A wythe is a continuous vertical section of masonry one unit in thickness, and a web is something formed by or as if by weaving or interweaving. Put those two together and you get Wythe & Web, the new public art installation at the Jamaica Plain Branch Library.
I (often accompanied by my dog, Lucy!) have been following @metchew's Wythe & Web project at Curtis Hall in Jamaica Plain since work started a while ago, and I was super excited to happen upon a sneak preview today - and meet the artist again! Opening Nov. 4 4:30pm. pic.twitter.com/2NcvBoBdmw
— Alley Stoughton (@fullyabstract) October 28, 2021
Artist Matthew Hinçman started his work on the project January 2021, and the community is finally going to have the opportunity to celebrate it on Nov. 4 (4:30-6:30 pm) with the art on the front lawn of the library and Curtis Hall. The event will include music, poetry, and more.
The city commissioned this project as part of the City's Percent for Art program.
Hinçman wrote the following narrative about the project:
The lawn at the municipal campus that includes the Jamaica Plain Branch of the Boston Public Library and the BCYF Curtis Hall Community Center has been altered with a sculptural intervention. A series of low brick walls now zig-zag across the lawn on an approximate north-south axis. Some of the walls are capped with brightly colored glazed bricks, while others are more conventionally capped with slabs of granite. Separate from the walls, five chairs inhibit the lawn. The chairs take their form from ubiquitous aluminum tube, vinyl webbed folding chairs found in millions of backyards and lawns. Yet these chairs are constructed of bronze - sculptures of chairs - immortalizing this very familiar, close-to-home piece of furniture.
Passersby are welcomed into the site via the newly created gate off the South Street sidewalk, where a section of the 150’ iron fence and granite curb has been removed.
This sculptural intervention provides audiences with a myriad of ways to engage with the work, and resists a didactic and/or singular interpretation. A refined level of craft and material use coupled with the ubiquity of the forms afford viewers multiple vantage points with which to enter into dialogue with the work, and to construct meaning and or narratives. Themes of history, community, and monuments may inform a viewer's interpretation.