{"id":8935,"date":"2018-10-12T01:03:51","date_gmt":"2018-10-12T05:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=8935"},"modified":"2018-12-24T09:44:54","modified_gmt":"2018-12-24T14:44:54","slug":"beck-coral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/10\/12\/beck-coral\/","title":{"rendered":"Giant Coral Reef Arrives In Boston\u2019s Fort Point Channel As Call For Help"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning, if all goes according to plan, an artificial coral reef\u2014conceived by Fitchburg artist Jerry Beck of The Revolving Museum<\/a> and crafted by more than 50 artists, kids and community members\u2014will be towed into place in Boston\u2019s Fort Point Channel, between Summer and Congress streets, where it will live until Dec. 15, or so. Just to be clear this is a floating sculpture of a coral reef, not the under-water kind. [Update Oct. 12 afternoon:\u00a0<\/strong>The floating reef is now anchored in the channel. See the photo above. Later update: However, the artwork soon sank. A revised version was floated in the channel, which, it seems, may have saved the life of a fleeing (alleged) criminal when he jumped into the water to evade police and then clung to the artwork to save himself.]<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m from Hollywood, Florida, and Florida\u2019s reefs are practically all dead now. Great Barrier Reef is 75 percent damaged,\u201d Beck tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like we\u2019ve reached that tipping point where the ocean is dying. And we\u2019re plasticizing everything. It\u2019s in our bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The floating artwork, \u201cCreate Coral Reef,\u201d aims to increase public awareness and promote individual and government action to save the coral reefs worldwide. It was commissioned as part of Fort Point Arts Community<\/a>\u2019s 39th Fall Open Studios from Oct. 12 to 14. Beck plans a related performance on the Congress Street bridge, near the Tea Party boat, from 2 to 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 14.<\/p>\n

[Update Oct. 17:<\/strong> Oh, goodness, the good ship \u201cCreate Coral Reef” has apparently sunk! Beck wrote on Facebook yesterday: “Last night, the Boston Harbor had gale winds reaching up to 75 miles per hour. Several boats capsized included our beloved CREATE CORAL REEF. After talking with TOW BOAT U.S.A, they believed the sailboat couldn\u2019t withstand the strong gusts of wind and fell over. In the next day or two, TRM will be working with the boat towing company to lift it up, pump out the water, and tow it back to the boat launch area to take it to Fitchburg. We will then repair and re-design it for a more stable barge-like vessel.”]<\/p>\n

\"Jerry<\/a>
Jerry Beck with \u201cCreate Coral Reef.” (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Since the early 1980s, Beck has been organizing community projects that have filled vacant lots and city parks around Boston and later Lowell with visionary, carnivalesque art under the banner of his Revolving Museum. The museum began as an occasional, nomadic enterprise, but became an actual place when it occupied a building in Boston\u2019s Fort Point neighborhood in the 1990s and moved to Lowell in the 2000s. But Beck left his museum in 2009\u2014some would argue he was pushed out\u2014and it closed due to a lack of funds in 2012.<\/p>\n

Beck served as the marketing and community engagement director for the Fitchburg Art Museum from 2011 to \u201913 and spent half a year as economic development director for the city of Fitchburg. Then as the board wound down the Revolving Museum, they offered the nonprofit back to him, and he launched it again.<\/p>\n

His most recent Revolving Museum escapade was an attempt to build the world\u2019s largest paper airplane<\/a>. Hundreds of volunteers helped assemble it. In June, a crane hoisted the aircraft\u201464-feet and 6-inches long of corrugated cardboard papered with artworks\u2014several feet up into the breeze at Fitchburg Municipal Airport.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cCreate<\/a>
\u201cCreate Coral Reef.” (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cCreate Coral Reef\u201d is a side project of a bigger project in which Beck aims to create a 60-foot-wide sculpture of a manta ray and sink it beneath the waters off Florida to serve as the foundation for growing coral. Coral has been on his mind, inspired in part by his wife\u2019s name\u2014Coraly Rivera\u2014and partly by news reports of the massive die-off of coral around the world.<\/p>\n

For the Fort Point commission, Beck went looking for a boat and bumped into Cliff Clark, an editor at the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise newspaper, who by chance was mulling parting with his 22-foot-long sailboat. Beck convinced him to donate the boat and trailer to the cause. Florida friends donated aluminum that was sculpted over the cabin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had that boat and a trailer and we\u2019ve been building on top of it. We\u2019ve been collecting trash and pollution from our neighborhood,\u201d Beck says. \u201cWe took all to that stuff and we started tape-wrapping it and looking at different types of coral.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beck and his collaborators turned the tape and recycled materials into an encrustation of coral tubes and tentacles in shades or yellow, blue, red and green. Solar-powered LED lights illuminate it at night. The sculptures rise some 14 feet above the waterline. \u201cWe have to go at low tide to go under the bridges,\u201d Beck says.<\/p>\n

The thing is another 4 feet taller when he puts a sign with a poem in the arms of a 10-foot octopus on top. Beck says, \u201cIt\u2019s our kind of poetic way to make public art and have activism at the center of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u201cCreate<\/a>
\u201cCreate Coral Reef.” (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\u201cCreate<\/a>
\u201cCreate Coral Reef.” (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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This morning, if all goes according to plan, an artificial coral reef\u2014conceived by Fitchburg artist Jerry Beck of The Revolving Museum and crafted by more than 50 artists, kids and community members\u2014will be towed into place in Boston\u2019s Fort Point Channel, between Summer and Congress streets, where it will live until Dec. 15, or so. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8953,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,100,105],"tags":[37,446,447,448],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8935"}],"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=8935"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9741,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8935\/revisions\/9741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}