When I innocently walked into the gallery at 73 Main Street in North Adams on Saturday morning, I was drawn by an enormous, stepped pyramid covered with thousands of plastic action figures and small rubber dolls. I was captivated and charmed, because this work of art had an anthropological quality that seemed to say, Look at this #!@&?! world we human beings have created. I walked over to one of the giant wall collages—a grid of ephemera such as motel room keys, business cards, campaign buttons, miniature liquor bottles—and a courtly grey-haired gentleman who looked vaguely familiar started explaining the piece. "It's like a city, but another view of the city," he said. "We've created quite a society. We have surrounded ourselves with lots of junk." I noticed the sign on the wall: Maya III by Jarvis Rockwell, and wondered if this was the son of Norman Rockwell, whose studio I had visited, coincidentally, four days earlier. Indeed it was, and Maya III is a variation on the piece that Rockwell made for MASS MoCA's Game Show exhibition in 2001. Though he did not want to talk about his father, Jarvis said that he shares his father's interest in ordinary life--a sociological aesthetic. "My father used to say this was the century of the common man," says Jarvis, who has assembled figures from toy stores, fast food chains and theme parks around the world into a multicultural portrait that, in a sense, is the son's version of Golden Rule. There was only one small piece in the gallery, a beautifully framed shadow box with three rows of cigarette butts neatly glued to cardboard like a piece of conceptual art. "I collected the butts from the ladies at the bank who smoke in the alley," he explained. The piece was not only the story of their lives, it seemed to be the story of mine (or at least the 15 years when I smoked.) I had to have it, and Jarvis, who seem surprised that I would want it, agreed to sell. Now the untitled piece hangs in my house, my own little piece of the Rockwell legacy that honors ordinary Berkshire lives. Maya III by Jarvis Rockwell73 Main Street, North Adams; 413.664.8718 Wednesday - Friday 11 AM - 6 PM Saturday 10 AM - 6 PM; Sunday 10 AM - 4 PM
One view of the figures used to assemble Maya III
Another view of Maya III
Jarvis Rockwell with one of his giant collages that capture the spirit of the city
A detail of one of the collages.
