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NORTH ADAMS - Move over, Zephyr. There's a new windmill in town.
Well, temporarily, anyway. And it will produce electricity ... well, maybe a little. But it will look pretty cool, that's for sure.
The windmill is actually a piece of art, the brainchild of Connecticut artist Joseph Smolinski, that will be on display this summer as part of Mass MoCA's signature exhibit, "Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape." The exhibit, which opens May 24, features art by more than 20 artists, all with the loose theme of landscape art and environmentalism of some sort. The exhibit is also only one part of a busy summer season that MoCA announced to staff and the media last week, a season filled with performing art, music, film and more (see accompanying box).
But it's Smolinski's piece of the exhibit that is perhaps the most topical in Berkshire County, which has seen both its share of controversy over wind turbines and the recent erection of one, Jiminy Peak's Zephyr.
"It's definitely the most pragmatic," said curator Denise Markonish, who first encountered Smolinski and his tree turbine idea while she was working in Connecticut herself before coming to MoCA last year. Pragmatic,
"The whole thing in some ways is kind of silly," she said.
Indeed, the turbine itself is kind of a poke at the fake trees that disguise cell phone towers in many municipalities. It has the look of a real tree, with a long "trunk" actually made from a steel lamppost and "branches" made from aluminum. The branches spin on a vertical axis - like an egg beater - as opposed to the horizontal axis of a traditional turbine like Zephyr. (Check out treeturbine.com to see a spinning model that will help clear it up.) It will be set up outside in the courtyard next to the river at MoCA.
"Joe's work definitely takes an ironic approach," Markonish said. "It's sort of a funny way to solve a problem that's real for people."
And what exactly is that problem? The major one, according to Smolinski, is that some people think traditional turbines "mar" the landscape, despite their environmental benefits. That argument doesn't sit well with Smolinski, who as part of his research visited the turbines in nearby Searsburg, Vt., and found them "amazingly beautiful."
"If we continue burning coal and oil ... that is going to mar the landscape more than any spinning turbines," he said.
That argument also grates on Bill Greenwald, a Pownal, Vt., engineer who is assisting Smolinski and Mass MoCA with the project. ("I'll make it so it spins," Greenwald said.)
"We need alternative sources of energy," said Greenwald, who happens to have a power-generating turbine on his property. "You gotta decide where you're going to make your sacrifices."
Greenwald, whom Markonish calls MoCA's "great problem-solver," said the project resonated with him because of its ability to not only spark discussion about alternative energy but create some of that energy, too. Indeed, Smolinski hopes to generate enough power to run the video about the genesis of the tree turbine project.
"We know it will generate something," Markonish said.
That spark of intellectual curiosity is what Smolinski is hoping for from the general public, too.
"I'm excited it will generate power," he said. "But for me, it's about the dialogue it will create about alternative energy.
"It doesn't have to be this industrial, ugly-looking thing. For me, the aesthetics are something that need to be addressed."
That's because Smolinski, who has been working with University of New Haven engineers and students to develop the model for the tree turbine, is still an artist at heart, despite all of the environmental aspects of the project.
"Right now I think of it as a sculpture. I think of it as art," he said.
But in the future? Maybe it means more.
"We're considering this a prototype," he said. "I would love for people to have their own spinning tree in their backyards."
"Badlands" runs through spring 2009 at Mass MoCA. Info: 413-662-2111 or massmoca.org.
