Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1094653
72 S ince we first began tracking this story in June 2013, artist and activist Selven O'Keef Jarmon envisioned, then led an ambitious project connecting Houston and the Eastern Cape of South Africa, via an unlikely medium: the traditional craft of hand-beading. Flash forward: Six years later, 360 Degrees Vanishing (360DVP) will get its big reveal next month at Art League Houston. ALH director Jennie Ash has announced a tentative date for the beaded tapestry to be unveiled: Saturday, May 4. The completion of 360 Degrees represents the work of 16 beaders who flew in from South Africa as well as legions of Houston volunteers — roughly 1,000, ages 5 to 93. They came together over multiple months to create the final metal- clad architectural tapestries, woven with more than 350,000 large colored acrylic beads threaded with pliable metal cord. One panel will adorn the southwest side of the Art League building; three additional panels will grace locations citywide (venues TBD). This month, Jarmon realizes a pendant project, which he calls "profound" — a fitting bookend to 360 Degrees Vanishing. Titled Leisure Tower, it features seven rocking chairs with high backs, which are in turn hand-beaded by refugee children during a commissioned workshop at Interfaith Ministries. Saturday and Sunday, April 6 and 7, Jarmon leads 20-some school kids, ages 6 to 18, in the art form of beading. Once completed, the chairs will be on view at Interfaith Ministries at Midtown, with the artist planning to travel Leisure Tower as he does the tapestries of 360 Degrees Vanishing. GET A BEAD ON ART MATTERS BEADING A BUILDING, FORGING NEW MONUMENTS, A FEMINIST TAKE ON HYPERREALISM, AND THE QUEST FOR A VANISHED SCULPTURE BY CATHERINE D. ANSPON O ur lead story long in the making began a century ago, with the disappearance of a plaster sculpture intended to be cast into a monument to commemorate America's most horrific natural disaster, the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. The artist, Pompeo Coppini (1870- 1957), memorialized the Victims of the Galveston Flood first in clay, then plaster, in anticipation of a patron to fund a heroic bronze version. Its vanishing act is a grand unsolved mystery requiring a skilled art-world detective. Coppini, an Italian immigrant, was one of the go-to figurative sculptors in his day, working in San Antonio, Chicago, and New York. In Texas, he is best known for the Littlefield Fountain, a memorial to the fallen of World War I on The University of Texas at Austin campus, and the Alamo Cenotaph in San Antonio. The search for the vanished Coppini Victims sculpture has met its match in Austin talent promoter and preservationist John Bernardoni, whose great-grandfather perished in the storm of 1900 after he went back to rescue another family. For the past three years, Bernardoni has been obsessed with locating the sculpture that went missing sometime in the 1920s, in the bowels of The University of Texas at Austin. It was recorded in the Cactus Yearbook of 1920, referencing an exhibit on campus during December of 1919. In his hunt, he's checked in with archives and contacted historians; some 4,000 emails have been sent and queries made to at least 70 individuals and entities. When he rang us up last summer at the recommendation of PR maven Dancie Ware, a Galveston native, we were intrigued. A volley of communications were exchanged: texts, calls, emails, and finally a luncheon meeting, where he reiterated his commitment to either find and cast the original sculpture, now lost for exactly 100 years, or go to Plan B. And Bernardoni has a plan B: to recreate the original 10-foot-tall work of art that depicted a woman rising from flood waters, dramatically clutching an infant, while a little girl tugs at her skirt. "The first time I saw the photo of the statue, it really put the hook in me, so visceral was the reaction," says Bernardoni, who founded and manages The Lost Coppini Statue Project. With an artist now secured — Ivan Schwartz / StudioEIS of Brooklyn, whose portfolio includes 42 sculptures of the founding fathers at the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia — and a projected budget of $450,000, Bernardoni is ready to move to the next phase. He plans the statue to be a gift to the city, but so far the project awaits a lead benefactor. ON THE TRAIL OF HISTORY: GALVESTON'S LOST VICTIMS SCULPTURE Selven O'Keef Jarmon Coppini's lost sculpture, Victims of the Galveston Flood, in the Texas Building, St. Louis World's Fair, 1904 JENNY ANTILL CLIFTON MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY, ST. LOUIS