The Tears of Things: The Ins And Outs Of Donald Lipski's <i>Doors</i>

May 19, 2007

The Ins And Outs Of Donald Lipski's Doors

by Jerome du Bois

When I first heard about this piece, it was called Scottsdale-O-Scope, and I objected to its inclusion in the competition for a public art piece for the Scottsdale Police Department's forensic unit. It wasn't chosen for that site, but Lipski must be a good lobbyist or have a dedicated local advocate or two, because here it is, larger than life, under another name and with a different slant. Since I could find no drawings or descriptions other than "kaleidoscope" back then, I thought it would be clunky and junky, made up of hundreds of reflective units of small somethings originally created for an unrelated function. It's a Lipski gimmick. More importantly, in those earlier verbal glimpses, there was no mention of the doors at all.

But present reality shows that the inverse is true. Now that the thing is installed, the doors are the main attraction, and the kaleidoscope part is so from hunger that its ribs are showing. This is certainly not what we were led to expect. If you go to the Scottsdale Center for the Arts webpage about this piece, scroll down to the computer image called "Design Concept" and you can see that interior was supposed to be faceted, like being inside a mirror ball or a bug's eye. [Update 6/14/: The drawing is gone, and in its place a photograph a lot like the one at the top here.]

But no. This is what it looks like:

I've been in more visually intriguing elevators. And when you look up (see top photo), it's a pale imitation of crystal blue persuasion. It is not a kaleidoscope except in the thinnest dictionary sense. This was such a letdown for me. Was I supposed to be charmed by the vaunted Peruvian cathedral doors? The hammered steel? The piece looks like it should be placed as the entrance divider for the single-lane in-and-out roads to an exclusive housing development, hiding the utilitarian cameras and desert-brown box of the security office.

"How much did this thing cost?" Catherine asked me.

"Half-million plus," I told her.

After a moment's reflection: "You could buy two pretty good houses outright, and furnish them, for that much money."

I nodded. "Take a look at this," I said. "They skimped on the riveting."

I pointed:

"It's nice hammerwork, that's for damn sure," I said. "These are very handsome doors. But look at the middle boltheads there; they're only spot-welded to the steel, not riveted through the wood, which would make the whole strap more sturdy. And that thin overlap there (lower right in photo) where the two strap-ends meet . . . I don't know, especially with those 'fake' boltheads in the middle --it just looks sloppy."

And one other thing. Cathedral doors --which are not open all the time in the great capitals of Europe as Lipski claims-- are supposed to guard and lead the way to mysteries and mercy and myriad dazzling images of both. If Lipski was aiming that high, he fell far short of his goal. Flat shiny metal sheets do not mystery make. The Doors are as mundane as their quasi-mystical name.

(Better than Scottsdale-O-Scope, though. That's for damn sure.)

Finally, I consider it my media-civic duty to comment about the coverage of this piece --and of course you know I mean the lack of coverage. It was completely installed by April 17th, giving both the Phoenix New Times and the Arizona Republic plenty of time to get a photographer and writer out there in time for the dedication on Saturday, May 12th. Some venues did cover the story, such as the East Valley Tribune, but the two major papers --such as they pathetically are-- completely ignored it. Neither Richard Nilsen nor Kerry Lengel dropped by in time, and not since. As for the NT corral, why would they bother? It's neither stinky-fingered nor skanky, their two principal criteria.

Finally finally, some responsibility of getting the story in the papers must be shared by Valerie Ryan, Media Contact at the Scottsdale Public Art Program. She should have pushed harder.

Finally finally finally, we close the three doors on the subject by saying that everyone involved could have done a lot better. It's a sign of the slackness of the times. When we visited, a couple of days after the opening, in the middle of a weekday, the site was deserted. Nobody was even near it.

Posted by Jerome at May 19, 2007 04:00 PM | TrackBack