Silvios Garden

jelletlambie — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:25:11 +0000

Originally published July 1, 2008

Things have their place in a civilized world. There is an order. One can expect to look, and to find, what one expects in the places one looks. This is the glue of our society. If we expect to find art, we look to a museum. We stand in line. We buy tickets. We look. We feel. We visit art in places we would expect it to reside. But what happens when we find art in the last place we expected? What happens when that art touches us in a way that no museum can? What happens when the artist emerges from a nap in his backyard to find people peering through his fence behind a strip mall in Redford? Simple….Silvio rubs his eyes, greets his friends, old and new, and begins the tour.

Silvio Barile was born in Ausonia, a small village in the province of Casserta, Italy in 1938. If you ask him he will tell you he hails from Naples. Close enough. In 1941 his family left their village for new accommodations in a relocation camp built by the Nazis. The men worked, building bridges, clearing land, whatever manual labor their “hosts” had for them. The women and children maintained the family unit in steadfast and grueling poverty.

I was startled that he would so freely speak of that period in his life. From the ages of 3 until 8 he lived in the relocation camp. These are deeply profound years in the growth of a child, years that should be spent in the family home, not in such a place is that. I expected after a sentence or two he would pitter off into silence, glassy eyed, the trepidation rendering him speechless until some other subject pierced his brow and shifted the conversation. Instead he spoke openly of singing Italian folk songs for the Nazi soldiers that they may toss him bread. He told stories of the toy cars, tanks and planes he would make from the deep red clay abundant in the camp, molding them with his small hands to then be left in the sun to harden. The beginnings of art are oft more inspiring than the actual work. Sometimes, both are splendid.

After the war he returned to Ausonia, toiling in the fields of his family farm, tending the animals, harvesting what few crops would grow. At some point in early adulthood (he does not remember his exact age) he and his mother left Italy to live with his Aunt in Dearborn, Michigan, to live in America.

Silvio loves many things; Family, cooking, and art among others. He worked as a baker briefly before buying a building in Redford, where he would open Silvio’s Rita Pizzeria. For more than 40 years he operated his business, serving what friends have told me was the unquestioned best pizza in town.

His Pizzeria is still there, at the corner of Plymouth and Lucerne, although the health department of the great state of Michigan decreed a few years back that his establishment was, in his words, “Not ok for making food”. Silvio disagreed. He did so with such fervor that he was arrested. It seems the lack of ventilation, proper storage space for food items and a growing collection of “art” in his establishment did not meet or exceed the minimum health and safety standards set forth by the State. The cost to upgrade was overwhelming. His restaurant would wither and die in his own hands.

I imagine many people would sell off the assets, the building itself, and fall gently into retirement. Silvio would do no such thing. His double store front has been converted into a place dually named The Redford Historical Institute of Arts and The Italian American Historical Artistic Museum and Cultural Center. He sells wine, packaged Italian foods and groceries – he cooks nothing. Along with his small social security checks, this is how he makes a living. This is not how he makes a life. Silvio is an artist. This is his life. He makes it anew everyday.

I have seen the Heidelberg Project. I have seen the abandoned barges of Houghton, Michigan, covered in graffiti. I have seen numerous places where abstract creativity has become art, in celebration of the artist and the world the artist knows. I have seen some of the most bizarre and unusual expressions and impressions in the United States. I have never seen anything akin to Silvio’s. I have rarely seen art in such a pure form. It is startling, alarming, far too much for many traditional connoisseurs to handle. It is something that quite simply, as the cliché allows, must be seen to be believed.

Within the building itself is a multi-media assortment of photographs, hand drawn signs, jackets, bottles, old model televisions, children’s toys, magazine cut-outs, paintings, album covers, dolls, musical instruments and sculptures. The items are hung and stacked in such a way it takes several moments to absorb at face value alone. Empty space is the enemy of the artist. It is reminiscent of what I imagine Silvio’s mind may look like on the inside. The gnarly, half Italian, half English scribbling of the proprietor is embedded on nearly every artifact. I am tempted to call the place alive, but it is more flaccid than anything allowed to draw its own breath. This place is a memoriam to Silvio Barile, what he has seen, what he has known. This world is his, yes, it is the same one we all share, but none of us have the singular grasp upon our own place in it as Silvio does his.

There is homage to several Popes, the Catholic in him bleeding through into everything in a passing way. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is well represented. Pavarotti, Bing Crosby, Gordie Howe, Leonardo Da Vinci, The Mother Superior and a flaxon haired circa 1984 swimsuit model whose name escapes me at the moment are also plastered about. Left and right, up and down, from side to side and back again. It is everywhere, this thing, this amalgamation of what has been witnessed by a crazy old man, this crazy pizza man.

The floor tiles curl at the edges, held in place by vapor of glue at best. In the far back corner of the building a bilge of ceiling tile debris hangs limp from a hole in the drop ceiling, pipe and wire exposed. The lighting doesn’t work. Well, to be fair I’m sure the lighting scheme once worked, but the shear mass of nostalgia crammed in every direction so completely blocks the store front windows that barely a ray of natural light can now pass through. There is a dry, dusty smell; Nothing offending or rank, just dusty. Everything creaks, except Silvio, portly and spry despite himself, as he leads the tour.

To describe it as decoupage is a surface critique. This place is not the product of a long weekend spent with magazine clippings and a glue stick. This is a lifetime of work. It is a mission. It is a credo – a living, breathing credo, which needs to create to exist. No form of art is more pure than the work of those who must create it.

His knees are clearly bad. There is a wobble to his step. A bow-legged-ness. A pitch and plant stride pattern. He has short arms. His reach is minimal. If he stands above 5′ 7″ I’ll eat my hat. Yet walls that climb 12 feet high are shellacked over with imagery. Piles of items are found in configurations I would have thought impossible for a man of his size and age to reach, let alone assemble. He will be 70 years old this year. Still he works, and works, and works at this never-ending arrangement in the dumpy store front in Redford.

The kitchen area is home to a once magnificent oven, now dilapidated by years of neglect. His cooking utensils remain scattered along the counter, buried amidst piles of yet to be hung photos and signs. There is little in comparison hanging in the actual work area of the kitchen. It is still his place of work. For a man who looks back through his art so thoroughly I find it queer that his utensils have not been put away. Is it a longing to begin that life again, or an acceptance of it being over? I don’t know. I imagine that once he finished with those tools he was immediately and hence forth distracted by what to create next, and fluttered away like a tan, old, Italian cherub.

Behind the pizzeria, in the garden seating area, is the beginning of a collection of pieces that in its’ entirety covers more than four residential lots. It is strange to emerge from the dimly lit inside of his crazy into the sun showered outside of it. It takes your eyes a moment to adjust. I thought for certain I was having some sort of hallucinogen induced flashback. Nope. Just the statues.

There are a handful of small concrete based statues inside, but outside is where the bulk of them reside. The bigger ones. Elaborate and ornate, the grey cement peppered with garage sale trinkets and spray paint, these figures are massive, some more than 20 feet tall and weighing thousands upon thousands of pounds. Each is a celebration of itself. From life-size depictions of Julius and Augustus Caesar to the Empire State Building, The Stanley Cup and the Three Stooges (with honorary stooge Silvio included), each piece is the result of painstaking work. There is a soft around the edges feel to his detail. Any mold he may use is primitive, hand-crafted. Metal rods create the spines, mixed concrete and rock harden into shapes he hones by hand. Fat, sausage fingers riddled with calluses hang from his small hands. His fingerprints are in everything.

Flat areas of the statues are marked with hand scribed text, the hybrid old Italian/ English dialect adorning each figure. Pater Familia is carved into the body of Octavius Caesar, just below the words USA and Popou Romania. This is to remind Italian Americans that one culture feeds another, and that the Italian heritage must be celebrated, lived. At least that is the answer he gave in response to my first spoken word upon seeing the sculptures – “Why?”

His art is not for sale. It is not destined for galleries. The work is not commissioned. It is created out of unfettered desire for a thing, a representation, a vessel through which to tell a story. My first tour lasted some two and a half hours. Every piece has a story. I saw them all. I heard them all. I lost count of how many sculptures in total exist in his cavernous back yard, across the alley, behind the pizzeria.

The gate is fashioned with a hodge podge of wire and cable tying it shut. There are two signs – a small black and blue Posted No Trespassing, the kind you’d find at any hardware store, and a hand painted red, white and blue Silvio’s American Forum sign, unlike any you could find at any hardware store. There is only one way in, and it is through the madness of the man himself. Don’t get me wrong, he is delightful, truly so, and no more dangerous than your own eccentric uncle. He invites total strangers into his outdoor galleria, re-telling the same stories he has undoubtedly told hundreds of times, perhaps more. He sings. I’ve been told his selections vary with the seasons, but Italian Opera seems to be a constant theme. I imagine he may have sung for me the same tune that once netted him a hunk of stale Nazi bread, that which imprisoned his family and kept it alive in each same bite.

He has been the subject of countless articles and even a low budget, short documentary nearly impossible to find even in the internet age. His hair is grey from root to halfway up, black dye from there to end. A photographer came to his home some time ago to capture him and his work for a magazine, bringing out the vanity in the man. It seems since there have been no photographers, hence no dye jobs. Imagine a disheveled Paulie Walnuts.

Paths are laid between the trees, old carpets lining the thin passage between decades of stone and cement. The pieces sit outside all year, moving them is simply not an option. Some smaller works, placed on top of barrels, have been blown over by strong winds, or laid down as a precaution, giving the yard a stronger ramshackle appeal.

I find it peculiar that he shares a birthday with Picasso, Silvio says it connects them. Coincidence or not there are similarities in their shape patterns. The faces of his statues are consistent in the deep, round, hollow eyes, gaping mouths and bulbous noses. Perhaps I am ignorant in the study of sculpture, but I see little else in his work reminiscent of others. I doubt Donatello ever incorporated a school bus belt buckle. I do not believe Bernini specialized in seashell breast plates.

Barile’s filler arises from availability. Whatever the salvation army store has in the nick nack department that day is what will some day end up embedded in the walls of the coliseum or St. Francis of Assisi. Bold splashes of color abound in his grey backdrops, sometimes through ornamentation, others through $2.79 cans of Krylon. His driveway is lined with more than 2,000 pounds of large rocks he purchased to build the centerpiece of Gods Throne, his latest work.

However the pieces arise, they all exist to fulfill that purpose he told me in the beginning, to teach, to enlighten. This may be the end purpose, but I hold true to my hypothesis that each piece is created because it must be. There is simply no other thing for him to do with any subject he finds himself ensnared in. He must build it. He must materialize opinion, history, celebration and pain. And there is pain.

A few pieces depict his children. Their names are carved into the cement with sticks and fingers. Their faces round and hollow like the others. I should pause here to disclaim that I spent only one afternoon with Silvio. It is not possible to probe a man entirely in a single afternoon. Even if time permitted, certain things are off limits on day 1. I don’t pry into family difficulties. Sometimes however they emerge.

Some time ago his wife left him. It seems his relationships with some of his children are strained. He is alone, in a giant house, with a yard full of concrete giants. I learned enough that afternoon to see there is a sadness in the man. I can only imagine all the places it comes from. The sadness in him becomes the madness in his work, and therefore in him. Silvio sees the world at its least common denominators. His judgments are based in values we all aspire to, Love, Loyalty, Honor, Respect, and God. He draws from what he believes and freely opines it. He is without a filter. I like that in an artist. Some of his thoughts on religion, sex, abortion and other matters of catholic debate are considered archaic, some are more quaint. In either case he has squabbled with visitors before on these matters. He makes no apologies. He believes what he believes; you can see it in every concrete slab.

I would not expect him to waiver. Men like him solidify as they age. They have grown into their skin and even in the darkest of hours, find solace in their work, in their amassed collection of memory and thought. The most comfortable place in a maniac’s world is in his very own chair. In this case that chair is used to stand on while he affixes a plastic replica of Abraham Lincoln into a concrete mold.

The next time I visit a museum and peruse the sculptures, I will think of those concrete giants in the yard. The work I see at the DIA will be of finer detail, better quality, masterpieces of recognized genius. There will be a hole in each exhibit though, where the work of Silvio Barile should be. It is on the other hand charming to think that the next time I am in the market for Olive Oil or a bottle of wine that I may visit this man and this place. I may just find him napping in the yard, pondering what tribute must next be created.

You can find Silvio and his world of concrete giants at 26417 Plymouth Road (corner of Lucerne), Redford, MI, 48239. Come prepared for the tour. It is customary to purchase an item or two from his store as compensation for his time.

Hazaa

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ajenjonst — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 08:13:12 +0000

Os voy a contar la historia, según mi profesora de “Historia Antigua”, que también lo es de “Historia de las Religiones Antiguas”, del origen de los velos de novia.

Parece que esta tradición es de origen romano aunque, como todo lo romano, se confunde con la tradición griega. en esta época el velo romano actuaba como protección para la novia.

Habría que remontarse muuuuuuchos siglos para encontrar una sociedad matriarcal. En Roma dominaba la figura de Pater Familiae que sería una figura similar a los patriarcas de la etnia gitana de hoy día.

El velo de boda, como os decía, era una medida de protección de la mujer que dejaba de estar bajo la protección de su pater familia para pasar a formar parte de otra familia una vez realizado el enlace. Pero ¿qué pasaba desde que la mujer salia de casa de sus padres hasta que la esposo la recibía? Pues que estaba sin protección y por ello era necesario un velo para borrar sus pisadas en la arena y que los espíritus malignos no la viesen desprotegida y atacaran.

Curioso, verdad?

Bueno, pues hoy día 1 he salido de casa de mi Pater Familia para convertirme en mi propio Pater Familia de una familia unipersonal.

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Silvios Garden

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