The piece of public art being installed at Crane Point Museum in Marathon was conceived almost five years ago, and then installed in Brooklyn four years ago. In 2017, it was dismantled and prepped to be shipped to the Keys as part of the Florida Keys Sculpture Trail. And then came Irma.
Now, the artist is working in Marathon on its resurrection.
“I think that’s the happiest part of this whole project,” said Jamie Emerson. “When it was installed in 2016, it was never completed. There were four columns missing, for example. And the site’s railings covered up all of the interior artwork and required a notch in the structure itself. So, it was like it never got born all the way and now it is.”
To celebrate this fact, Emerson is even renaming the piece. In Brooklyn, New York, it was “Bridges.” In the Keys, it will become “The Red Nun.” The name was suggested to Emerson by a passerby as he was working on it next to Marathon’s busiest intersection.
“The man told me that Red Nun is a navigational term — the floating red markers have a peaked top,” he said. “It’s part of the ‘red, right, returning’ mnemonic.”
Emerson hails from Atlanta, originally, then New York City, where he was a part of the collaboration between the New York Parks Department and the Arts Student League to install public works of art. The Florida Keys Council of the Arts, with the support of local philanthropist John Padget, acquired a batch of the sculptures and transported them to the Keys. Emerson’s is the last-but-one to be installed.
“Everyone is already talking about this,” said Charlotte Quinn, the director of the Crane Point Museum. “We’re getting a lot of interest.”
The artist has the help of his dad, Bob Emerson, and said his support is essential. The help is both physical (a dad with power tools!) and psychological. Emerson uses words like irrational and unlikely to describe the project and its route from inspiration to the second installation.
The inside of the sculpture is painted with a cityscape mural, depicting different scenes, from a man standing underneath a lamp to group outings. Emerson’s roommate is in there; so is his ex-girlfriend.
The paintings on the bottommost part of the triangle are special.
“You have to get close to see it, at the right level, but all those characters have really long legs. They had to, because the viewer’s position in the center forshortens the image,” Emerson said.
He’s able to look back at his work and compare it to his current projects.
“My education with the Arts Student League was very traditional. Since then I’ve moved into performance, puppetry, set design, while still painting, drawing and sculpting. But I think that all ties into this type of art. I can create it, but it takes people to complete the loop. Through use, it becomes alive.”
While the structure is reinstalled and sturdy, including a new foundation, Emerson will begin the work of repairing years of dis-use. Some pieces need to be re-stuccoed and repainted. The outside will turn red again. And the people will come.
