lisa linde

The gentle drone of a passing train cuts through the air on a breezy late summer day in Lincoln. The echoing sound of the train whistle comes not from miles away at Lincoln Station, but rather from just up the stairs in the Joyce and Edward Linde Gallery of the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park.

The 3,500-square-foot gallery has been transformed into a sprawling canvas for 12 adventurous New England artists and artist teams, whose eye-popping installations combine to form the museum's newest exhibition: "Trainscape: Installation Art for Model Railroads." The fantastic and unique landscapes are unified by a fully operational O-scale (1/48 normal size) model railroad connecting each of the miniature worlds that inhabit the gallery space.

Multiple working trains on four different sets of tracks pass through this imaginative exhibit, organized by curator Nick Capasso and Koch Curatorial Fellows Kate Dempsey and Lisa Sutcliffe.

"A major theme within this exploration of parallel universes is a wide expansion of the idea of landscape sculpture (as opposed to the far more familiar 'landscape painting'). Trainscape presents many alternative worlds, united only by the physical � and often conceptual � presence of the trains that travel throughout the exhibition," Capasso wrote in the gallery text introducing visitors to the exhibit. "Trainscape thus provides enveloping journeys to cities, mountains, deserts, technological landscapes, and places of pure imagination."

With more than 700 people attending the grand opening on Sept. 1, Trainscape appears to be an immediate success for the museum. But Corey Cronin, director of marketing and public relations for DeCordova, said it took many months of hard work by many different people to make Capasso's vision a reality.

The process began with a Request for Proposals (RFP) inviting 75 selected artists to devise concepts for installations or sculptures that would best integrate a working model train, Cronin said. Of 30 applications received, organizers selected 12 finalists to appear in the exhibit. The pieces represent 14 New England artists, including two husband and wife teams, Cronin said.

"This really challenged the artists. It was a whole new world for them," he said.

Installing the massive and intricate installations once they were completed presented another set of challenges for organizers at the museum, especially due to the technological and mechanical aspects of the exhibit, Cronin said.

"We've never done something this complicated before," he said.
Walls were added to better control the light in the gallery, which remained closed for three full weeks as crews worked around the clock to remove the museum's Annual Exhibition and install Trainscape. Once installed, members of the museum staff were trained on proper maintenance of the model trains.

The exhibit may have many visitors feeling a bit like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, as variations in size and scale play with the viewer's perceptions. While the railroad tracks stand a uniform 30 inches off the ground throughout Trainscape, the size and depth of the installations can make the trains seem larger or smaller at different points, Cronin said. In addition, a television screen shows visitors a train's-eye view of the installations from a miniature camera mounted on one of the train's as it moves through the exhibit.

Traveling through 'Trainscape'
Made up of a network of pipes and cloudlike structures, "Inflatable Respiring Cloudscape" - by Robin Mandel and Gideon Webster - is the first thing visitors see, and hear, as they step into the gallery. The approach of the train below the installation triggers a switch the inflates and deflates the clouds, simulating the blast of a train whistle, while vents send a rush of air to add to the sensation of a passing train.

"What we're most excited to see is that people aren't expecting this at all. They're walking into the gallery and saying, 'Wow!' The diversity that is shown here is really taking people aback," Cronin said.

To the right of "Cloudscape" sits a large sculpture of 19th-century railroad mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt, who towers over the tiny train tracks beneath his feet. With his oversized money sack (complete with a cartoon-like "$" sign), "Cornelius Vanderbilt, Chief Rogue of the Railroad Robber Barons" by George Greenamyer reflects Vanderbilt's reputation as a ruthless businessman.

Continuing counterclockwise around the gallery, Ellen Wetmore and Jeff "Jeffu" Warmouth's "Land O' Lactation" was inspired by the biological experience of new motherhood. After recently giving birth to a son, Wetmore remarked that her life was being taken over by her breasts. That sentiment is reflected in a comical and provocative landscape made up of giant "mammary mountains" and pools of milk.

The train disappears momentarily as it tunnels through "Tickled Pink" by Doug Bosch. But while the train is not seen, its presence is still felt as the vibrations cause floating pink forms to flutter and dance over Bosch's landscape.

The four separate railroad lines meet in a central hub as they pass through a tangled mass of architectural styles and geometric shapes in "Municipile" by Chris Frost. One of the tallest installations in the exhibit, "Municipile" plays with scale as replicas of familiar area buildings are stacked up to create a disconnect between the size and importance of the sites. Included in the sculpture are local landmarks like the State House and South Station, and of course, a replica of the DeCordova Museum itself.

Egyptian-born artist Ahmed Abdalla draws on both his Middle Eastern heritage and his experiences as a contemporary Western artist in his installation piece, entitled, "Witness: A story without a narrator #7." A pile of cracked and shattered pottery memorializes the Denshwai Incident of 1906, in which several Egyptian farmers were murdered in a violent skirmish with British troops.

With thousands of individual letters suspended by wires, Ralph Helmick's "Fourteenth Way" is one of the exhibit's most visually spectacular installations. Seemingly floating in mid-air, the hanging letters not only create a rolling landscape around the train tracks, they also spell out verses from the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

Joy Wulke creates another eye-catching landscape with her installation, entitled, "Here, There and Everywhere." Made from clear, frosted and dichroic glass, mirrors, lights and even rock candy, Wulke's glowing cityscape evokes comparisons to the Emerald City of Oz fame. According to the gallery text, the reflection and refraction of the train as it passes through the glass world "shatters notions of time, space and place."

Constructed entirely of new and recycled children's toys, "Plush" is very popular with younger visitors, Cronin said. But the installation's soft and cuddly exterior belies a more sinister meaning implied by artist Stuart Schechter.

According to the gallery text, "While on the one hand we associate model trains with children and play, real trains have a haunting history." Visitors are reminded about the deplorable conditions faced by the immigrants who built our country's railroad system, as well as the terrible trains that carried millions to concentration camps during the Holocaust. The darker side of trains is reflected in the menacing movement of some of the toys as the train passes through the installation.

The exhibit returns to the more fanciful with "Sharp?town" by Edythe F. Wright. Based on a circuit board from a Sharp television (magnified 3,800 percent), Wright's installation is a paradoxical landscape of massive transistors and giant microchips.

Continuing to follow the tracks, "Trainscape" moves from the insides of man-made appliances to the inner workings of the human mind. In "Buddha Express", artist Sandor Bodo explores the nature of spiritual enlightenment. Multiple Buddha sculptures rise from a "desert of ignorance" and even the train roaring straight through his head cannot disturb his meditation. A sitting area in front of the installation invites viewers to engage in their own meditation.

Finally, the exhibit ventures even further into the philosophical domain with Mike Newby's "Trains of Thought". A humorous mixture of verbal and visual puns based on railroads and philosophy, Newby's landscape includes references to Socrates, Plato, Freud and other great thinkers.

For those wishing to learn more about the art or the artists, the museum's Process Gallery can shed more light on the ambitious exhibition. The gallery includes samples of the artists' other work, booklets and audio tours explaining how the works were created, and small exhibits demonstrating the mechanics of the installations as they interact with the miniature trains.

"Trainscape" will be on display at DeCordova through Jan. 13, 2008, with various special events continuing through the fall and winter, Cronin said. In addition to Artist Talks and Eye Wonder Family Programs featuring installation artists, the museum will host a "Trainscape Day" in October and a special lecture in November.

For more information, call 781-259-0505 or visit www.decordova.org.