THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 22, 1994 TAG: 9407220789
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
Some artists begin by pulling out tubes of paint and brushes. Laurel Quarberg starts her art by visiting city officials and plumbing company managers.
Instead of oil paints or clay, she uses PVC pipe, birdbaths and road salt. And not exactly in dainty amounts.
The Norfolk artist's latest sculpture, ``Treading Water,'' uses 30 tons of road salt and a 52-foot-long trough filled with water and used motor oil. Here, the usual art installation equipment - hammer, nails - just wouldn't do.
Setting it up last week in a 40-by-80-foot gallery at the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts required a dump truck, front loader, diesel backhoe, wheelbarrows, shovels and lots of staff and volunteer labor. It also required uncommon engineering skills on the part of the artist.
The piece will be unveiled tonight at 6:30 at the arts center, along with a sculptural installation by four Cincinnati artists who call themselves TODT.
``Treading Water'' is a site-specific sculpture, which means it was designed specifically for that gallery. Quarberg's piece features a long pipe suspended by cable through a pulley system with counterweights. To enter the gallery and experience the work, visitors must crunch-crunch-crunch through a thick layer of road salt.
Everything about the installation concerns a delicate balance, the artist said. That's the point of the salt, too.
Salt is both deadly and necessary for life. ``We cannot live without salt in our bodies. But if we got too much salt, it would be dangerous to our health.''
Whether viewed from a personal or a planetary perspective, balance is essential for survival, Quarberg said. Interdependence also is part of the point.
``With this structure,'' she said, ``no one of these parts could do it alone. And if one part didn't hold its own, it would all collapse.''
Balance has been a theme in Quarberg's other site-specific works, installed at various local galleries and at prestigious venues like the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, N.C.
The public was allowed to observe the installation last week at the arts center. On Tuesday, after the last batch of salt was spread evenly over the gallery floor, two neighbors poked their heads into the room.
``What is this?'' asked one of the young men.
Quarberg popped over to greet them. ``This is a sculpture installation, and it's going to open on Friday,'' she said, projecting friendliness.
``Is this salt?''
``Yes, sir.''
``What kind of sculpture?'' asked the dark-haired one, Rudy Bautista.
``Ceramic or what?'' asked his friend, Billy Harrison.
``It's exactly what you see,'' she began. ``When I do the piece, the whole room is the piece.''
Harrison thought a moment. ``A place with no piece. Oh.''
A few more questions, and the guys were ready to go. Harrison had one last question: ``Are they going to have any art exhibits, like paintings or something like that?''
Not this month, she said.
Conversations with nonartists give Quarberg a charge. In putting together the work, she elicited aid from all sorts of people.
She spent several weeks making and testing the trough - made from PVC pipe - at Ferguson Enterprises, a Norfolk plumbing and heating wholesale company. ``She seemed like a real nice artist,'' manager Thomas Dye said, ``and I wanted to help her out.''
Quarberg spent months sweet-talking public-works officials to lend her all that salt, the chunky kind they spread on icy roads. Given the current rates at Southern Salt in Norfolk, which sells to area cities, the 30 tons would have cost her $1,260 plus tax.
First she went to Bobby Whitney, assistant superintendent for Norfolk's streets and bridges division. He told Quarberg that Virginia Beach's streets division owed him some salt.
So Whitney called Roy Hale, superintendent of street maintenance for Virginia Beach, who agreed to deliver the salt to the arts center.
Hale spoke with Quarberg about her art. ``It's a special taste,'' he acknowledged. ``Laurel is one of the sweetest girls I've met. Matter of fact, I feel good when I'm around her. She's real peppy.
``But her project? I have no idea what it amounts to. She was talking to me about the things all around us that we don't pay attention to.
``What the salt is for, I have no idea.''
Such interactions ``bring the work back into life for me,'' Quarberg said. ``I have to trust that other people will bring their energy and expertise to this piece. Otherwise, it wouldn't happen. I couldn't do it alone.
``By the time it's all up, it's not my work. It's our work.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff
Laurel Quarberg's ``Treading Water'' uses 30 tons of road salt and a
52-foot-long trough filled with water and used motor oil.
Photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff
Friends and associates of artist Laurel Quarberg spread road salt
across the 40-by-80-foot gallery floor of the Virginia Beach Center
for the Arts. The sculpture uses 30 tons of road salt and a
52-foot-long trough filled with water and used motor oil.
Graphic
THE EXHIBIT
What: ``Treading Water,'' a site-specific sculpture by Laurel
Quarberg
Where: Virginia Beach Center for the Arts, 2200 Parks Ave.
When: Free preview reception from 6:30 to 8:30 tonight. Exhibit
continues through Sept. 11. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Friday, 10
a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 4
p.m.
How much: Free
Call: 425-0000
by CNB