{"id":25166,"date":"2024-06-28T14:00:47","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T18:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=25166"},"modified":"2024-06-29T07:08:02","modified_gmt":"2024-06-29T11:08:02","slug":"duke-riley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2024\/06\/28\/duke-riley\/","title":{"rendered":"Duke Riley Turns Dazzling 19th Century Maritime Crafts Into Fossil Fuel Warnings For Today"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cProud Winner of the Guinness Book of World Records Largest Sailors Valentine in the World,\u201d an 8-foot-tall pattern of radiating flower designs, is the showstopper at New York artist Duke Riley\u2019s exhibition \u201cThe Repatriation of King Skellig M\u00f6r\u201d<\/a> at Praise Shadows Art Gallery in Brookline from May 24 to June 30, 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 19th century, sailor valentines were dazzling patterns of shells glued into wooden boxes, roughly the size of chocolate boxes or game boards, that sailors made on long voyages or bought to give to loved ones when they returned home. Riley assembled his giant octagon from shells, tampon applicators, disposable lighters, plastic syringes, buoy parts and other plastic junk he found washed up at sea. So in Riley\u2019s hands, the sailor valentine becomes about love of the sea and earth and a warning, a dazzlingly beautiful warning, about the plastics that our polluting our waters and lands and, in the form of microplastics, <\/strong>our bodies. All these plastics are, of course, another deadly product of the fossil fuel industry\u2014like global warming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Duke
Duke Riley, \u201cMonument to Five Thousand Years of Temptation and Deception V, VI, VII,\u201d 2022 (left) and \u201cProud Winner of the Guinness Book of World Records Largest Sailors Valentine in the World,\u201d 2024. (Courtesy Praise Shadows Art Gallery)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Riley, who grew up in Boston and studied at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, has fashioned a catchy oeuvre out of history and traditional craft and environmental concern and outdoor adventuring and alluring daredevil wit. He first gained wide notice in 2007, when he constructed a rough wooden replica of a Revolutionary War era submarine and got arrested for driving the thing rather near the ocean liner Queen Mary 2 in New York harbor<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides what Riley calls “the largest sailors valentine in the world,\u201d the Brookline exhibition includes faux \u201cruby glass\u201d and \u201cscrimshaw\u201d scratched onto \u201csingle-use plastic fished out of the waterways of the eastern seaboard,\u201d the gallery says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American version of the ancient art of scrimshaw was mainly a tradition of whalers who engraved sperm whale teeth, walrus tusks, walrus ivory and bone with pictures of patriotic figures, ships, whales, and women. It is believed to have begun in the colonial era and persisted through the 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whales were hunted for oil used for candles and to fuel lamps; baleen used to stiffen corsets, collars and support hooped skirts; and ambergris used in perfumes and sometimes as an aphrodisiac in wines. One of the ingenious ideas floating around in Riley\u2019s work is the way whaling was part of the quest for fuel that continues with today\u2019s devastating fossil fuel industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Duke
Duke Riley, “Three Articles Selected for the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum (No. 403, 319, and 184),” 2024,” painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax. (Courtesy Praise Shadows Art Gallery)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This haunting idea runs through \u201cMonument to Five Thousand Years of Temptation and Deception V, VI, VII,\u201d 2022, two cases of handsomely displayed fishing lures crafted from repurposed plastic junk, and the old timey-style \u201cscrimshaw\u201d that Riley etches onto found plastic bottles and old cassette tapes of music from the 1980s and \u201890s Boston rock scene. Onto the bottles, Riley sketches a sailor weeping at a grave, a couple running to embrace on a dock, lighthouses, mermaids, sperm whales dashing boats. There are also portraits of J. Peter Grace and an Aerovox Co. factory spilling \u201cpolychlorinated biphenyls\u201d (aka toxic PCBs) into the sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAerovox Co and W.R. Grace & Co are two of the culprits responsible for the ongoing pollution and superfund sites at New Bedford Harbor and Woburn, MA,\u201d Riley writes on Instagram. \u201c\u2026Nearly 30 years after that landmark court case ruling that W.R. Grace & Company, Beatrice Foods, and New England Plastics (N.E.P.) in Woburn, MA, were found responsible for the wells that supplied both toxic drinking water and a legacy of cancer to the local community. The sites remain contaminated despite a $21 million cleanup effort. And no one, not even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency which monitors the site as part of the federal Superfund program, knows whether humans are still being exposed to its witch\u2019s brew of chemicals, federal records show.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Duke
Duke Riley, \u201cFive Boston Battleships and Their Accompanying Mascots,\u201d 2024 (left),\nand “Scrimshaw Cassettes Series.” (Courtesy Praise Shadows Art Gallery)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFive Boston Battleships and Their Accompanying Mascots,\u201d 2024, was inspired by a piece of ruby glass in his grandmother\u2019s Cape Cod home, according to the gallery. Vintage souvenir red \u201cruby glass\u201d cups, bottles, saucers, and creamers are displayed on wooden shelves with Riley\u2019s mock-ruby glass made from empty dishwashing soap containers and other discarded plastic bottles that he\u2019s painted red and scratched decorations onto. Including images of Quincy-built destroyers that symbolize the \u201cUnited States\u2019 strident flexing of its Imperialist muscle on nations following the Spanish-American War\u201d (according to the gallery), a sailor at a gravestone, military men, the goat King M\u00f6r, Flaco the owl, parrots, an anchor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRuby glass was one of the first mass produced souvenirs in America,\u201d Riley writes on Instagram. \u201cThey began to flourish at the turn of the last century at a time when working people in the USA first had leisure time and could afford to take vacations and the tourist industry began. It coincided with the expansion of the US Navy and the United States military dominance over the rest of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"From
From Duke Riley, “Five Boston Battleships and Their Accompanying Mascots,” 2024, painted, salvaged plastic, vintage Ruby Glass, vintage carved wood display shelf. (Courtesy Praise Shadows Art Gallery)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The title piece of the exhibition is a display of old news clippings and new letters from Riley to Boston-area museums seeking the whereabouts of Skellig M\u00f6r, a prize-winning goat at the 1905 Puck Fair in Ireland. After the contest, Boston\u2019s Knights of St. Brendan bought the goat, but when that organization splintered, the goat ended up as a mascot on the USS Vermont, built in Quincy. When the goat died in 1909, The Boston Globe headline read: \u201cSkelling M\u00f6r Today Is No More \/ Death Gets the Vermont\u2019s Goat, the Pride of the Navy. \/ Change in Diet From Tin Cans to Steel Hatch Combing Fatal.\u201d The goat was taxidermied and put on display at a Boston museum. Riley wants to know where the dead goat is now. The piece feels like a comical sidetrack into old, weird maritime lore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, occasional newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2024 or the respective creato<\/em>rs.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Duke
Duke Riley, “Proud Winner of the Guinness Book of World Records Largest Sailors Valentine in the World,” 2024, found plastic trash, mahogany frame. (Courtesy Praise Shadows Art Gallery)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Duke
Duke Riley, “No. 418 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum,” 2024, painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax. (Courtesy Praise Shadows Art Gallery)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Duke
Duke Riley\u2019s exhibition \u201cThe Repatriation of King Skellig M\u00f6r\u201d at Praise Shadows Art Gallery in Brookline from May 24 to June 30, 2024. (Courtesy Praise Shadows Art Gallery)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cProud Winner of the Guinness Book of World Records Largest Sailors Valentine in the World,\u201d an 8-foot-tall pattern of radiating flower designs, is the showstopper at New York artist Duke Riley\u2019s exhibition \u201cThe Repatriation of King Skellig M\u00f6r\u201d at Praise Shadows Art Gallery in Brookline from May 24 to June 30, 2024. In the 19th […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[1271,1272,1273,1270,1274,1275],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25166"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25191,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25166\/revisions\/25191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}