiling of Mayer's bronze bust of the 83-year-old sculptor.
Boor's sculptures are featured on both the uptown campus in the Earth Sciences building and the Performing Arts Center and at the university's School of Public Health in Rensselaer.
``I'm thrilled,'' she says about the naming of the studio, as well as her first visit to the building.
``I walked in with my mentor, Anthony Padovano, from New York City. He's an internationally famous sculptor who has worked all over the world, and he said he'd never worked in a place so beautiful in his life.''
Boor also says she can't wait to work on her current piece a 3-foot, white-marble replica of the sword of Italian unification fighter Giusseppe Garibaldi.
``It's in memory of my Italian grandparents,'' she says. ``My grandfather fought by Garibaldi's side, and my grandmother sewed the golden epaulets for his army.''
She'll need help lifting and chipping at the marble block, but she's come to depend on the aid of undergrads working in the studio that bears her name.
``They'll help me with everything,'' she says. ``They're marvelous.''