"Arts on the Line" & Ten Figures 

The subway extension was part of something greater than mere transportation: policymakers were hopeful that the addition of new stations would right the ship of Somerville’s urban decline, as “the new stations are expected to provide greater access to Boston for residents of the Hub’s western suburbs and to stimulate economic growth in the areas surrounding the T stations” (“Red Line Extends to Somerville”). Somerville public officials envisioned a revitalization of the areas surrounding the MBTA stations, expecting a transformation in retail, restaurants, and the housing market to accompany the subway access to Boston. 

And to accompany that makeover, city officials planned for a design aesthetic to match their plans for economic revitalization. Tom Pelham, then-director of Somerville community development office, shared his goals for the project: “We’re trying to set a tone for Davis Square. Positive, upbeat, neighborhood oriented development” (Kaufman). That “positive, upbeat” development necessitated a vacating of old neighborhood haunts: diners and residential apartments needed to make space for corporate offices and commercial retail lease space. A more beautifully aesthetic, revitalized neighborhood was necessarily a more developed one. As Lois E. Nesbitt portended in her reporting on the ‘Arts on the Line’ project: “What does this bode for the future? Developers such as Gerald Fandetti and Rocco J. Antonelli have suddenly become very interested in the residential market in the Davis Square area.”

Each of the stations in the Red Line extension project received several art installations as part of the ‘Arts on the Line’ project; Davis Square station received a mosaic of subway tiles composed of artwork from children in the community, and the ten sculptures entitled Ten Figures produced by local artist James Tyler. Nine of the ten sculptures were sculpted from real-life Somerville residents; the tenth sculpture is the only fictitious one: a mime kneeling in front of John and Alice Kenney, frozen mid-performance. 

If you found yourself in the Davis Square plaza walking towards the figures of Bill and Alice Mosho, you would be forgiven for first assuming them to be just another passerby. The statues are life-sized, captured mid-motion, and, out of the corner of one’s eye, surprisingly realistic. Furthermore, the nine residents who are captured in the statues are recognizable to their fellow community members, presenting a kind of blurring of the lines between real person and statue.

This woman does eventually switch to the past tense in her introduction, referring to the real residents of Bill and Alice Mosho, now departed from the community—but she begins her introduction in the present tense (“This is the fisherman and his wife”), referring to the statues as though they were the Moshos, here to greet a new customer at the Fish Market. Similarly, in Lynn Doncaster’s reporting on Ten Figures, the Davis brothers (the two boys depicted in the scene of the family of four) also refer to the statues as though they were real family members when they describe the defacement that took place over the years: “‘Someone had painted 666 onto my father’s forehead and stuck a cigarette butt in his mouth with chewing gum. I was taken aback because my father had never smoked a cigarette in his life’” (Doncaster). Both of these examples demonstrate a similar blurring of reality with regard to the statues: though concrete and unmoving, they in some ways embody the real-life residents that they depict. This type of interaction isn’t limited to those who personally know the residents behind the statues—this phenomenon is evidenced also by the stranger that I saw leaping backwards from the figures, having for one moment mistaken them for real. 

This type of public interaction speaks to what art historian Hilde Hein describes as a central feature of public art: it is publicly constitutive. Hein rejects the “crudely pragmatic and narrow definition” of public art that equates it with “art installed by public agencies in public places and at public expense” (2)—in Hein’s view, the fact that the MBTA spent public funds to install art in the public location of the square has little to do with its theoretical categorization as public art. Instead, Hein stresses how the viewer of a work of public art is “no longer figured as passive onlooker, but as participant, actively implicated in the constitution of the work of art. Effectively, the work’s realization depends on the audience’s bestowal of meaning upon it” (3). Public art is both created by and analyzes the public around it—there is no work without the public that creates it in the act of public engagement. Viewing the statues is a necessarily public act: all around you are the sights and sounds of the city, the laughter and chitchat of passersby, the eyes of fellow residents watching you—and all the while, the statues stand disconcertingly at eye level, easily accessible for you to reach out and touch.

Placing your hand against the statues reveals a startling truth: they are crumbling away beneath your fingers. The reddish-gray material is rough and granular, with embedded white particles and impurities that produce a sort of shimmering effect in the sunlight. The statues appear weathered in places that are more exposed, and in these places the roughness gives way to a worn away smoothness. Nature has also left its mark: there appears to be some type of algae growing in the cracks in the figures’ jackets, and there are leaves and other natural detritus caught in the crevice where the woman’s arm disappears into the crook of the man’s elbow. These statues are continually shaped and impacted by their environment—and they won’t last forever. 

In her reporting on the ‘Arts on the Line’ art installations for The Boston Globe, Dana Gerber interviewed Marggie Lackner, deputy chief for quality assurance and quality control at the MBTA and head of the MBTA’s art program, about the lifespan of the Red Line extension art installations. Lackner revealed that, “to ensure both the longevity and low maintenance of the art,” most of the pieces are “integral,” meaning “that they are built into the architecture of the stations themselves.” They therefore “must be made of something that is just as durable as the station is, made of the same kind of materials” (Gerber). Indeed, most of the projects along the northwest extension are made of the expected durable materials: bronze, ceramic tile, solid metal. By contrast, Ten Figures is cast in concrete and only expected to last “between 75 and 100 years” (Kaufman). This isn’t an artist trademark: sculptor and former Somerville resident James Tyler typically works in bronze and ceramic for his installations. These statues are meant to have this impermanence, to be weathered by their surroundings and eventually fade away—and according to an interview given by Tyler at their celebratory unveiling, “They are supposed to be a neighborhood statement” (Kaufman). 

As you step back and begin to turn away from the statues, you can’t help but give them one last lingering look, perhaps feeling a pit at the bottom of your stomach. This type of emotional reaction—fear, sadness, unease—seems to be a common response to the statues in spite of their innocuous subject matter. The statues at the center of Davis Square plaza depict the Moshos as a kindly elderly couple, smiling arm-in-arm—and yet something about the scene is haunting. 

However, that fear and unease lingered around the statues right from their inception in 1983. At the celebration of the statues’ unveiling, then-Somerville Mayor Eugene Brune confided, “I’ve been getting a mixed reaction. Some people think they’re beautiful. But some people think they’re scary” (Kaufman). That emotional ambivalence was evidenced by another Somerville voice, commenting on the statues at their installation: “‘They should have done me; I was a waitress here for 30 years,’ jokes Margaret Furlong yesterday as she eyes two of the life-size sculptures unveiled in Somerville’s Davis Square. Furlong stepped back and shivered slightly. ‘I think they’re great, but they're also kind of haunty’” (Kaufman). 

Even at the cheerful moment of Ten Figure’s installation, a community celebration of a new transportation horizon, of the revitalization of the neighborhood, and of the “beautifying” of Davis Square with new public art, fear and unease simmered beneath the surface.