“06880” culture correspondent Robin Moyer Chung writes:
MoCA\CT’s newest — and final — 250th-anniversary exhibition, “Looking for History,” is “Connecticut Industry.” The exhaustively researched work was created by artist and acclaimed large-scale muralist Michael Borders.
According to executive director Robin Jaffee Frank, “We selected Michael Borders for ‘Looking for History’ because we are a nation of states, and our state is Connecticut. (That’s why we have CT in our name.)”
Addressing the opening night crowd, Borders noted that “Connecticut Industry” is foremost a work about history. MoCA is the first institution to show it for its aesthetic and artistic value.
Michael Borders, at his MoCA reception. (Photo/Mariana Roman)
His work consists of 8 10-by-40-foot panels, each evoking the industrial history of a Connecticut county since the 1600s. Intended to be viewed in an octagonal, cylindrical format, the panels here are on full display.
In each, the upper portions — depicting the sweaty merger of body and machinery intrinsic to the industries in a cubist/classical manner — are tempered in the lower portions by folk art-inflected renderings of hundreds of people who helped sustain and shape them.
As a viewer I found it provocative but visually intense; I returned a few days later to continue unpacking it.
2 of Michael Borders’ 8 panels: New Haven and Fairfield Counties. (Photo/Lewis Derogene)
For instance, in the Fairfield County panel, elements of hat-making, Sikorsky helicopters and sewing-machine production are layered on top of the outline of the county. Other images denoting maritime history, farming and transportation swirl about, like a collage.
TIP: Refer to his studies and composite drawings to best locate the details — and to get a peek into Borders’ intricate mind.
The people beneath, all documented, are those who helped spark the industries, from the Native Americans who preceded the settlers — such as Mahackemo, sachem of the Pequonnock who ceded his land to Roger Ludlow — through Igor Sikorsky and beyond. (If you’re interested in more, Borders wrote a 178-page treatise.)
Details, from “Connecticut Industry.”
From 1978 to 1981 Borders, enamored with manufacturing history, visited “chambers of commerce, historical societies, and industrial sites” to trace their origins to the modern era.
He received a $5,000 grant toward creating the set of murals, with the goal of completing it in three years.
Twenty-five years later, they were complete.
His studio was the basement of an elementary school in Hartford, and the teachers would bring their children downstairs to watch him paint and ask him questions.
“Boy, it was a wonderful experience,” Borders recalls.
I’m sure it was for the kids, and their teachers as well.
(The exhibit runs through November 15. Rick Schaefer’s “Colossi” remains in the next gallery. For more information, click here.)
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