In addition to information about the sculptures, the stone workers who made them and where each stone face can be found, my book also contains four interviews with men who shared a passion for these anonymous works of art. Ivan Karp founded The Anonymous Arts Recovery Society and saved countless sculptures from certain destruction, some of which he donated to The Brooklyn Museum. Chris Pelletieri was the Sculptor in Residence at St. John the Divine and works today with many of the same tools stone workers used over a century ago.
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G Augustine Lynas (dubbed "The King of Ephemera" by the New York Times) adds clay sculptures of his own to the facade of his residential building on the Upper West Side, welcoming their accelerated aging as part of his public art. Randall Dana salvaged literal tons of ornamental art and sculptures from buildings due to be demolished in 1970's while still in his teens, a young man with an unusual passion.
Found below is a small sampling from each of their personal stories, extracted from the interviews I conducted. |
*Photos courtesy of the family of Ivan Karp.
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Excerpt from My Interview with Ivan Karp
AB: So, can you tell me about how the Anonymous Arts Recovery Society came in to being?
IK: After I came out of the army in early 1947, I did not have a clear destination in my life. I had no clear objective except for writing fiction and I never had any schooling or much practice in doing it but I started describing little parables. Writing two sentences was always much easier than writing the full story. Trying to find my destination, I wandered the streets and I was on the GI 52-20 club. You got 20 dollars a week for 52 weeks just for having been in the service. So I sustained myself on that and my family was receptive to my wanting to live on that for a while. I used to wander the streets through a lot of the old parts of the city. They were fascinating to me as they might be to anybody who was a city dweller, a person who like myself who came out of the very grit of Brooklyn, you know. And I came upon a demolition site and there on the ground, during the excavation, was a terra cotta casting of a cherub's head. And I looked up, and the wrecking was going on and it was a vigorous, tumultuous scene. And I said to myself "They're just letting this stuff fall" because there were other terra cotta ornamental pieces on the ground also smashed to pieces. Apparently, this one had managed to survive its fall somehow. AB: The piece was already on the ground? IK: Yes. So I picked it up and I carried it home. I thought there must be more stuff falling... (laughs) that has merit, as objects of art in fact, all over the city. So I started seeking out other demolition sites and I got myself a shopping cart so I could transport the pieces that I found, and I kept finding pieces like that. And I recruited other unemployed friends like myself who just came out of the service, 2 or three friends that I had, got them involved with me, doing it, borrowed a car to transport the objects. AB: Could you explain what motivated you to choose the term “anonymous?” IK: The anonymous arts. None of the objects, none of them have the names of the artists on them. There were no inscriptions. We never found them. All we have is a numbering system for a location for the piece in a certain part of the building. They were numbered for where they were supposed to go, but that’s all we ever found. We never found an inscription on any of them! And we’re talking about thousands of stones. It’s possible some of the numbers or lettering on them would designate the company, the modeling shop, the place where they were made but I never found a person’s name on them. They may be somewhere in some mysterious place. You haven’t seen them being taken off a building, right? AB: No, I never did, but what I seem to have learned so far in my research is that little to no information exists anymore about the stone workers. IK: Right. Anonymous arts! |
Excerpt from My Interview with Chris Pellettieri
CP: I think that reason why you, and Ivan Karp, and a lot of people responded to the curious idiosyncrasies was because it was coming direct from the creative person without being filtered through layers of approval, as opposed to something which was from a major commission or a really important building like the customs house, or the public library or the Metropolitan Museum of Art where it could still have some personality to it but it would be very… well. For instance something like a face being symmetrical. You won't see things like asymmetry or weirdness of anatomy on those buildings. But you will see that on these lower budget carvings because no one was going to reject something that they didn't pay that much for. Maybe, I mean, that's my assumption.
AB: That makes a lot of sense. I know it was true for Ivan Karp and it's definitely true for me that the ones I find most interesting are the idiosyncratic faces that really look like they came from something that was in the stone worker's head, or from someone he knew, and part of what makes them so interesting for me is that we'll never know who it was that he had in mind because there are no records of that. CP: In that sense it comes closer to fine art, what we consider fine art today because it's got some more imprint from the creator. But in those days the fine art was more the Daniel Chester French and Rodan… the guy who was focusing on having it come out... really studying it, being less spontaneous. More studied, you know? And the guy doing these keystones was more folk art, he was more a tradesman. You know, like a carver of ship figureheads or something. It was a business. It was an industry. He was a workman, as opposed to being a fine artist. You know, up on a pedestal as an artist. AB: So getting back to the neighborhoods I’ve photographed, I feel like most people know what a Brownstone is, even if they don’t completely understand what that means. CP: Brownstone is a sandstone. There are other kinds of sandstone that are green or tan but what people call Brownstone is a sandstone. People call buildings brownstones because of the design, the stoop and all that stuff. AB: What would you say is the most common stone that people see when they are walking around looking at residential buildings? CP: Probably brownstone. That’s the one that’s got the faces. That’s that… I guess budgetary level. Probably the industry was geared to provide sandstone. I think it was cheap because it was local. Connecticut and New Jersey had sandstone so it was cheap. And transportation many times is the biggest factor. AB: The cost. Sure. Is Sandstone particularly good for that that kind of thing (referring to carving)? CP: No, not really. Not really. AB: Just that they had it available and they had to make that work. CP: Yeah, it’s very abrasive obviously, because you know “sand paper,” “sand stone.” The particles are very abrasive. They dull the steel tools much faster than marble or limestone. |
Chris Pellettieri in his work shop at St John The Divine.
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G Augustine Lynas maintaining his sculptures outside of The Amidon.
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Excerpt from My Interview with G Augustine Lynas
AB: So what drove you to adorn the outside of your building with these wonderful clay sculptures?
GAL: Well I noticed that the capitals on the columns that flanked the doorway and the windows had degenerated over time and been "shmeered," I guess is the New York word, with concrete and that was pretty ugly. And it's a beautiful old building. 1892, lovely details in the stone work although it's been abused for a long time. It was filthy when I moved in, in 1978, and the windows were boarded up and there was a crack den on the first floor. And a terrible fire in 1974 had destroyed this line, the A line (of apartments), and ruined the colonnades, the cornice of the building. But I've always taken pride in where I live and I'm a sculptor. It's my favorite discipline in the arts. And I thought I could probably make those things look more interesting and it occurred to me that I had neither the money, more the time or the inclination, to cast anything or carve anything in stone and try to affix it to the building and I certainly had no permission to do that and I had a rather unfriendly landlord who wouldn't have approved anyway. So I surreptitiously decorated the columns with some of my heroes, like Gandhi and Lincoln and Mother Teresa and Hellen Keller and Einstein. And then I decided that in addition to doing portrait sculpture I would do figures of endangered species so I did the Mountain Gorilla, and Indian Elephant and any of the animal species I could think of. And then I said "Why don't I make up a couple of things, just for fun?" And I noticed that I was making friends with people because I would work "In situ" (a Latin term meaning "in position") and people would stop and talk to me while I was doing it. I started to get to know people in the neighborhood. And I got a reputation and I got jobs and I made friends and it started a whole ball rolling of improvements in the neighborhood. People knew then what I did for a living. They knew my name. I addressed my neighbors by name and it was a real connection to a neighborhood. I became active in the block association. I designed and built some playground sculptures in a local playground in Riverside Park. I rebuilt a kiosk across the street and made a weathervane for it. And I started to do a lot of very public artworks, if you will. I removed the boards that were covering the windows right next to the doorway that made the building look kind of slum-y. I put some white paper over the bricks that are behind the windows and then I glazed the windows and put curtains in there and now it looks like an apartment with people in it. (laughs) Even though if somebody tries to break into the building they'll discover a brick wall behind the glass. And now I kind of owned the neighborhood. I don't really (laughs) but… I worked in a material that was easy to handle and I covered the Plastelina in Liquitex, which is a form of plastic acrylic paint that would seal it so that it wouldn't lose a lot of it's oil and wouldn't evaporate too much and be protected somewhat from the elements. And that first set of clay heads in front of The Amidon lasted about ten years. Then they decided to clean and point the building, the masonry, and when they put up the scaffolding the sculptures suffered tremendously so, they came down. And then I started a whole new series of them. Now there are 38 brand new sculptures which are now about a year and a half old. And it's a way of sketching and playing, and this time instead of doing endangered species and famous people, I did portraits of real animals and I "cartoonified" the people, making kind of a statement about what's happening to the Homo sapien. |
Excerpt from My Interview with Randall Dana
RD: I remember coming home from summer camp in 1973, wandering around via bike and finding the last floors of a demolished building two blocks away on Broadway and Waverly Place. I went exploring the "ruins" and found some interesting artifacts - a couple of fire alarm boxes, an air raid shelter sign and a few other tidbits like that. I also explored construction sites like the Bobst Library and others, but soon the Broadway Central Hotel collapsed that month and I found that as well and explored the building. There I found more fire alarm boxes, boiler gauges, an ornate elevator plate and woodcarvings. From there came the Women's Prison on 6th Avenue. Once I discovered these items existed I started looking more for them, so it started right around then. I guess my interest even earlier in antiques and old things came in use for pushing this further. Finding new pieces was essentially a treasure hunt of sorts, I suppose.
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Randall Dana in one of his many past storage spaces.
*Photo courtesy of Randall Dana. |
AB: I'm still amazed that you had amassed over 50 tons of salvaged items at one point. Can you tell me about how you kept track of what you salvaged and from where, and what you may have come to learn about certain items that may stand out in your memory?
RD: I kept index cards in a file box on every piece, including address, floor and window, and any identifying numbers on the pieces. Back in the 70's there was no internet and there was very little available other than the hall of records to search building information and records, but it was a difficult place to navigate and little help available. You had to get the block and lot number from maps in one room, then go down the hall to the Liber Room and start looking, occasionally I found facade elevation drawings and other information but also later plumbing permits and other useless tidbits. |
AB: Were you able to uncover specific information about any of the stone faces, such as who the original stone workers were, or who a particular face was supposed to represent? RD: Not really, at least till the last year or so. They were anonymously made in factory style production plants and no one signed anything I ever found. Two different books detail two companies - Gladding McBean and American Terra Cotta Co, but other than that there's not much left since most all of the companies were out of business by the 1940's and most of the people involved - deceased. |
Photographs and Content by Alan Bazin © 2021
*except photographs as noted on this webpage
*except photographs as noted on this webpage