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'Roadside Memorials' captures the touching folk art of makeshift monuments
A memorial to Jay Mulligan, killed on Green Tree Hill
Courtesy Taylor Art Group
A stuffed animal hanging in the tree planted in memory of Scott Drake
Courtesy Taylor Art Group
All that remains of a memorial to an accident on in Aliquippa
Courtesy Taylor Art Group
Kurt Shaw covers the art scene for the Tribune-Review. He can be reached via e-mail.
While these markers traverse the spectrum from the most simple of crosses to elaborately decorated displays, they are all art, local artist Chris Taylor says.
"I find them fascinating," Taylor says. "I see them as folk art. People have this need to do this, to create these expressions of memorial. I see them as religious sculptures."
A trained sculptor himself, Taylor was so moved by a roadside memorial for Scott Drake, the
11-year-old North Side boy killed two years ago by a homeless man, that he decided to photograph it.
But as he drove past it every day on his daily commute to his job with the Aliquippa Embraces Art project, he noticed it started to change. The sapling planted in Drake's memory that was once decorated with flowers, a stuffed toy cat and an angel ornament began to fall apart as elements of it started to wither or blow away. Ultimately, the tree itself was gone.
"There's nothing but a big, gaping hole there now," Taylor says. But that is of little surprise to Taylor, because for the past two years he has been photographing roadside memorials such as this for his show, "Roadside Memorials, Shrines and other Markers," which will close today at Garfield Artworks.
In the show, nearly 10 roadside memorials marking fatal car crashes and other tragedies are chronicled throughout the seasons, ranging from photographs of snow-covered stuffed animals strapped to a makeshift shrine along Thompson Run Road in Penn Hills to plastic poinsettias found along the Parkway East that are surrounded by trash and springtime sprouts.
"Some of these decay and fall apart, disappearing altogether, and some are regularly maintained," Taylor says. "Sometimes, on anniversaries, you'll see that people have cleaned them up."
Such was the case with a wreath strapped to a stoplight pole along Franklin Avenue in Aliquippa, which marks a fatal crash that resulted from a carjacking nearly five years ago.
Taylor says a year after photographing the marker, he was surprised to see big bows strapped to it one day.
Although most of the images are from memorials Taylor found locally - which visitors can identify by way of maps next to each - a few are from Philadelphia and Virginia, which Taylor photographed while traveling through those areas.
One of the most heartbreaking of Taylor's chosen subjects is that of an Allegheny Cemetery plot turned shrine for a 5-year-old Morningside girl who fell out of a second-story window two years ago.
Although technically not a roadside memorial, the shrine is highly visible from Stanton Avenue where, having occasionally passed by it, Taylor noticed that it was constantly changing with flowers, notes and dollar store items being added or taken away.
Intrigued, he decided to contact the family of the little girl to find out more about her story. That resulted in a 10-minute video piece that Taylor and local filmmaker Jay Golden produced titled "Journey to Remembrance."
Featuring interviews with the girl's family, a mental health professional and various scenes of many of the memorials featured in Taylor's photographs, the video is the most interesting and profound work in the show, addressing the subjects of loss and longing far better than any of the other works on display.
Offering little more than documentation, Taylor's photographs ultimately leave viewers guessing at the stories associated with the markers and memorials featured in them. With no more evidence to their cause, they are just as anonymous in an art gallery as they are on the roadside.
Are the memorials in Taylor's photographs objects to be respected for their reverence, or are they simply just something to gawk at?
To that end, Taylor offers no resolution. But even so, these images still manage to throw the viewer into the role of passive witness to the point of redundancy.
Ultimately, they offer only an opportunity for cool voyeurism in which to continue rubbernecking long after the crash.
Nevertheless, seeing the video is worth venturing to the gallery this evening for the show's closing reception.
| 'Roadside Memorials, Shrines and other Markers' |
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