Fall arts and culture round-up: visual arts preview!

Armitage Heights Center for Contemporary Art: MySpace Facebook Guantanamo: New Work by Hanson Freeman Carney

Mishipeshu Institute of Art: Arbus /Frazetta (October 20, 2007 - March 3, 2008) .

Stanton Avenue Arts: Maeda Bedosky: New Paintings on Corporate Letterhead (November 3, 2007 - February 2, 2008) .

Hanley Contemporary: Mas Feces (November 7, 2007 - December 19, 2007).

5299 Space: Building Code Violations (October 12, 2007 - ongoing) (note: the 5299 Space remains closed for building code violations)

Little Wilmington Arts Center: New Botanical Watercolors by George Thorogood and the Destroyers (October 18, 2007 - January 24, 2008) [pictured above]; Cambridge x Dover x Chincoteague: Six New Delmarva Artists (November 11, 2007-January 3, 2008).

Baby Dolls Heads: New Baby Doll Head Collages by Suzanne S. Carmichael (November 14, 2007 - December 2, 2007).

Our vanishing '70s sculpture garden heritage.

I'd just like to take a moment to acknowledge some emails I received lately from several members of the Kendall Park Neighborhood Association. This one, from KPNA interim president Dr. Linda F. Snyder, is very representative:

No one who lived through the councilmanship of Spence Whitmarsh can forget what heady times those were for the sculpture garden scene. There were new ones sprouting up everywhere, and the neighborhood was the better for it. Only a few remain today, and even those are threatened by the forces of greed and "social improvement."

For those of you that are too young to recall, Councilman Spencer J. Whitmarsh (left) represented the 3rd Ward from 1968 until his tragic motorcycle death in 1971. He cut quite legendary figure during that "go-go" period, representing the neighborhood through one of the most tumultuous times in Armitage Heights' long history -- the Esperanto Arondismento Tumulto of '69, the '71 Kitchen Riots, and the sedition trial of Dr. Thomas Jefferson Harding, also in 1971. Controversial journalist and writer Kimball F. Burin was appointed to replace Whitmarsh by then-Mayor Freese.

Perhaps Whitmarsh's most visible legacy, though, was his shepherding through of some of the most revolutionary land-usage acts in the neighborhood's history. Hundreds of sculpture gardens exploded onto the scene, in every conceivable nook and cranny of the neighborhood. My assistant Marisha dug up from the Armitage Heights Historic Society a copy of a 1975 book entitled Sculpture Parks Now!: Your Guide to the Armitage Heights Topiary Art Revolution. The appendix is a list of contemporary sculpture gardens and their locations. Consider these mostly now-defunct sites that comprise the list:

• Giant Earth Robot Meditation Plaza (1970)
• New Atlantis (1972)
• Man Vs. God Memorial Park (1969)
• Good Time Charlie's Sculpturetorium (1973)
• Up With Statues! (1972)
• Spencer Whitmarsh Municipal Art Park (1971)
  
• City Sculpture Yard and Come-Down Tent (1969)
• The People's Revolutionary Three-Dimensionalists Guild (1968)
• The East 33rd Street Urban Boreal Plaza (1975)
• Superlove Legacy Gardens East (1973)
• The Stanton Avenue Olympus (1977)
• Preservation Compound (Mk. I, 1973; Mk. II, 1975)
• Pierce County Hebrew Gardens (1969)
• Urban Lightning Field (1975)

With a few notable exceptions, most of them are now gone. In fact, all that remains now are Man Vs. God Memorial Park and Giant Earth Robot Meditation Plaza (Superlove Legacy Gardens East at Stanton Avenue and 56th Street still exists, but the original design has been incorporated into a Chevy's Fresh Mex restaurant).

Man Vs. God Memorial Park, located on a quarter-acre of land at the corner of Schofield Parkway and Gilpin Avenue, is in particular danger. Built around a towering sculpture created by noted late local artist and Church of Satan high priest Hargrove Forsyth in 1969 at the dawn of the golden era of '70s sculpture gardens, the MvGMP represents -- as only rusted metal forms, ivy, concrete, vintage Soviet submarine salvage parts, and park benches welded to steel can -- the epic struggle between man and god.

It's also standing on a prime piece of real estate right on the edge of the now-trendy Little Wilmington district that developers have offered the city an unspecified amount of money to build a proposed W Man Vs. God Luxury Hotel. If the deal goes through, that leaves only Giant Earth Robot Meditation Plaza as the sole reminder of a once-swingin' sculpture garden scene. A shame that would be, too, because Giant Earth Robot is an eyesore that I would much rather see torn down than the relatively charming weirdness of Man Vs. God.

Please continue to write both myself and Mayor Underdahl if you'd like to see our neighborhood's vanishing sculpture garden heritage be preserved. You can also direct correspondence to the Armitage Heights Historic Preservation Council, the Man Vs. God Defense Fund, or to Dr. Synder at the Kendall Park Neighborhood Association.

For more reading on this fascinating topic, I recommend Ecce Hoedown: The Armitage Heights Sculpture Explosion, by Frank Carney-Nentzl, Half-Welded to a Dream, by Groff Schwenson, or Cast in Pain: An Uncensored Look at the Armitage Heights Sculpture Garden Wars, by Dr. Connoly Boatman.

"Poik de coy in de loit."

You can "poik" your "coy" in " this'n ga-royge" at Armitage and 38th Street.

Sound familiar? I was travelling back from a conference in Seattle this week, and I got into a conversation with a fellow I was sitting next to at the Sea-Tac airport. He was flying to Houston, but his mother had apparently grown up in Kendall Park, and he recognized me as a "Peshie" right away because of my accent, which got me to thinking about the Mishipeshu accent.

I grew up in Wihinapa, as did both of my parents, so they both had strong Peshie accents, as did my grandparents. I still remember when Grandpa Henry taught me "droive" in his "coy" down Stanton Avenue when I was 16.

And certainly a lot of people still think of the late, celebrated television and film comedian (and Armitage Heights-native) Marty Miller for his outrageous vocal characterizations of the Peshie accent (who can forget his classic shopkeeper gag? "Oh, shoyp-keepa!").

It's an accent like no other in the country, informed by the blend of influences that have made our city so unique -- from early Native American tribes that flourished along Lake Mishipeshu, to the Polish settlers that made Little Warsaw home, to the Quebecer, Delawarean and Esperanto speakers that poured in last two centuries in search of a better life. So poik your coy with pride!

Neighborhood focus: Delawaretown.

The bustling storefronts of "Little Wilmington."

Hello, everyone. With summer in full swing and the city council adjourning for a few weeks, I thought this might be a good time to continue a regular feature I began earlier in the year, Neighborhood Focus. In this section, I'll take a look at some of the interesting, notable parts of the Armitage Heights neighborhood that you may have yet to discover!

This next neighborhood we're going to have a look at is a personal favorite, another example of the richness of diversity in our community: Delawaretown (also known popularly as "Little Wilmington"), located on the border of Kendall Park and Armitage Heights. The neighborhood is generally defined as the area between 45th and 51st Streets, with Schofield Parkway to the north and Corwin Avenue to the south.

Delawaretown began as a hardscrabble blue-collar pocket of the neighborhood, inhabited primarily by the families of workers at the nearby Armitage Munitions Works, who set up operations in 1856. In 1901, Armitage was purchased by E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (known generally as DuPont), who expanded the plant's output from munitions to include lacquers, cellulose chemicals and other non-explosive products. The plant became one of the most productive and innovative cogs in DuPont's empire, and beginning in 1905, huge waves of dozens upon dozens of Delawareans streamed into the neighborhood, searching to begin a new life away from their homeland. With them, they brought their customs, languages and ways of life -- early accounts of burgeoning Delawaretown are striking, like this, from a Mishipeshu Herald article on the area from 1910:

Strolling along 46th Street, one feels as if they have been transported hundreds of miles away to the Delaware River valley, with street vendors hawking what they call "tomatas," and everyone around carrying on in the puzzling dialect of the native Wilmingtonian. They dress in the native outfit of the Delawarian [sic], seemingly unaware of how odd their brown trousers, woolen coats and black shoes must seem to their non-Wilmingtonian neighbors...

One still gets that sense strolling down 46th Street on a busy weekend afternoon! You can still hear classic Delaware accents from the older shopkeepers ("wooder" for "water" -- still fascinates me!), who keep their shelves stocked with Delaware delicacies like delicious blue hen breast, peaches, crab puffs, chicken salad, carrot soup and mashed potatos -- all wrapped in DuPont cellophane, of course! The residents of Delawaretown are very proud of their unique heritage, and in fact, this small pocket of Armitage Heights has the largest population of Delawarean-Americans anywhere outside Delaware -- nearly 330. You'll often see storefront windows with pictures of noted Delawareans like George Thorogood, Pierre Samuel "Pete" du Pont IV, and Joe Biden (who, coincidentally, commands a 78% lead in Democratic primary polls in this area, as witnessed by the image to the left -- a common sight around this close-knit and politically vocal community).

And of course one can't forget the shopping! Though it's a small area, the Delawarean-American population in this pocket have managed to make their shops tax-free, much like their homeland. It's pretty easy to get a credit card, as well, since a number of major financial corporations have set up small incorporated storefront offices along 46th and 47th Streets.

This neighborhood, with it's great mix of seafood, tax-free incorporations, and phonemic æ-tensing, is a real gem. Be sure to visit for Thorogood Days in August, when the music of Delaware native George Thorogood and the Destroyers is celebrated in appropriately raucous fashion in a day-long street festival, or visit the Blue Hen, a charming tavern on Corwin Avenue at 49th Street that specializes in delicious Delaware microbrewery beers and seafood, and features live music on weekends, typically bands playing traditional Delawarean music. Listening to the music waft out into the streets, you can almost smell the salt-water and nylon in the air! It's not hard to feel the breeze coming off Lake Mishipeshu and feeling like it could be the Delaware Bay -- just like you're standing in the first state!