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Lee County
Citrus Poll
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Preparations for the installation were carried out at the
Scheneman groves where I built the center piece of the installation and my
patron and friend Virginia Scheneman supervised the project. Pictured
below are Virginia Scheneman and grandson Zoah Scheneman, left, and Tiité
preparing the installation's sculptural centerpiece. |
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The Lee County Citrus Poll was prompted by the passing of
a new piece of legislation regarding open containers of with alcoholic
drinks on moving vehicles. The ordinance was received with mixed
feelings and I thought that focusing an installation to examine the issue
and conducting a public poll would produce interesting and unexpected
results.
The poll or the installation was set at a public open (flea) market o
Ortiz Ave. in Fort Myers Fl. The installation offered the opportunity to
place art in the social context of everyday life in such a way that the
gap between art and life was eliminated. the installation was
simultaneously seen as one of the many vendor arrangements in the market
and as a work of art by those who knew that the installation was my latest
work of art.
I must add that this was 1984 or about eleven years before the term
"relational aesthetics" was formalized into art by the French art critic
Nicolas Bourriaud in 1995. A term that was to embrace the work of a number
of artists who in the early 90's where combining the legacy of
Happenings, Conceptual Art, Performance, Fluxus, Warhol, Joseph Beuys,
Gordon Matta-Clark and others. |
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The artist and Lee County Commissioner Melvin Morgan who
signed the seals on the ballot box and later attended the official count.
the poll netted 625 votes out of which the majority or 375 were cast
against the ordinance. Commissioner Morgan obtained a sample public
opinion on the ordinance that was valid and informative as to the way the
ordinance was received and art provided the unusual vehicle to obtain the
information. |
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The poll was titled Lee County Citrus Poll because fresh
citrus, oranges, tangerines and grape fruits where used as a free
incentive to attract people to the polling box. People enjoyed free
samples of the delicious fruit while they exercised their freedom to
suffrage. |
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The installation was improvised to look and function just
like the rest of the one day vendors who frequent the flea market during
the weekend. the sculptural center piece would have look out of place if I
had not made it into a functional display for the fruit. |
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The artist Performing, serving the fruit and the ideas
behind the poll. The installation was coordinated by Brent Scheneman in
collaboration with Virginia, Chester and Zoah Scheneman. |
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This photograph encapsulates astonishingly well the
intent, the process and the spirit of the installation. It does so by
presenting to the viewer the glory of free enterprise, the freedom to
express it, the basic simplicity of the market place and more poignantly
the abstract reality of a work of art that transcended the ideal blurring
between art and life that was sought then by modern art, a search that
continues to this day, seen here fully realized decades ago. |
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