Ann Reichlin
Translucent Home (2008)
House foundation, steel, steel lath, and debris netting

I have been working on the same abandoned house site at 914 Whitesboro Street in Utica, New York, for the past ten years. My project began during a residency at Sculpture Space when I first made Insert (1998), a large stainless-steel wall wedged into the house. Exploring the transient light penetrating the cracks in its walls, I created Solitary View (2001) inside of the boarded-up house. After it became structurally unstable and was eventually demolished, I built Translucent Home (2008) in relationship to the remaining stone foundation. Mimicking the size and volume of the torn-down house, Translucent Home is constructed from square steel tube, angle iron, reinforcement rod, translucent steel mesh, and debris netting. Depending on how the mesh interacts with light, the structure can at times seem solid, at other times fragmented, sometimes dense, and sometimes hollow.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the small city of Utica thrived with factories, the Erie Canal, and the railroad, but since the 1960s its population has dwindled dramatically. Numerous houses have been abandoned and destroyed. When I first moved to the area in 1997, Utica was fighting arson by demolishing many of these houses. Now only a few structures within the vicinity of Translucent Home still remain standing.

Ann Reichlin
Solitary View (2001)
Abandoned house interior, steel lath, wood

In Translucent Home I wanted to capture that state between falling apart and building, that tension between what was and what might be. I’m fascinated by the idea of potential embedded in the states of abandonment, demolition, and buildings in the process of construction. Once a building is falling apart, one imagines what it might have been. Before it is completed, one imagines what it might become. It has long been my desire to work within the same space over an extended period of time—to make a piece that always has the potential to change, and in that way, remains alive. Although we tend to think of houses as permanent structures, they are actually in a constant state of flux. Insert, Solitary View, and Translucent Home are all separate projects, but are linked by their connection to the same house site and all three embody its transformations over time.

Part of what excites me about working outside of a neutral gallery/museum setting is how the site impacts the idea. On a visual level I am thinking of the form of a house like an “exploded” mechanical drawing, where the elements of the house have become disassociated from each other but the parts are still intact. I’m interested in the synthesis between volume, skin, and light. Visual ideas take on psychological meanings when they encounter an actual place. A home has implications—as a private space, a human presence. In a neutral space, I sometimes struggle with the artifice of sculpture. Abandonment becomes contrived; refined floors of a museum remind us that what one makes is only sculpture.  But out in the world a sculpture melded with its site can seem more real. To a person encountering the work unexpectedly, it is ambiguous whether a work is sculpture or the residue of the neighborhood’s past.

Ann Reichlin  Insert (1998)  Abandoned house, stainless steel, wood		Ann Reichlin Translucent Home, in-progress; phase two (2007)  House foundation, steel

Sculpture Space, the artist-in-residence program, owns the property at 914 Whitesboro Street and generously gave me permission to use it to create Insert, Solitary View, and Translucent Home. Because the technical demands of Translucent Home went beyond my experience as a sculptor, I sought the help of the architecture firm In.Site: Architecture, in particular Rick Hauser and Ali Yapicioglu. They critiqued my models from an architectural perspective and translated the final model into a structural plan. In the studio, I am able to physically carry out my work independently, but in the field, I collaborated with steel fabricator John Aiken of JCA of Utica to ensure the project’s structural stability. Working outside of the umbrella of an exhibition, I was responsible for issues that one is often insulated from in a gallery setting—dealing with community access and funding. Advice from various professionals and Creative Time’s Open Door program helped me to navigate some of these issues. In 2006, I received a grant in partnership with GroWest from the “Art Creating Community Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts.” Because of its community outreach emphasis, this grant was enormously helpful in launching the project and integrating it with the neighborhood. The grant, however, covered only a fraction of the eventual cost.

Translucent Home will be open to the public beginning in early November 2008. It represents the completion of a decade-long project, and yet I don’t see this as an end. Rather, I am looking for another space to engage in a new conversation.  Ultimately, the ongoing dialogue between my ideas and real places gives my mind a place to dwell.

Ann Reichlin is a 2008 and 2000 NYFA Fellow in Architecture/Environmental Structures. The formal opening of Translucent Home will be held on April 22, 2009 from 5 to 7 p.m.