Latest News
Auto Repair
Blinds
Building/Remodeling
Floor Refinishing
Insulation
Landscaping
Landscaping
Lightning Rods
Moving
Overhead Doors
Critics love Agnes Martin for her clarity of vision and probably for her manner, too. The singular and solitary Canadian-born painter came to prominence in New York City with people like Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg in the late 1950s.
They all lived and worked in dodgy lofts and studios near Wall Street, convening now and then on a tenement roof, Martin in a quilted jacket she seemed to wear indoors and out, sitting a little apart from the rest.
A few years later, Martin gave away everything she had — her budding acclaim, her paints, her brushes — and drove west in a pickup truck settling in New Mexico where she lived alone and sparely in an adobe house she built with her own hands.
She did not paint for seven years. But when she set up her canvasses again, dressing them with two coats of gouache, covering the whole with a tight grid of pencil lines drawn by hand using a straightedge and then laying down horizontal bands in muted and uneven pigments against a paler ground, the critics and the collectors were ready. These powerful and meticulous paintings have been auctioned for multi-millions of dollars.
Dia: Beacon is exhibiting 20 of Martin’s sublime paintings. Some date back to the years when she was young and strong enough to hoist 36-square-foot canvasses so that she could paint the horizontal acrylic stripes vertically, avoiding drips. More recent paintings are just 25 square feet, still large enough, as she said, for a viewer “to step into.â€
She spent the rest of her life alone, reading no newspapers, watching no TV, rejecting such theories as evolution and atomic energy, and painting every morning, finally in a retirement home in New Mexico. Her only extravagance was a white Mercedes. Otherwise, she lived simply, waiting for inspiration and trying not to get in its way. She died in 2004 at age 92.
Dia: Beacon’s Riggio Galleries are at 3 Beekman St., Beacon, NY. The museum, once a Nabisco box-making factory with white walls and silvery natural light, houses works by Michael Heizer, Andy Warhol, Blinky Palermo, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra and others. To see Heizer’s enormous craters, call the museum at 845-440-0100 to join a small escorted group circling the scary and compelling excavations in the museum floor. For information, go to www.diaart.org.
Related Stories
Get Local News Delivered To Your Inbox
Subscribe to receive stories reported for, by, and about our neighbors, on the issues affecting you.
By signing up you agree to our
privacy policy
.
Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.