On my way from home and toward the Irvington Presbyterian Church, I passed a house at the corner of Lowell and Layman Streets. In my 1.2 mile walk to the place where I practiced singing in preparation for a choral performance with Harmony Collected, an arts group affiliated with the Irvington Arts Collective, I passed many houses, but this one interested me because there were bottles buried in the ground on one side of it, and on another side, buried bottles encircle some plants.
I am a bottle junkie. When I lived in an old house on Orange Street, near Fountain Square, I found in the basement, under the coal dust around the furnace, a mound of bottles. The bottles were shaped like wine bottles, but none of them had labels. I still have those bottles, along with old Crisco and Spry glass containers that I found in a hidden partition along the steps into the basement. I also have an empty bottle of 12-year-old The Balvenie whisky, a gift from some friends on my 50th birthday, as well as an empty bottle of 21-year-old The Balvenie, a competing gift from another friend; an empty bottle of Maker’s Mark, the label of which is dedicated to my late friend, Bill Davis, and empty bottles of Rolling Rock beer, including a case that I won in a taste-testing contest. Rolling Rock beer was originally produced in Latrobe Pennsylvania, and as a Pittsburgh native, it was the first beer I experienced.
On the corner of Lowell and Layman, bottles are decoratively arranged around and near the house. Each time I passed that corner, I wanted to stop and examine each bottle. I hesitated because I did not want to appear “creepy-stalkery,” even though the bottles enclosing plants are on the grassy area between the sidewalk and the street. I made return visits to the bottle installation (I think of it as art) and took some discreet pictures. When I reviewed the images, I tried to imagine the decision-making process that went into the placement of the bottles. Does one place a Merlot next to a Pinot Noir? A Cabernet next to a Chardonnay? Should a Bordeaux be paired with a Riesling? Or does one just reach into the box, grab the next bottle, and plunge it into the ground? I also wonder if the artist spent as much time on the creation of the arrangement as I have on contemplation of its origin.
Patricia Cornwell writes crime fiction about Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, and one of her books is The Body Farm. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville has a Forensic Anthropology Center, where the decomposition of human bodies in varying environments can be studied. The 3.5-acre area is commonly called a “body farm,” and the concept figures prominently in Cornwell’s book of the same name. Of course, bodies are neither grown nor harvested on this “farm,” but when I hear a forensic investigator on a murder/mystery TV series speaking of the development of various bug species on a decomposing body, I am aware of the science because of Cornwell’s book.
On a recent excursion with the Eastside Art Collective, I visited the home of the artist known as Steven Tanaka, where I saw many bottles that had been formed and distorted into unique and creative shapes. On the corner of Lowell and Layman in Irvington, someone’s singular approach to the arrangement of bottles on an urban landscape has achieved what I think of as art, what I contend should be viewed as art.
I do so like that bottle farm.
cjon3acd@att.net