© 2024 WFAE
90.7 Charlotte 93.7 Southern Pines 90.3 Hickory 106.1 Laurinburg
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Charlotte Viewpoint: Home And Garden With Linda Vista

The Charlotte Arts Journalism Alliance is a collaborative effort of WFAE, the Charlotte Observer, WCNC-TV, QCityMetro.com,
The Charlotte Arts Journalism Alliance is a collaborative effort of WFAE, the Charlotte Observer, WCNC-TV, QCityMetro.com,

The Charlotte Arts Journalism Alliance is a collaborative effort of WFAE, the Charlotte Observer, WCNC-TV, QCityMetro.com, Charlotte Viewpoint and UNC-Charlotte to enhance arts coverage in our region. If you live in NoDa, perhaps you've wondered what's going on at the house on the corner of 35th and Charles streets. This is the home of Linda Vista, and she has plans. An assemblage artist, Vista started her career making collages and mixed-media pieces for corporate clients. She then moved on to more personal work, acquiring an impressive collection of junk from which she makes humorous constructions that address an array of political, feminist and other concerns. Now she is embarking on her biggest project: LindaLand, an outdoor environment that will eventually fill her entire yard. "Bringing elements together has always been my strength," she said. "First it was two-dimensional, then three-dimensional and now it's the larger scale yard art environment. My house and my whole environment are my art." LindaLand is still in its beginning phase and at this point mostly an idea; much of the sculpture that will get it started is inside the house. But you can see the beginnings in the small back yard, which is crowded with objects, including a shed Vista painted to look like mud cloth. The front yard has less stuff, but smatterings of drama and idiosyncrasy are already there. The gate is a pair of heavily varnished salvaged doors. There is a '50s-era metal chair upholstered in artificial turf, the first component of a lawn furniture set. Vista is now planning the hardscaping, which will include paths, dividers, grottos, and dry stack cairns. Vista's route to her home and garden in Charlotte was a circuitous one. After graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in her hometown, she began to move. First it was Tucson, and then it was off to San Francisco for an unpleasant seven months. Vista then spent 14 years in Los Angeles, where her career flourished, but a major earthquake prompted her to leave. Her next stop was Southern Oregon, close to California's Mt. Shasta. "You'd watch the news and there would be seven different microclimate weather reports. Beautiful there," she says. "I loved it." But nine years later, a desire to be closer to family on the East Coast brought her to Jersey City, just across the river from Lower Manhattan. "I knew immediately I was not going to be happy," she said. A year later, in 1999, she wound up in Charlotte. "For many years, I made my living doing two-dimensional work. In Los Angeles in the '80s, corporations were the patrons of the arts. I was cranking out the art and it was flying away. I still have drawers of paper; I could whip something up with my eyes closed and it would be really good. But it just wasn't challenging anymore. I simply exhausted that medium. "So I reclaimed my art for myself and decided not to sell it. For the first time in my art life I had the work around me, and if I wanted, I could go back years later and rework something," Vista said. After she abandoned her two-dimensional work and the galleries that sold it, gourds were among the many things that caught her attention. A touching example of her gourd work is Bird Mates. Simple in its construction, this quiet work consists of two gourds embellished with just enough found and salvaged objects to suggest a pair of ducks. "I'm happy to show my work, but I like my work. I like having it around me. It's not a commodity." Vista's materials sound like they belong to a hoarder: cardboard, cutesy garden ornaments, gutter guards, model railroad shrubbery, artificial turf, rubber reptiles, small appliances, zip-ties, gearshift knobs and other things she has found at junkyards, flea markets, dollar stores and the curb. Doing the garden has opened up a whole new aspect of shopping and junking, as she seeks out materials that can withstand the elements. Vista is engaged in what she describes as "a process of adding and subtracting, looking and honing, heeding divine intuition and trusting surprises." Her work is meant to be viewed in the aggregate, which is reflected in the way she talks about it-she speaks in depth about concepts and plans, but her descriptions of individuals pieces are concise, sometimes glib. But brevity is essential because there is so much here: crosses, ticklers, torches, chalices, keepsake boxes, memory jars, gourd sculpture, plaques, tabletop monuments. There is also a large cast of characters drawn from religion, art, mythology, legend, pop culture and whatever else seems to cross her path: Jesus, Darwin, Adam and Eve, Amy Winehouse, Santa, Tiger Woods, the Virgin Mary, King Midas, assorted saints, Gertrude Stein, Nike. As we wandered around her studio, I was struck by a shadow-puppet-like piece hanging on the wall: little more than a piece of board with a small bright smile and tiny eyes, it is innocent and a little absurd. "Oh, that little guy? He's just a little whatnot. Just a piece of corrugated cardboard," said Vista. "Back in the '70s I was living in Tucson and didn't know anybody; then another artist introduced me to correspondence art and I began doing it with people like Ray Johnson. I received a piece from Futzy Nutzle that had a smile on a black silhouette. I always loved it. So I appropriated it a number of years later. That could be stuck in a planter." Given the type of work she does, you might expect it to look like the final scene of Citizen Kane. But despite all the assemblages and constructions on the walls, shelves and floors, Vista's house is airy and tidy. "It will get more crowded, but it will always be somewhat organized," she said. "I like chaos, because therein lies fertility, but it can take over and be oppressive." After years of keeping a low profile, Vista recently received a major vote of confidence when she was awarded a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship, which is given biennially to a handful of the state's visual artists. Upon receiving it, she used some of the money to travel to Wisconsin and visit art environments on the John Michael Kohler Arts Center's Wandering Wisconsin itinerary. "Art environment" is the term the Kohler favors for what might also be called a yard art environment, art garden, folk art environment or any other number of disputed, slippery terms. It is usually applied to a yard that has been filled with sculpture or constructions or topiary or any combination thereof. Yards artists tend to lack formal training; in the past, some were unaware that they were even part of tradition, but in our era of ubiquitous information, that is less and less the case. Among the best-known environments, the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden in Bishopville, S.C., is the one closest to Charlotte. In Wisconsin, Vista saw Carl Peterson's garden, which has been relocated to the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, James Tellen's Woodland Sculpture Garden in Wilson, Father Wagner's Rudolf Grotto Gardens in Rudolf[www.rudolphgrotto.org], Nick Englebert's Grandview in Hollandale, Fred Smith's Concrete Park in Phillips and The Forevertron by Dr. Evermor (a.k.a. Tom O. Every) in Baraboo. The grant is also funding the initial phase of LindaLand. "Receiving the grant was definitely a booster rocket in getting the work to where it is. I had already been referring to my house/museum as LindaLand. Without the grant, I really don't know how, if or when that would have spilled into the yard. "It was only the second time that I ever applied for a grant. I had the misconception that grants were for people who legitimately needed money as opposed to career/resume building. Since I was educated and able to work, I figured that I was supposed to finance my own projects. A couple of years ago, I was incredulous when a local artist friend suggested that I write a grant proposal to go flea market shopping. But that planted the seed." Vista is deeply invested in the idea of things coming full circle-revisiting genres, reworking individual pieces-and now she traces LindaLand back to her childhood fascination with a neighbor's yard. As she wrote to the NCAC, "The whole Wisconsin experience had an unexpected impact on me. I was struck by the realization that no matter how many decades I have been living and roaming around elsewhere, the Midwest is my Motherland and those cement & bottle environment builders are my tribe." The trip to Wisconsin "brought back my Midwest roots," she told me. "When I was growing up, I would walk past a house that had a statue of Mary in the front yard and I was always intrigued with it. "It's fascinating, because when you're young, you think that everyone is seeing what you're seeing. My sister remembers none of it, but I could tell you the color of the brick and describe the cyclone fence. We found it on Google Street View last year-the statue isn't there anymore, but everything else is the same." Vista cherishes the intensity of this childhood memory and hopes to create similar experiences for both adults and children with LIndaLand. "I love the idea of moving into the yard, of contributing to the streetscape. I can do public art and not have to sit in meetings or compromise. I can do whatever I want. "And it's good for the neighborhood. This used to be the Arts District, but now it's not. I'm doing my environment and am encouraging another friend on 35th to do an idea that she has. Then I'm going to alert the neighborhood: The gauntlet is thrown. Who needs McAdenville? Let's have NoDa become known for outside-the-box yard stuff. We'll see. " One of the sculptures that will eventually go out front is Nike of NoDa. Vista had been trying to create a yard art homage to Nike of Samothrace and was having little luck finding a material that could represent the sculpture's flowing drapery until she came upon a cache of nail-gun nails in a junkyard. Nike of NoDa is yet another example of Vista's ability to combine a small assortment of materials to achieve surprising results: the sheets of nails are arranged in graceful cascades on a simple wire form, and the wings are wire frames used for stretching muskrat pelts. Near the end of our visit, Vista directed me to a bank of lucite compartments crammed with tiny items arranged in tableaux, which she rearranges and plays with constantly. After we talked about the little scenes she creates in these spaces, I asked if she made or found the shelving. "I found it at Famous Mart Basement for $20. It's hit or miss down there. I always find something, but this is a real score. I also found a cart for $20, and when I was rolling it back out, a couple came in and the woman said, 'Oh, I just brought the reverend here to show him this; we really wanted to get it for our fellowship hall.' And I said, 'Yep, it really was a good deal.'" Vista didn't know if he was really a reverend. "But it's my cart now. Nice try, buddy." I wondered if she thought God would smite her for walking off with the cart. "Maybe their god would," she said. "But my god would never do a thing like that."