RUSSO (Host Intro): This winter, the Academy Art Museum in Easton hosts a rare and ambitious work. It's a 100-foot photographic montage that's traveled from storage in New York to the heart of the Eastern Shore. I'm Bryan Russo. But the story behind its creation and arrival is as layered as the artwork itself; woven through decades of artistic collaboration, technical ingenuity, and a deep commitment to art as a catalyst for social change. Delmarva Public Media's, Kevin Diaz has the story.
DIAZ: The project's roots traced back to the early 1970s when Don Saff, then chair of the visual arts department at the University of South Florida, began working with Robert Rauschenberg, one of the most acclaimed artists of our time. Their partnership flourished in Oxford, where Saff's former studio, Saff Tech Arts, became a hub for artists seeking technical expertise to realize unique works.
SAFF: Unlike a typical print studio, we were in the business of making sculpture unique works, collaborating with artists, with them producing their uniques... [and] in that we had a different kind of conduit for them, a technical conduit in which we could help them produce works that they could not produce on their own.
DIAZ: That's Don Saff, who still lives in Oxford. Among those joining Saff was George Holzer, a former student photographer and printmaker in Easton. Together, they supported Rauschenberg's vision of Chinese Summer Hall, a piece born from a 1982 trip to China.
SAFF: They had security people around me all the time, around us all the time, I should say, and certain occasions they try to confiscate the film because it was pointed at the wrong imagery. You could see one of those images in the photographs in which you see Mao and Marx and Lenin and Stalin. They didn't want us taking that picture, didn't realize that that was still painted on the wall. They tried to confiscate the film and through some subterfuge, they didn't get it.
DIAZ: Back in the studio. Holzer and his team faced daunting technical challenges, the goal to produce a single seamless 100-foot photograph.
HOLZER: I was the guy back in the studio waiting for them to bring the film, and I was the processor of the film and then printing proofs of all of the images for Bob to look through and choose, and then more proofing at different scales, et cetera, that whatever he wanted to [say], "let me see that one in this size or that size." And then originally the plan was to work towards this 100-foot long photograph, which we really didn't know exactly how we were going to do that, but I'm game, okay.
DIAZ: Here's Don Saff again.
SAFF: I remember him saying, with the two people, you have at least three ideas. Mine, yours and the combined idea.
DIAZ: The work is more than a technical feat. It's a reflection of Rauschenberg's philosophy.
SAFF: His work is not programmatic, and if two people come away feeling the same exact thought from the work, he felt that he was not successful.
DIAZ: Bringing Chinese Summerhall to Oxford was the result of tireless efforts by Academy Art Museum curator Lee Glazer and museum director Charlotte Kasic. The Rauschenberg Foundation agreed to lend the piece, which has been rarely exhibited in its entirety outside of New York.
SAFF: It's sort of surprising given the cost and logistics that we could have it here, but this museum does have a history of having first rate exhibitions that one is constantly surprised about and they shouldn't be at this point. Whether it's a [Mark] Rothko show or a Rauschenberg show.
DIAZ: For Delmarva Public Media, this is Kevin Diaz in Easton.
