Fall 2005

Introduction

I can’t really keep up with all of the projects, shows, and events that Karen is involved in. Here are some that caught my eye. Most recent are at the top.

April 14, 2005 Big Article in Cambridge Chronicle

About six weeks ago Karen received a telephone call from Hafthor Yngvason, the Director of Public Art. Some artist had failed to deliver for the April show. He was interested to connect Karen with another artist for a show of work about Central Square. Hafthor remembered Karen’s work and thought that it would work well with that of sculptor John Tagiuri. So a mad rush ensued to get the work ready to hang. It must be noted that this happened just as Karen was preparing for a large show, over 40 pieces, at University Place in a show, “Parallels and Crosswalks 2“, sponsored by the Cambridge Art Association (opens new window) .

Along the way Karen thought, “Gee, wouldn’t it be great to put some of the Central Square photos up in the same locations in Central Square itself.” Sort of a walking addendum to the formal display. The Arts Council staff ran around the Square and got permissions.

Then Mr. Wonderful pointed out that he had been playing around with his computer toys and this had lead him to Apple’s iMovie and iDvd programs. Pretty simple to run. Why not take a series of the Central Square photos and connect them with the spoken text from one of Karen’s Central Square books?

More rush rush…..then the DVD movie.

Finally the opening. Monday April 4. Here is more about that eventt >>>>>

The Reporter

Then the phone began to ring and I heard mysterious conversations about events and places in the past. It was The Reporter. Following a tour of Central Square lead personally for The Reporter by the Artiste, we found this in today’s Cambridge Chronicle.

Go here for the whole story >>>>>

Go here for the whole story >>>>>

The DVD Movie

As mentioned above, the show at the gallery included a DVD movie. I have re-formatted this as a Quicktime movie. It is about 9 MB so if you are on a dial-up connection this could take a bit of time. Click here to open a new window and the movie will load.

Cambridge Chronicle

(borrowed without permission from http://www.townonline.com/cambridge/artsLifestyle/view.bg?articleid=224514)

A Central phase in her life

By Alexander Stevens

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Photographer Karen Davis believes Central Square attracts people who are going through life changes.

She’s got lots of anecdotal evidence to prove her theory – friends and acquaintances who found Central Square on the way to finding themselves. But she also has first-hand experience: More than 30 years ago, she was a 31-year-old newly divorced mother of two fighting through depression who pulled up her roots from a comfortable, rent-free storybook cottage in Wellesley to live in a rent-controlled hovel with “a day-glo green living room” at 254 Western Ave. in Cambridge.

The movers, who saw both the home that she left and her new home, couldn’t believe it. They asked why she had made the choice, but they didn’t stick around for the answer when one of her new roommates – a cockroach – suddenly scampered out of its lair to welcome her.

“People I know have a lot of memories of life changes” associated with their time in Central Square, says Davis. “Part of it is moving to a place that’s not that stable, a place where people move in and out while they’re figuring out their lives. I’m sharing my memories because it was a very critical move for me. But a lot of people have parallel experiences.”

Davis chronicles both her love of Central Square and the way it was a catalyst for change in her own life as part of the exhibit “Walking Central Square,” hanging at the Cambridge Arts Council Gallery through April 22. She shares the show with Cambridge photographer John Tagiuri.

Part of the exhibit includes a quick, four-minute video presentation written and narrated by Davis, and set to a decade’s worth of her black and white photos of Central Square.

In the piece, she describes her Wellesley home as a place she neither “fit in nor understood.” And she gives the answer that the movers couldn’t wait for: She felt a crushing sense of isolation there, and she needed a change. When a friend who lived in Central Square called to tell her about a rent-controlled apartment that was available, she jumped.

Davis describes it as the “greatest distance I ever leaped.” In Central Square, she found exactly what she needed. Her two young children made friends immediately, and Davis was bound together with a community also in flux.

“There were six units in the building,” remembers Davis, sitting in an Au Bon Pain (that used to be King’s Pub, she notes). “There were puppeteers who used to move furniture, an academic, a jazz singer, a couple who had been in a commune that was breaking up. No one had money; everyone was just picking up work and making things go.”

What they did have was time to talk and a desire for pot-luck dinners. And a common struggle can build powerful, familylike bonds. If it all sounds a little like “La Boheme” or “Rent,” that’s probably not far off.

And it wasn’t just the neighbors who embraced Davis. She also found support elsewhere in the community. She says the Cambridge Community Center was a great resource for her kids. And “Mrs. Bartley” at Bartley’s Burgers was extremely understanding of her when giving her waitressing hours.

And the “Walking Central Square” exhibit itself is testimony to the wisdom of her difficult decision to move. Had she not moved, she probably never would have discovered photography, or her new husband, or herself.

No wonder she has such affection for Central Square, even as some others may fear it and avoid it.

Appropriately, the exhibit isn’t just in the gallery, it also lives in Central Square, which – as her photos document – is undergoing a metamorphosis from a quirky hodge-podge of oddly outdated shops into the home of an increasing number of chain stores that you’d also probably find at the Mall of America. Davis stands in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank on Mass Ave. in Central Square, site of the controversial Holmes building project. She’s shuffling through crisp black and white prints of Central Square storefronts that she snapped a decade ago. She collects ones that show what the Holmes building looked like a mere 10 years ago, when the Holmes was home to funky shops such as Emily Rose and The Lucy Parson Center. Prints of the same photos hang in the Savings Bank windows; they’re “before” and “after” shots of a Central Square extreme makeover.

Asked if patrons and passersby will understand that the photos are a snapshot of the Holmes building’s recent history, she answers without hesitation: “If they’ve lived here for 10 years they will.”

It’s a motif that’s played out at shops all over Central Square: Davis’ photos hanging in Picante, T-Mobile, Falafel Palace and the Middle East, showing what those shops used to look like.

Davis says most of the shops were “very receptive” to hanging the photos. Although, if she hadn’t just given up, she might still be waiting for corporate approval from the Starbucks home office, 3,000 miles away.

Davis is gentle in her review of the changes. She thinks they did a “decent” job with the Holmes building, but adds, “there are still a couple [changes] that are both amusing and unreal: the Gap and Starbucks. It’s a symbol that things are really changing.”

But if Central Square changed Davis, then maybe Central Square must be allowed to change as well.

And soon after her move, Davis had changed. As powerfully connected as she was in 254 Western Ave., those kinds of experiences are transient, like summer camp or college. Sooner or later, you move on. In 1977, she was remarried. In 1978, they moved to 266 Western. And a year later, it was time for another leap: She and her husband bought a home on Kinnard Street in Cambridge. Yes, that’s in Central Square. In fact, it’s about four blocks from the home that changed her life.

“Changed her life.” Is that too strong a statement?

“Not at all,” says Davis. “Everything came together for me in Central Square. But of course it’s not the place, it’s the people. I can’t think of describing any place else as home.”

“Walking Central Square,” photos by Karen Davis and John Tagiuri, hangs at the CAC Gallery, 344 Broadway (at the City Hall Annex), in Cambridge, through April 22.