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Postponed because of Tropical Storm Ivan, the public reception honoring Alastair Noble, assistant professor of art at Lafayette, has been rescheduled to 4-6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 16 at the Richard A. and Rissa W. Grossman Gallery of Lafayette’s Williams Visual Arts Building, where sculpture that he created specifically for the gallery is on display.
Noble will give a public lecture about the installation 6:30 p.m. today at the gallery. Sponsored by the art department, the reception and lecture are free.
The installation, “Zang Tumb Tumb,” uses the site’s architectural features, particularly a pit and the concrete column in front of it. Its name is the title of a poem (and book) by Italian futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Noble’s intention is not to illustrate the text, but to “manifest its essence in space,” he says.
Mechanical engineering major Brian Finkelstein ’07 of Mendham, N.J., assisted Noble in creating and installing the work. He transferred sketches of the sculpture into an computer-aided design program called autoCAD, and, after the software fabricated a two-dimensional stencil of the artwork, he helped Noble cut the wood and aluminum pieces that comprise it.
Finkelstein’s engineering background was crucial to the artistic process behind Noble’s particular technique, in which metal is cut into patterns that mimic the layout of a poem and creates the effect of a coded message.
The pair collaborated through Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, in which students conduct research with faculty while earning a stipend. The program has helped to make Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 160 students who participate each year share their work through articles in academic journals and/or conference presentations.
“I totally transform the architectural space of this large gallery by integrating certain unique features of it into an indefinable sublime place,” Noble says. “This project follows the general scheme of my work whereby I employ poetry as the genesis of my work. I am expounding upon my ongoing investigations of Futurist literature.”
Over the past two years, Noble has completed a considerable body of work revolving around the Russian Futurist poem “The Brooklyn Bridge 1925” by Vladimir Mayakovsky.
For Noble, the most distinctive feature of the Grossman Gallery is the pit at its rear, a hidden hole that stretches 17 feet long, 10 feet wide, and five feet deep. Normally covered with boards flush with the concrete floor, the void is the focal point of his installation. The artist covered the concrete column and pit with two layers of wire screen mesh stretched over an aluminum frame 14 feet long by 10 feet wide, surrounded on three sides by a three-foot wide and four-inch deep black reflecting pool. Suspended on the surface of the screen are cut-out stencils that represent the cover of the war-themed poem/book “Zang Tumb Tumb.”
The back gallery wall that abuts one end of the pit has been recreated as a hinged wall 12 feet high by 20 feet long. It is partly hinged from the top as if it will close down onto the screen. In the base of the pit is theatrical lighting that projects upward, illuminating the screen and casting rippled patterns onto the wall as it passes through the two layers of mesh. The cut-out stencils of the poem also cast a typographical image of the cut-out text on the wall. This image of fragmented text on the hinged and adjacent walls in turn is reflected onto the surrounding reflecting pool below. The installation also includes a soundtrack with an excerpt from the poem.
Noble’s art has been exhibited nationally and internationally for more than 25 years, including at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy. His works are part of many private, corporate, and public collections. He is the organizer of several symposia and exhibitions on public art and poetry, contributes regularly as a reviewer for Sculpture magazine, and has published other articles, including a piece in Journal of Architecture.
New Jersey Transit, in conjunction with the New Jersey Council on the Arts, has commissioned Noble to lead a three-phase project involving art and architecture at a $30 million NJT train station and bus terminal in Wayne. He is consulting on the facility’s design, creating the largest artwork in it, and making suggestions for complementary art based on his theme of light and speed. Work on the project is projected to finish next year.
Sandra Furnbach ’03 (Matawan, N.J.), who received a B.S.degree in civil engineering and B.A. with majors in art and international studies from Lafayette, worked with Noble as an EXCEL Scholar to create his project proposal, which he presented to a selection committee and the mayor of Wayne. In Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, students assist faculty with research while earning a stipend. The program has helped make Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 160 students who participate in EXCEL each year share their research through academic journal articles and conference presentations.
The major artwork at the facility will be a sculpture with two aluminum pieces measuring 15 feet wide and 36 feet high. The pieces will look like giant book pages, with the “text” cut out of the sculpture and coal cathode lighting shining through the spaces from behind. The sculpture will sit in the building’s front façade, bracketed on both sides of the central tower of the terminal. Furnbach played a major role in helping Noble use computer-aided design software to make drawings of the sculpture. The pair continued their collaboration by corresponding frequently while Furnbach studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.
She also used a computer program called AutoCAD to design an entranceway for the 9th Street New Jersey Transit Light Rail station in Hoboken, N.J., and to create a web site to showcase Noble’s installations, sculpture, and public art. Designs for the entranceway were cut from quarter-inch steel.
In addition, Furnbach helped Noble install an outdoor sculpture, “Brooklyn Bridge 1925-Mayakovsky,” at Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park under the Brooklyn Bridge. Reflecting various phases of the bridge’s construction, the piece was included in the 21st Annual Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition Outdoor Sculpture Show.
Last school year, Noble mentored four Lafayette students as they created log and stone sculptures for the Breast Cancer Awareness Garden at Riverside Park in Easton. He has led his Principles of Studio Art students in creating collographs — prints made from low-relief collages — that were displayed in downtown Easton at Quadrant Book Mart and at the Williams Center for the Arts. A Fundamentals of Sculpture class taught by Noble created abstract plaster forms inspired by clay figures they based on live models; selections were displayed in a Skillman Library exhibit.
Noble’s interests include poetry, literature, and public and installation art. Prior to joining Lafayette’s faculty, he was visiting professor of sculpture at Cornell University. He has also taught at Cedar Crest College and Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, N.J. He holds a master of fine arts degree from Rutgers University and a bachelor of arts from Hull College of Art, England.
Brian Finkelstein ’07 helped Alastair Noble, assistant professor of art, create a public sculpture for the New Jersey Transit Authority in Wayne, N.J.