Podcast Transcript

Barbara Saint Clair
Hello and Welcome to Arts in the podcast produced by creative Pinellas. I'm Barbara St Clair, your host, and I'm here with Douglas Kornfeld, who is a public artist. And for those people who might be listening in the Pinellas County area or the Tampa Bay area, you might be very familiar with one of his works, which is called Face the Jury. It's nicknamed the red chairs, and it's located in front of the county courthouse in St Petersburg, FL. Let's just jump right in with the red chairs, because there's a wonderful story.

Douglas Kornfeld
Yes, the piece was inspired by me actually sitting on a jury for 13 days. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I enjoyed it. It was very captivating. It was very interesting. And during the trial, you're not allowed to talk with anyone about the proceedings, so I would go home at night, and I was married at the time, I had to bite my tongue. I couldn't say anything. And so, when the trial finally ended, I was just gushing about how wonderful of an experience sitting on a jury is, and how meaningful it is and how interesting it was. And I went on and on and on and on and on. And my wife got sick of listening to me, and she finally said, Look, you know, enough, go do some art about it. And two years later, I was named a finalist for the project here in St Petersburg at the Judicial Center. I came up with this piece, and it's 12 monumental sized chairs. Each one is unique, and each one is inspired by a person who I sat on the jury with. When I was designing them, I literally tried to close my eyes and bring myself back to the jury room, where we sat and deliberated and argued and made friends and made enemies and so forth over the two days of deliberation. And so each chair has a distinct personality, inspired by the jury that I sat with. So what kind of trial was it? It was very complicated. There was a gentleman who was in charge of a parking garage that had a lot of cash at the end of each evening. He was hurt in a robbery, and he sued because the guards left every night at 10 o'clock, and they didn't lock up and count the receipts till 1030! He was severely hurt and suffered brain damage and so forth. He sued the city who contracted the guards. I thought it was all cut and dried, but there was four or five people who said, No, he doesn't deserve any money, including, I'm so sad to say, the woman that I made friends with, she was the sweetest person. She brought cookies every day. I consider her my buddy, and one of my favorite chairs in the installation is designed with her in mind, and she just wouldn't come around. And it took us two days to finally get a majority. So that was my experience, and it was, it was wonderful in a weird way.

Barbara Saint Clair
So how did you translate a personality or the way somebody looked, or whatever it was that you used to trigger it? How did you translate that into these metal objects and each chair looks very different?

Douglas Kornfeld
Well, for example, this woman, she was very proper dressed, very nice. You know, people would come in just slovenly dressed, and she was always in a suit, and her hair was made up, and she brought homemade cookies every day. I thought of her as sitting in front of a vanity in the morning when in front of a big mirror, sort of making herself pretty. And so that chair came out of that. Then there was a guy never said two words the whole deliberation. He just sat off to the side, and he became like the most generic of the chairs. And I put him in the very back of the installation, another was inspired by a very large man who was really a great guy, very funny, and always saying nice things and funny things. I made a very large, squat, massive structure that would support him, almost like a sumo wrestler. That's what I thought of in my mind when I was designing it.

Barbara Saint Clair
Which chair is you?

Douglas Kornfeld
The Doug chair? Yes, it's, similar to a Breuer chair, originally designed by a German architect, if you face the installation, it's on the extreme right, closest to the street, and I think there's a picture of me sitting on it on my website. So and why is that? You? I don't know, at the time, it seemed right. I did this piece in 2006 I believe. I'm just so thrilled that it's been so well received by the city. I mean, I just keep hearing over and over again from people who people do like it and interact with it

Barbara Saint Clair
It has kind of a playground feel.

Douglas Kornfeld
That was very intentional. Each chair sits on its own mound of grass. When I arrived at the site, it was. Flat, dead flat. And so I sculpted a mound for each chair that was kind of symbolic. Every juror was autonomous and had their own vote and their own personality. So, each mound is slightly different shape and size, and as each person was a different shape and size, but one thing they all had was they all have an unobstructed view of a very generic chair that sits on the corner of the site. That's the only chair that's normal size. The juror chairs are all very large, and I call them monumental, but the defendant chair is on the corner of the site, and if you sit there, you have an unobstructed view of all the juror chairs which the defendant did, have an unobstructed view of all of us. So it's it was me trying to describe the American judicial system without being too didactic and playful. Of course, I love that, and I wanted people to climb on them. I wanted people to play with them. And people came out of the woodwork just as soon as we were installing them, and climbed on them and put their kids on them and so forth.

Barbara Saint Clair
That's one of the things that's I think, is when public art is really doing the work that public art can do, that you have the freedom to touch it and be with it. You know, I've gotten my hands slapped literally more than once in a museum. Oh, yes, environment, you know, you're not supposed to touch things, even in cases where sometimes the artist wanted you to. Yes, the you know, the museum proctors are not, not necessarily on board. So I think it's a real freedom for people, and can be great pleasure to, you know, to hug the art, or climb on the art, or, well, yeah, stones on the art, or whatever it is you want to.

Douglas Kornfeld
And also, the public has paid for this. They own it. I mean, it's their tax money that has paid the bill for this. And when you do public art, you know the first question they ask you, when they're trying to decide who to choose for the project. Will it stand up to, the public, can it be damaged? Do we have to maintain it? You have to make things very robust and very strong. I use steel. I want to encourage people to touch it and to interact with it. And they do. And I take great pleasure from that. It's, it's different from a museum. I would never touch a work of art in a museum, but public artist is a different animal.

Barbara Saint Clair
So how did you become a public artist? Or why? Maybe thats the better questions.

Douglas Kornfeld
I'm still asking myself that question. It wasn't deliberate and it wasn't premeditated. It was circumstances. I was originally, a long time ago, trained in college, as a landscape architect. I practiced that for a few years out of school, and I enjoyed it very much. A great job. However, back then, back in the olden days, before there were computers, you had to draw your designs with pencil on paper. There was no computer to render it for you. And I wanted to improve my drawing, so I went to night classes to just take life drawing and add to my skills as a draftsman, and I was incredibly fortunate to have a teacher who changed my life. I went to him saying, just teach me how to draw a person. And he went, No, we don't do that. Let me teach you about art. And I said, I don't want to do art. I just want to draw a person. And he was very patient and stuck with me and got me to think about things as an artist. And three years later, I quit my job and I started drawing and painting full time and going to school full time at the Museum School in Boston. And then I painted for many, many years, not very successfully. I was never a great painter. I went to grad school and made paintings in grad school, but those were the last paintings I made. While there I got interested in using a computer, the Apple computer had just come out, and I started fooling around with that, and I started designing images using the computer and putting these images into space, you know, using a brand new software back then, which was called Photoshop.

Barbara Saint Clair
I know, it was earth shaking.

Douglas Kornfeld
It was amazing. It was magic. And I used that, and I started putting my images into real space. I would go to a place, I would take a picture of it, and then I would make an image in Photoshop or using various software, and then I would collage it into the space so it looked real. In fact, back then, people didn't know Photoshop, so they go, Oh, wow, you did that. That's amazing. And I go, Oh no, no, this is a computer rendering. But back then, people just didn't know. Now you can't fool people like that. So I started doing that, and then one curator saw something I did and said, Why don't you apply for this sculpture exhibition? The honorarium is not very much. You get, four or $500 to do a piece. And I said, Well, I'm not really a sculptor, and I don't really want to do it. And he goes, Listen, I'm the only juror. You'll get in. And I went, Oh, okay, so I, I took the money and I did a piece and I installed it, and it wasn't anything that made anybody that impressed, but it was the first piece I did, and the curator liked it. And then I did more. I kept taking pictures of places and then putting my images into these places using Photoshop and showing them around, and and then the same curator said, oh, you should apply for this project done in Providence. They give you $2,000 to do a piece. Back then that was, Wow, a lot of dough! So I agreed to do it. And I mocked it up using Photoshop and so forth. And then I sent that as my application, and at the very end, you had to submit a budget, and I had, $100 left over in the budget, and I wrote: burgers and beer for My crew. Those going to help me put it up? My friends Said, “Oh, don't put that in there. They won't take that. They won't like that.” And I said, Well, if he doesn't have a sense of humor about this, then I don't even want to do it. Turned out that was one of the deciding factors that made the guy who ran that competition like me and gave me the commission. And that was a big piece, and I did it. And so then I started submitting slides, back then there was no digital images. I took pictures of my projects, and I would apply for other things. These made up my portfolio, I added these to the digital renderings that weren't real projects. And I just kept applying and applying and applying, and eventually I got a permanent project. Took a lot of rejections. I still get a lot of rejections, but I sort of stumbled into something that I literally never expected to do and didn't even know about i. If you had told me about public art back then, I What's that? You know I don't even know about it. Well…..

Barbara Saint Clair
I think most people would have answered, you know, a guy on a horse on a plinth,

Douglas Kornfeld
Yes, yes! Back then, yes. I had to apologize for the things I did back then, because people thought of public art as a horse with George Washington sitting on it. And I would go, No, that's not, what I'm interested in. And they go, Well, what do you do? And I would explain it. And and I remember one woman looked at my images, and she said, Oh, You use a computer for this, right? And I go, yeah. She goes, Oh, I don't like computer art. And I went, Oh, what do you do? She goes, Oh, I'm a writer. And I go, Oh, I don't like typewriter art. And she stopped cold, and she said, Well, the typewriter doesn't write my stories. I said, well, the computer doesn't make my images. And, that was a big moment for me and for her, I don't think if I was starting out now that I would, be able to break into it. Now there's so much more competition. There's, oh, my goodness, it's very hard to get a commission. These days, I apply for somewhere between 50 and 100 projects every year, and in a good year, I am made finalists for maybe two or three projects, if I'm lucky, if it's a good year, and if it's a very good year, I am selected to build one of them. So I, I get 1% and I'm, I'm pretty proud of that 1% it's, it's challenging, it's very challenging, but very rewarding. I mean, my chairs, for example, here in St Pete, more people will see that piece than anybody who goes to a museum, sure. I mean, 1000s drive by it every day, whether they look at it or know about it, but they see it, and that's an incredible influence you have over the public. You have a huge audience. You have a huge opportunity to communicate with people who may never, ever go into a museum.

Douglas Kornfeld
You know, a lot of public art is selected to decorate. I choose not to do that for me, public art is a message in a bottle. What does that mean? It means we we do it and we sort of throw it out there into the world, and it will be here long after I'm gone, long after. It's made out of steel, if it's even reasonably protected, it might be here in 100 years. So what are these people in 100 years gonna think? They're gonna think, Well, what did they think was important 100 years ago when they gave their treasure to an artist to make a piece of art? For me, I want people to think about what we were doing with ourselves and our ideas, what we thought was important.

Barbara Saint Clair
So you said something as you were talking about going to your drawing class that I really wanted to come back to because I thought it was so interesting. You told this teacher, I just want you to teach me how to draw a person or a thing or whatever. And he said, No, I want to teach you how to think about things as an artist. What does it mean to think about things as an artist?

Douglas Kornfeld
That's That's the ultimate question. Yeah, artists are magicians. We really are. Think about it when, when I used to do a drawing or a painting, and I would hang it up, maybe in a gallery and try and sell it. I didn't sell too much. But the first thing somebody would say, Will you sign it? And I, of course, I'll sign it. And you think, Well, why do I need to sign it? It's like, it's like the laying on of your hand. Touching that piece made it authentic without that signature. It just wasn't real. But by touching it, I transformed it from a piece of canvas or a piece of paper with some scratchy marks on it or some paint on it, into an object that someone treasured and was willing to fork over real money for. But you have to give them something more than just a piece of canvas or a piece of paper with scratch marks on it. What do you put on that piece of paper? You try and show them something that causes them to think differently. I taught figure drawing for many, many, many years, and I tried to teach like my teacher, Bill Flynn taught me, I would always say to my students: We're not here to make pictures of naked people. That's what the internet is for. What we're here to do is look at things and show them in a new way and get people to think differently when they look at it, when you show somebody something that they already know, that doesn't change them. So Bill taught us to look at a figure, a man or a woman, or an object or whatever we were drawing, and change it. Make it ours. Make it what we see. What I see as an artist that's different than the what you see? I had another teacher. He said the role of the artist is to manipulate the viewer and manipulate in a good way, not in a bad way, but to get them to think differently, to get them to see your way, your vision, your way of doing something. And if you're successful, they they see things differently after that, you know, they walk around go, Oh, I saw a painting of something, and it looks so different than the real thing. And why and what? What am I seeing, New an artist, who looks at the world and processes it and spits it out in some new way, in sculpture and drawing and painting and film and dance in music in a way that's different, and we we take it as an audience and hopefully get ideas from it. And sometimes we're just entertained, sometimes we're amused, sometimes we're upset. You do a painting or a drawing or an image, I'm a visual artist, and people think, oh, that's that's depressing. And respond to that: how many emotions do you have? Is everything joyful and pretty, if you love someone dearly, is that the only way you can see them? What about when they do something to hurt you, or when they pass away or something. Don't you feel sad? There's a myriad of emotions and ideas that come to you about things, and I think the artist’s job to show you those possibilities and get you to think about you.

Barbara Saint Clair
“Face, the Jury” is quite different than much of your other work.

Douglas Kornfeld
It's very specific to that site and to that building and to how I was thinking at that time. A lot of what I'm doing now are figures, but not figures in a realistic sense. They're very angular, they're semi abstracted, they're made of steel tube. They're not round and soft and cuddly, but I try to put them in poses or in ways that are iconic. In Memphis my figures are dancing, or they’re inspired by dancing, they're joyful, they're playful, and they're fun. They're not super serious, but they're to make you feel joyful movement. and And what was interesting, as I was presenting these to the jury in Memphis, I had the computer renderings, of course, and someone said, “Oh, they're Jukin. And I went, what’s that? Well, I didn't say that, but in my mind, I went, what does that mean? Turns out that in Memphis hip hop dance, there's a style of hip hop dance that is called Jukin, J, U, K, I, N, like jukebox. I don't know what the origin of the word, but this is what they said. They said, “they're, they're Jukin.” And I went, Oh yes, yes, of course. And they go, they loved it! So I have four figures that are various hip-hop or dance positions, two and two in two different spots. They appear to be dancing with each other, or next to each other, and they communicate “Jukin’” to the locals. They would communicate just dance, to the rest of us, who might wander by, who are not from Memphis, but they're playful. I never get tired of this. I come up with an idea, and somebody pays me to do that, and and they give me thousands of dollars. I don't get to keep much of it. Most of it goes into the materials and the fabrication and the contractors and so forth, but I get a little at the end. But what's most important is I get my vision built in the world. I don't have children. These are what will remain of me when I'm gone and I I'm thrilled and honored and excited and delighted, and that's the reward it takes forever. It's very involved, but it's worth it.

Barbara Saint Clair
I certainly didn't realize for the longest time that a lot of people doing public art create the design and then work with in sort of in collaboration with structural engineer and fabricators and contractors to pour cement, and that many public artists come up with a design and the idea, and then they almost become project managers.

Douglas Kornfeld
That's the word. That's the word I, it's funny. I, you know, I have pictures of all my projects on my phone, and be at a bar, at a party, or, you know, whatever, meet somebody, you know, a friend or whatever. And they say, What do you do? And I go, I'm an artist. And they say, Oh, can you do pictures? And I show it to them. They go, Oh, my goodness, you must have a studio that's just gigantic! I did something recently in San Antonio that's 35 feet tall. And I go, No, no, you don't understand. I don't build these I don't have the machinery or the factory wherewithal to do it. Rather I conceptualize it, I design it, very much like an architect. The architect doesn't build the building. They're not out there with their hammer putting the nails in or pouring the concrete. They design the building, and then what do they do? They hire engineers to help make sure it doesn't fall down, and then they hire people to assemble the materials. Then they hire people to install it, and so forth, and, in the end I’m a project manager, marshaling, the various resources I need to make it happen. It's quite an endeavor to do it with the money you have, and then please your boss, which is a city or a public arts administrator or a community, make sure they're on board. And then do it on a budget. And with public art, if you go over budget, they don't give you more money. You have to do it on the budget that they give you. So I wear many hats, and I get a lot of help in everything.

Barbara Saint Clair
And do you have a team that you work with most of the time?

Douglas Kornfeld
I've worked with a same structural engineer for many of my projects. I have a fabricator that I have used for a number of projects that I'm very happy with. But when I go to a city like Memphis, I have to hire a local contractor who, unless I've done a project in Memphis before, I've never worked with.

Barbara Saint Clair
So how do you find the right person?

Douglas Kornfeld
It's scary. Yeah, I lose a lot of sleep worrying about this. I, in Memphis, I went to the architect of the housing development, and I asked Who built this? The architect said go see this guy, And I so I called him up and he asks what do I sculpt? And they don't know. Contractors are very fearful of working with me because they have no prior experience with something I design. If you want to build a house. They’ve built houses before. They know what bathrooms are. They know what doors are. Show them a 14 foot high stainless steel dancer. They go, yeah, oh, wow!? Then when it's all done and they get it, then they love you, because, you know they put pictures of it up in their offices, and workmen take pictures and show it to their girlfriends, and everybody is like, oh, yeah, this is so cool. But, you know, getting to that day when it's done, yeah, is very challenging. And then a big truck arrives on site with my sculptures on a pallet. It's an experience! We'll tear the plastic off the pallets, and we will have a big crane that will then lift these up into the sky, which, this is the exciting part. I mean, this is, what you live for. And they lower them onto, the anchor bolts, set just right, so that they fit into the plates. And then you bolt it on, and you you're done, and you're like, Oh, my God, it's there. It's mine. I did that. And you look at it, and you go, my God, you know it really came out. And I, I'm always amazed. I mean, I know what it looks like. I know, intimately, what every detail is about. But when you see it in real life, bolted to the ground with people standing next to it, right? It is, I'm the luckiest guy on Earth. I mean, it's my work. It's me up there for the next 100 years.

Barbara Saint Clair
So I want to talk to you about New Orleans, oh, because you have a project there that seems to me to really be wonderful example of public art and social good, and also it's got a business purpose, so to speak.

Douglas Kornfeld
It's a unique project. The idea for it came about. Because of hurricaine Katrina, terrible tragedy. I think 3000 people died in New Orleans because they couldn't get out of the city. They were stuck there, and when the waters receded, the city said, we're not letting this happen again! And a group of people got together that named themselves evacuteers, and it was just some kids. I mean, they were like, 20 years old, and they made signs, you know, had printed up these traffic signs, similar in size to a no parking sign. They put them in 17 locations in New Orleans, saying this is where you come if you need a ride out of town. When the mayor calls for mandatory evacuation, we will have busses here waiting for you. Well, these signs, nobody saw them. Their intentions were great. The whole thing was a great idea, but what to do? So, they wrote grants, and they got enough money to have a competition for a sculpture that would be an icon that would be placed in these 17 locations around New Orleans that would give you the idea that this is where you come to get a ride. And my design was, well, we all take Ubers now, but once upon a time, in the olden days, you stood on the sidewalk and you raised your hand to the air and you gestured and a cab would pull over. It's a universal gesture. Nobody taught us how to do it. They do it in Asia, they do it in Europe, they do it in Africa, they do it in South America, everywhere. It's the universal way of hailing a cab. Well, that's how you get a ride, right? So I designed a figure that's hailing a cab, and I went and I presented, and in the middle of my presentation, I literally stood up and I assumed the pose of the sculptures for the jury, and I said, this is what you do when you want to hail a cab. And a juror said, not in New Orleans, that's what you do when you want somebody to throw you beads at Mardi Gras. And I realized, I hit the jackpot, because not everybody needs a ride out of New Orleans. In case of mandatory evacuation, most people have their own transportation, have a car, have ways out of town. But everybody in New Orleans goes to Mardi Gras. Everybody and I mean, everybody. I knew I had won the competition! So yes my figure is asking for a ride, but even more importantly, its asking for beads at Mardi Gras. And they have a tradition that’s starting to happen where, in various neighborhoods where these figures are located, they get dressed up, they get decorated for Mardi Gras. Yeah, the locals, have adopted each figure that is so cool. And then I got the highest honor awarded to anyone in New Orleans. On the first Mardi Gras after these were installed, one of the Crews, people who get together and build floats for Mardi Gras, copied one of my statues in paper mache, very nice job, by the way, and mounted it at the front of their float holding a cocktail. And so there was my sculpture, on the front of a float, paraded down Canal Street in New Orleans for Mardi Gras! Somebody told me, if you get lampooned in a float, that's it, you've died and gone to heaven. So that's really something. And every year at hurricane season, they have drills, and they set up tents at these sculptures, and they publicize it, and they have hundreds and hundreds of kids volunteering, and this is now part of the landscape,

Barbara Saint Clair
and I think that that moves me so much, going to get an artist to make something that people will connect with emotionally……

Douglas Kornfeld
And, very importantly, is I didn't want to frighten someone, right? You know, hurricanes are scary. What they do to New Orleans is terrifying, yeah, but I wanted people to see these sculptures and go, Oh, that's where I get a ride. But not, Oh, my God, that means we're all gonna die. I mean, no, they're not scary, they're friendly, they're figurative. You understand them immediately. Also, Mayor Landrieu, the mayor at the time, named them as official symbols of the city of New Orleans at the dedication. And and so. I also made a pin,an exact replica of the sculpture in a pin size, that you wear on a on your shirt. I made 300 Of them, that we distributed to all the bus drivers of New Orleans. We worked with the Transit Union, and it was officially deemed part of their uniform. So, never again will I have a project like this. It's unique. It's, it's, part of the city. It's everywhere you go. Also, , they're functional. They're doing a job. But, you know, so there's 17 because there's 17 evacuation locations. But I also have this sense, the 17 sculptures are connecting the community in another way too, because it's the same sculpture in 17 different places, and it's only in New Orleans, only in New Orleans, And since then they raised more money, and they're now lit at night. And that was a very expensive thing to bring electricity and lighting to each one of these, and because they're not in easy spots to bring wiring to, but they they got local businesses to donate. they're part of the landscape. Hurricane force winds will not damage them or move them. They will be there forever. I hope to god they're never used, but maybe they might be someday, they will save lives. Yeah, and there's not a lot of public art that saves lives.

Barbara Saint Clair
a pretty good legacy.

Douglas Kornfeld
So I feel good about that. I'm thrilled

Barbara Saint Clair
Thank you. I think that's a great place to stop. Public art saving lives. I don't think you can do better than that for an ending a conversation. I like that. Yes, that is a good ending. Thank you so very much.

Douglas Kornfeld
It's been a pleasure.

Barbara Saint Clair
I've been speaking with Douglas Kornfeld, public artist, Thank you, Doug. This is Barbara St Clair, and you've been listening to Arts In, also known as, AI, the creative Pinellas podcast, sponsored in part by the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners. Visit St Petersburg Clearwater and the State of Florida Department of Cultural Affairs.

Arts In is produced by Sheila Cowley.