Salt in a Wound

My old friend Mike MacGrath puts up resolved, figurative sculptures, made of salt, in Pioneer Square as a 9/11 commemoration. True sculptures (no punk-ass mould-slavery here), they will be outside, falling apart, in the rain for the next few months. Here, King 5 news proves once again that TV news is perhaps never the forum for art stories - nonetheless...

It was combined with a performance dance at the site - dancers in white and torn linen (why do ghosts always wear linen?) moving extremely slowly, wracked with pain, around the three figurative pieces, spilling bags of salt. That sort of thing is always in the execution, and there was every pitfall for maudlin or ideological pitfalls - here, utterly unguarded, without irony, and completely committed, it was deeply affecting. A passerby near me stopped, but had to leave, because she was embarassed about crying. I was struck by how their movements were exactly reminiscent of early 19th century paintings - dramatic, poised, moral, which fit the sculpture well. Usually, this sort of thing is a bit of a disaster, a half-formed mishmash.

Stranger to watch was the public reaction: almost everyone stopped and looked carefully, no one daring to cross the salt circle around the sculptures, in dead silence, except for a few downtown bourgeoisies who disturbingly carried on a light lunch and cell phone chat without a glance at half-nude woman in convincing agony contorting not two feet away.

What the hell do you have to do some people, slap them with live otters?