Steel Plays Integral Role in DIA Exhibit;
GLFEA Member MBM Fabricators Helps

Nov. 6, 2001 – From now through December 31 visitors strolling through the Detroit Institute of Arts will be struck by an impressive installation dominating a court near the building's Farnsworth Avenue entrance. Entitled, "Fast Forward, Play Back," it was created Ronit Eisenbach, a professor of architecture at the University of Detroit-Mercy, aided by Peter Sparling, director and choreographer of the Peter Sparling Dance Company of Ann Arbor. Support and assistance was provided by MBM Fabricators Inc., Romulus, a member of the Great Lakes Fabricators & Erectors Association.

The installation is part of the "Artists Take On Detroit," an exhibition of eleven works organized by the DIA in recognition of Detroit's tricentennial. It's being made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; a Detroit 300 Tricentennial Grant funded by Comerica Charitable Foundation; the Michigan Council for Arts & Cultural Affairs; and the city of Detroit.

Fourteen artists were asked to create works using Detroit as their theme. Eleven were generated, incorporating video and still photography, text, and sound, as well as sculpture in a wide variety of materials. Together they project a lyrical and abstract vision of the city.

Eisenbach describes "Fast Forward, Play Back" as a "temporary environment" that enhances one's memory, place, and identity, providing "a reference on how we think about things, how we can project into the future while looking back to the past." One of its purposes is to open visitors' minds to how memory affects the perception of places. A setting that references a public school as it existed during the 1950s – inspired by Dossin Elementary in northwest Detroit, attended by Sparling during his youth – reinforces this as a location embedded in the memories of generations of students, each moving forward in time while looking back toward their beginnings.

After receiving the commission in the summer of 2000, Eisenbach approached the GLFEA board of directors for help. Don Makins, president of MBM Fabricators, volunteered. "And he's been just terrific to work with," she says. In envisioning initial concepts for the installation, Eisenbach fortunately was able to retrieve and preserve a series of slate blackboards and floor tiles that had been taken up during renovation work on the UD-Mercy campus. The tiles were cut for the floor of the installation and the blackboards vertically mounted. Her plans call for chalk messages and pictures to be drawn on both. To enable this to happen, flexible, slender, yet strong framing was necessary "It immediately became apparent that steel was needed," she says, for both practical as well as esthetic purposes.

Further evolution of the design was provided by Chris Pomodoro, a UD-Mercy architectural graduate, working at the university's non-profit Detroit Collaborative Design Center. "He was able to translate it into a workable, buildable reality," Eisenbach says. Pomodoro oversaw production of the installation's final design as well as shop and assembly drawings, working hand in hand with John McElmeel of MBM's engineering department.

"Projects like these are quite different from the bulk of our work, which is geared toward heavy structural steel fabricating for buildings and the like," says McElmeel. "We had to accommodate the requirements and restrictions of the DIA and, at the same time, keep with the theme set by the artist."

Light structural steel members – typically one inch by one inch – had to be fastened together with buttonhead bolts to generate a clean finish. Additional support is provided by stainless steel cabling and turnbuckles, used for such things as suspending elementary school chairs collected and saved by Sparling for use by his dance company. Brackets and pulleys had to be specially clamped in a manner that did not permanently deface the DIA's interior walls.

Much of the project came together in a rush within two weeks of the Oct. 18 preview showing. "The time allowed for detailing, fabricating, and erecting was very limited," McElmeel admits. "Still, we were able to put this project into our already tight shop fabrication and erection schedule and finished it on time to the satisfaction of the artists."

It took three journeymen from Iron Workers Local 25 approximately 2-12 days to put the installation together. Makins even lent Eisenbach a masonry saw from his home to enable her to properly cut the slate tiles for the floor.

During the DIA exhibition, a video projector splashes images of dancers from Peter Sparling's dance company on the installation floor. Television monitors are mounted in the installation playing videos of current Dossin students as well as images of the elementary school building and grounds. Visitors are also being encouraged to write chalk messages on the blackboards. Eisenbach says plans call for taking photographs of the filled blackboards before they're erased for new visitors.

"It has simply been a tremendous collaboration," Eisenbach says, praising the work of her associates.

Plans for the installation's future after the close of the exhibition have not yet been finalized but hopes are "Fast Forward, Play Back" will find a permanent home.