metal persuasion: an architectural analysis
An unique sculpture guards the entrance to Paradise Creek Nature Park on the edges of Portsmouth, Virginia's grungy industrial district and the banks of the Elizabeth River. Created in the early 1980s by Peruvian native Peruka Ccopacatty, this stainless steel sculpture, "Steel Workers" portrays two men raising a crane with sheer force of muscle. Larger than life and strikingly realistic, this sculpture is centered in the middle of the circular gravel entrance to the park; visitors can't miss it.
Paradise Creek Nature Park is an in-progress venture of The Elizabeth River Project, an organization dedicated to promoting restoration of the Elizabeth River. Marjorie Mayfield Jackson, Executive Director of The Elizabeth River Project decided that the sculpture, orginially commissioned by Peck Steel Company in Portsmouth, would be the perfect crowning jewel of the park, symbolizing both the rough, rich history of Portsmouth, which has primarily industrial roots, and the beauty of the Elizabeth River and surrounding nature and wildlife.
The sculpture is a perfect representation of Portsmouth, a city that struggles to maintain positive leadership, public image and economy compared to neighboring cities of Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Suffolk. Portsmouth itself is a city of contrasts: it is home to beautiful, historic Olde Town, with hundred-year-old houses, quaint shops and restaurants, and a waterfront that boasts a stunning view of the lights of the downtown Norfolk skyline just a stone's throw away. But it is also a city with a high crime rate, old, busted streets, rundown strip clubs, housing projects and a rough public school system.
Just down the street from Paradise Creek Nature Park is Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and soaring up seemingly from the base of the Shipyard is the South Norfolk Jordan Bridge, a curved, architectural marvel and the highest bridge in the Hampton Roads region. Smokestacks, barbed wire, uneven parking lots, a jumble of smoke, steel and metal borders a picturesque river, which harbors cruise ships, container ships, military vessels and everything in between. Everywhere you look in Portsmouth, there is contrast between beauty and a population damaged by neglect and the very industries that are its lifeblood.
The Elizabeth River Project hit the nail on the head, really, with the placement of the Steel Workers sculpture. Executive Director Jackson says of the park, "It's sort of like a little oasis in the middle of industry. But the industry is all part of the story."
The sulptor Ccopacatty's website provides an explanation of his work that perfectly fits with the placement of Steel Workers in Portsmouth's wetlands park:
"He uses the material of technology to sympathize with a humanity victimized by its own discoveries. He hopes in liberating metal to art, in reuse of the discarded, to relate the idea of humanity as its own solution."
I believe The Elizabeth River Project, through the sculpture, attempts to persuade both locals and visitors to Portsmouth of the value and beauty of local industry through both the iconicity and synactic indeterminancy of the visual. Iconicity, as described by Gass and Seiter (2007) is the usage of an image to portray or represent something. The sculpture portrays not only the boom of a crane, representing the commerce of several major shipyards in the area with cranes that line the waterfront, but also two men lifting that crane with brute force. Maybe the message is one honoring the cities of this region, specifically Portsmouth, that have been built on the backs of hard labor, rough hands -- science and engineering made concrete and brought to life through industry.
The Elizabeth River Project might be seeking to provide both admiration and respect for the Elizabeth River, but also to send the persuasive message that industry is beauty.
I think the most interesting and striking persuasive tool utilized in the placement of the sculpture is synactic indeterminancy, or basically, as Bello and Brandau-Brown put it in their analysis of the persuasive power of the architecture of Washington, D.C., "The juxtaposition of images against one another". The park is 40 acres of wetlands, trails, footbridges and wildlife preserve, right on the edges of a concrete and stainless steel jungle. And right in the middle of this oasis is a concrete and stainless steel piece of art. The contrast is unmistakable, jarring, and yet somehow, incredibly appropriate.
References:
Bello, R. & Brandau-Brown, F. (2011). City as a message: a case study of visual persuasion in
Washington, D.C. The International Journal of the Arts in Society, 5, 1833-1866.
Bryant, Janie. (2013, October 28). Scupture a symbol of park's restoration, industrial past. The
Virginian Pilot. Retreived from: http://www.pilotonline.com/news/sculpture-a-symbol-of-park-s-restoration-industrial-past/article_0fda95bc-6a1d-5742-890a-b8ff20928c9e.html
Ccopacatty. His work. Retreived from: http://ccopacatty.com/his-work/
Gass, R. H. & Seiter, J. S. (2007). Persuasion, Social Influence and Compliance Gaining. New Jersey: Pearson.
