Nest Not Best

If Harvard Square has struck you as a bit strange, a bit different or a bit off in the waning days of October, it may be due to more than the newly colored leaves and the chill in the air. After all, these seasonal changes happen, well, every autumn. But what doesn’t roll around on an annual basis is a large, net-like structure like the one hanging in the air in front of Holyoke Center. Suspended by ropes—one of which extends all the way to the top of the Holyoke building—this conglomeration of mesh and colorful woodwork constitutes the sculptural portion of “Nest!.”

Sponsored by Harvard’s Office of the Arts (OFA), “Nest!” is a public artwork by eight of Boston’s Reclamation Artists who also collaborated with some burgeoning Harvard artists. Formed in 1990, the Reclamation Artists have made their mark on sites all over the greater Boston area, including Government Center Plaza, the east Boston waterfront and, of course, Harvard Square, where the most recent addition to their oeuvre is located. In addition to the sculpture, “Nest!” also features a live element, including performances and poetry readings by such artists as the Bread and Jams and the Spare Change Poets.

The theoretical underpinnings of the Reclamation Artists’ work is somewhat esoteric and hard to grasp, but in essence much of their work—including “Nest!”—seems to consist of attempts to make something out of nothing. Or, more precisely, to convert a formerly vacuous physical topos into an organic component of a superimposed piece of art. In particular, Reclamation Artists are concerned with neglected urban landscapes, and have often endeavored to add an aesthetically pleasing touch to otherwise barren and unappealing scenery.

The biggest obstacle to the success “Nest!” is its consummate inaccessibility, which is in many ways ironic. “Nest!”, and indeed the Reclamation Artists as a whole, strive to engage the public, and indeed to enliven public spaces for the viewing pleasure of passersby. They do not claim or intend to be pandering to an artistic elite or to people with any technical savvy or knowledge whatsoever.

Yet the sculpture hanging in front of Holyoke Center is anything but pleasing on a simple level. In part, this is a physical problem—a function of the sculpture’s positioning. It is constructed in such a way that the most interesting parts of it—the colorful structures that rest on top of the nest—are blocked to a large extent by the mesh upon which they lie. Sadly, the best way to appreciate the sculpture is to view the aerial photo of it on the Internet.

Further, it would be a large stretch to assert that the sculpture itself (to whatever extent it can be appreciated by a pedestrian) resembles much more than a heap of garbage—albeit a colorful heap of garbage. The Crimson’s editorial page noted as much with the pithy assessment that the sculpture “looks like trash to us.” It is hard to disagree with this appraisal, and if one tries to argue that the sculpture must be looked at more closely to be appreciated, then that negates the entire purpose of the easy public accessibility that “Nest!” purports to have in the first place.