Northshore Magazine

40nshoremag.com April 2014 Art ne step into the beverly oracle, take a seat, and ask a question: "Does she dream about me when I dream about her?" "Who will my children love when they're grown?" The answer? A snippet of poetry that emanates through the entire city. The questions are private. But the answers are for everyone. A strange glass building, a special chair, these riddles-as-answers are all part of The Beverly Oracle—a free, permanent, interactive public art installation that's slated to open in 2015. The project, which is under development now, was dreamed up by visual artist Anna Schuleit Haber, a MacArthur Foundation fellow who is cur- rently a visiting artist at Montserrat Col- lege of Art. The work will be jointly hosted by the city of Beverly, Montserrat College, and Beverly Main Streets. Located on Beverly Common, it will consist of a small building made of glass and brick. Visitors will be invited to sit down in a chair designed by Schuleit Haber and a voice will prompt a question. The building's "smart glass" will turn opaque for privacy. "I decided to do a project that would be all around sitting down, pausing for a mo- ment in a special chair," Schuleit Haber says. A voice will give the answer within the Oracle space, and corresponding text will briefly and simultaneously appear at four different locations throughout Beverly, including the commuter rail station. The Oracle's response will be drawn from a endeavors Original Idea Artist Anna Schuleit Haber's upcoming installation in Beverly will have people asking a lot of questions—and getting some unusual answers. By Alexandra Pecci pool of answers that Schuleit Haber will compile from poets and writers across the country, including Lewis Hyde and Jane Brox. To compile the answers, Schuleit Haber will travel across the country in a 1973 Buick Centurion, visiting writers dur- ing a road trip that will be filmed. "The idea for it came to me when I was visiting the city, walking the common, looking for the train station, and crossing the major intersections on Cabot Street," Schuleit Haber says. Finding inspiration by spending time in a place and channeling its energy is typical of Schuleit Haber's work, which is site-specific and deeply moving. Al- though Schuleit Haber studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, she doesn't limit her artistic vision to a two- dimensional space. "I always have this ache for trying to find the medium for what I'm seeing," Schuleit Haber says. Often the medium seems uncon- ventional. Take, for instance, "Habeas Corpus," a sound installation at the site of the Northampton State Hospital, a former psychiatric facility, that used a 45,000-watt sound system to reverberate Bach's Magnificat throughout the build- ing's abandoned rooms and eventually, out the windows. Thousands of people, including former patients and staff, came to experience the 28-minute display. "I was 26, and really happy that art could cause a traffic jam in town," she says. Another installation, "Bloom," flooded the hallways, rooms, and even the drained swimming pool of Boston's about-to- close Massachusetts Mental Health Center with thousands of blooming flow- ers for four days. The Beverly Oracle presents the chal- lenge of designing structures that can physically withstand the test of time. But the structures themselves are just the be- ginning: It's the imagination of everyone who engages with the Oracle that will truly give the project lasting life. "I believe," says Schuleit Haber, "that the imagination is a muscle in the body that can carry us anywhere." Drawing Plans Anna Schuleit Haber is a visiting artist at Montserrat. Photograph courtesy of Anna Schuleit Haber KJ Apr14 Oracle.indd 40 2/21/14 12:03 PM

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