The weekly demonstrations at the Gazebo on Thursday evenings continue with passion and purpose — each week a different issue. We wave signs, blow whistles, ring bells, and carry American flags. Across the street are a smaller group of flag wavers with bigger flags. Seems like we all like the flag. To the fellow who has been holding Old Glory in front of the Veteran’s Hall for some 25 years, we must seem like Johnny come Latelys. Patrick, our music man, chooses tunes from a wide-ranging playlist broadcast through a powerful speaker which makes standing in the heat and cold more pleasant — “Respect,” “Les Miserables,” “ Release Those Epstein Files,” are on his top ten. Some 5 out of 8 cars honk in support, many are oblivious, and one or two offer one finger salutes.
I never thought much about digital expression before but am becoming a connoisseur from observing passing cars. There is the traditional peace sign using index and second finger in a “V,” a relic from the Vietnam War, also used by Winston Churchill as a victory signal. If it’s turned around with palm facing inward, it means something else entirely. Then there is the thumbs up — self explanatory, and the thumbs down, still civilized but direct. There is the raised fist, assuming it’s in support, the honk and wave, and a new one for me Thursday — the “L.” You take thumb and index finger and stretch them apart making the letter “L”.
“What does this mean?” I asked a fellow protester. I thought it might mean love. “No, it means loser,” she said. “Oh.”
There is the ubiquitous heart made with the thumbs and index fingers but too difficult to do if you’re driving. And finally, the one finger salute or “the bird” in American parlance, which is the least savory and known to elicit strong emotions. I prefer the royal wave, extending my arm and rotating my hand around in a queenly gesture. All of these iterations are fully protected by the First Amendment.
Historically or hysterically, the middle finger gesture dates back to ancient Greece, used to insult or intimidate. One of the earliest recorded uses was by the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who reportedly extended his middle finger to mock the orator Demosthenes, demonstrating both contempt and humor. The Romans were early adopters as well, calling it “digital ostende” or “impudent finger” in the Latin. Not sure about the verb.
From the Prosaic to the Sublime
Entering the Benicia Library Gallery I was intrigued by the sight of multiple geometric and curvilinear objects —atoms, fans, hexagons, triangles, pierced by undulating cutouts made with balsa wood, and paperboard, each one displayed on a small shelf spanning the longest wall in the gallery. A glass case holding flat paper cutouts, hand cut with an exacto knife, reminded me of papel picado, Mexican paper cutting, but also lace, spider webs, origami, and Matisse.
This is the work of nationally prominent Benicia artist and sculptor Linda Fleming, also a planner, contractor, engineer, community builder, lecturer, university and college professor, and art school teacher. The exhibit entitled “A Library of Ideas” which runs through April 13, is a must see. Curated by art consultant Katherine Weller Renfrow and artist Bodil Fox, the show was installed by members of Benicia’s art community including Andy Shaw and Jack Ruszel. Her works are owned by major art museums and in public and private collections internationally.
These are the original maquettes or models for what in many cases have morphed into immense outdoor sculptures, steel pierced with lasers, monumental creations that take up to as many as 15 people and five heavy cranes to place. See the video across from the maquettes. A recent installation, “Wayfinding” in Honolulu, resembles a delicate, floating gateway to a heavenly realm but is 20 feet tall and weighs 9,000 lbs.
At the opening reception Sunday, I asked Linda what she thought about while doing the painstaking and seemingly tedious work of cutting paper designs. “This is my thinking time. I think about everything and let my mind go,” she said beaming. From the profound to what’s for dinner. I can only imagine all of the planning that goes into envisioning, making cutouts, constructing maquettes, to the very public job of placing a public art work with all of the bureaucratic requirements, finding fabricators, workers, cranes, and other equipment and then directing the entire exercise in a city you may have never visited before.
After reading Linda’s very informative and entertaining website, I marveled at how she seemed to be everywhere all at once, an active participant in the counterculture, crossing paths with many familiar names of the time. She co-created an intentional art commune in Colorado which is still operating, building a geodesic dome there from scratch, and an adobe house. The colony was deliberately low profile, somewhat secluded, and a place for real work to be done. Loved her story about jumping rope at a party in a mansion with abstract expressionist Robert Rauschenberg when she was a girl.
She has had some 26 studios during her career and continues to work out of three of them — in Benicia, Colorado, and Nevada. Former workplaces include an old brewery in Pittsburg, PA, a San Francisco Victorian, a storefront in North Beach, studios in NYC’s Bowery and SOHO, a house on a bridge in Colorado, a toy factory in Tribeca, sculptor Mark di Suvero’s loft in a fish market, the Macaroni Factory in Oakland owned by ceramist Peter Voulkos, studios in Santa Fe, a train station, a shipyard in France, and in the East Bay where she watched the Black Panthers do maneuvers in the parking lot.
I had been to Linda’s home/studio here decades ago when it was called the Brewery — a funky bar with glass bricks on the front and historic murals of Benicia lining the walls. Tia Teresa’s was an adjoining restaurant with more murals. An old boyfriend and I used to slow dance in the murky bar while being observed by Jack London, or maybe it was dance hall girls who looked down on us from one of the murals.
To see an example of a full-size sculpture, visit Estey Real Estate’s courtyard near the foot of First Street. “Dona Benicia’s Mantilla” is a completed rendition of one of the maquettes in the exhibit. Other monumental works in the Bay Area are installed in Burlingame, Stanford, the Oakland Museum, and Santa Clara University. Linda is currently working on another large commission. If she every gets a minute to write a memoir, I would love to read it. lindaflemingsculpture.com.
Letters From Benicia 