Truman Annex

Truman Annex used to stick out a lot more in Key West when there seemed (to me) to be more of a split between the colorful eccentric city and the restrained segregated annex hidden behind its gates and fences. These days to someone of my jaundiced eye the entire city sometimes feels like an annex, occupied part time by people whose claim to eccentricity is having bought a property for far too much money.

Looking through the Presidential Gates, so called rather grandiloquently because they are supposed to only open for a President, we can see Caroline Street leading toward Duval. Not a clean tidy street to be sure but not exactly run down.

Truman Annex was the brainchild of a young Pritam Singh, the developer who came to Key West penniless and slept rough and who made a fortune through Truman Annex despite the fact his first bid for the former Navy property sent him bankrupt.

It is one of those Key West legends in the style of "today's the day" the battle cry of the man who found the treasure- Mel Fisher.

Singh created the "key West style" for him homes which can be seen here and at the golf course and at Tranquility Bay in Marathon.

White picket fences, balconies, lots of greenery and white paint. It is the style of Old Town rendered clean and modern and easy to live in with modern conveniences.

Because this used to be a Navy Base it was a good place for vacationing Presidents to stay and be secure. President Truman stayed as much as he could and when he was in town her lived the Navy Commandant's House which became known as "The Little White House."

It remains a visitor attraction in the Annex surrounded by all the carefully groomed homes in this enclave.

I saw these style of buildings at the Panama Canal  which was built in the same era in a similar climate. Nowadays these are sales and rental offices for the realtors on the property:

The streets inside the annex are additions to the streets outside the fences:

I can see the desire of some people to stay here free of chickens and parking problems, no bums and peace and quiet.

Now that the rest of the city seems less raucous the annex in turn seems less exclusive in some way.

The crowds on Duval Street seem to be rolling up the carpet earlier in the city than in decades past.

The working class are being pushed out and artists need to make a lot of money to live here anymore.

All of Old Town Key West seems to be gentrifying, catching up the annex as it were...

And outside the fences I took a picture of the US Custom House, a tourist attraction with a museum well worth the visit.

Right in the path of the cruise ship hordes.

Seward's Folly

The statue in the foreground is admiring the proportions of the figures in the background, and it's all part of the public art display outside Key West's Customs House Art Museum. Sculptor Seaward Johnson calls it "Weekend Painter" and he stands, perpetually, in front of Key West's Customs House.

You might think the Customs House is an oddity of its own in Key West. In the 19th Century it was standard issue Federal design for Customs House, US, for the use of. The fact that it was built of brick, heavy to import to Key West, that the pitch of its roof was designed to shed snow, had nothing to do with it. Canada, Mexico or Cuba, Federal trade revenues were collected in the same style of building.

Now whether or not the bizarre orange folly is improved by Johnson's sculptures is for ypu to decide. You can't miss the embrace at the front, engaged in by a couple slightly larger than life size. The figure to the right is an unremarkable image of a youthful fishing Hemingway while the one in the middle is my dog.

There's the cruise ship in the background and here's the sad tearful farewell in the foreground. One is real, the other isn't.

This guy, in expensive foul weather gear carrying a coil of rope and dragging a sail bag is called "Wharf Rat" a very decorous and proper New England style of sailor. A Key West wharf rat has salty spiky hair, a dazed look in his eye from the weight of his hangover and an a lean leathery tanned body clad only in ragged shorts and weathered flip flops.

Johnson has his own sense of humor, and he exhibits it from time to time in his titles. This next is "Copyright Violator" which you might suppose is a title he might apply to himself. He specializes in making three dimensional representations of famous works of Art while adding his own impish details.

Here's the copyright the "painter" violated, a picture within a picture within a picture.

For corn fed cruise ship visitors this kind of scene has got to confirm, upon their arrival in "exotic Key West" that this town is different. In a country where a few years ago the US Attorney General ordered classical statues covered up as their aesthetic offended his private prudery, it has to come as a shock to be greeted by nekkid wimmins cavorting around a happy lad. I'd have been smiling too had this happened to me at that age, but there we are. Parents cover your children's eyes as you stream off the Disney Magic.

Seward Johnson was born into the tycoon family that sells you baby powder so I'm not completely sure he has much of a clue how the rest of us live. I sort of doubt he worries about getting fired, losing his home or figuring how to pay for a new transmission. His "Lunch Break" sculpture seems to reflect a bygone era, a time when Americans built things and worked in a time when wives stayed home and filled thermos flasks and lunch boxes for their men to take to the mines or factories or railroad. A modern cubicle lunch break never looked like this.

Nor did most break room views look like this:

If you explore his website you may be surprised not only how far flung his works are, but also how Seward Johnson and his work are always out front and in the public eye. Statues that look unique to Key West may not necessarily be precisely that. But they do look like they belong.

He first came to local attention when some of his life sized statues started crowding the southernmost point and that raised some local hackles (including mine, I must admit). Southernmost point | Flickr - Photo Sharing! from javajem's website in 2007. They've now put the simpering family above the entrance to the airport for people walking off their planes to enjoy.

The Customs House has the proper title of Art and History Museum and I like it very much. I go there frequently to enjoy the ambiance of wooden floors and quiet reflection in the high cielinged rooms. I can check up on the real history of Hemingway in Key West, the works of Mario Sanchez and I can also remember the Maine.

That I have to dodge the "Weekend Painter" and little Miss "Yum Yum" always eating her sandwich is no problem when I want to visit the Customs House.

Reflecting on all this statuary and then photographing them takes time and my dog got bored. Time to go, she said by standing up.

One last picture I pleaded, "Holding Out" an elderly shopper not driving but walking.

Yup, no hardship at all to enjoy these eccentric pieces of public art. It was about time I stopped to take a proper look at them and if you decide you ever want to they will be there, stuck in time, glued to the ground, and according to their owners they are to make us think. Hmm!

The Sculpture Foundation : Exhibitions & Leasing

Key West on Dwellable

 

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Jack Baron Exhibit

Last September I wrote a short essay on this ongoing exhibit at the Customs House. When I was there recently to see the Mario Sanchez show I took another turn in the gallery at the opposite end of he ground floor and I figured I wanted to show more of his astonishing art.

Art appreciation is a struggle for me. On the one hand I have the crude appreciation of "what I like" which puts me in the position of not feeling sure I know what exactly it is I do like. On the other hand my linear brain wants to know what it means before I can understand and therefore appreciate it. On the third hand I respect technique, considering every chip of a chisel that Sanchez applied to a piece of wood over several months. Or, in this case using wool to "paint."

Check out this detail from the pigtail. As far as technique goes this is way beyond me. Never mind having the required imagination to dream up such a style.

How do you think this up? Then how do you create such needlepoint? Amazing.

I photographed this last September and it remained in my ind ever since.

And here is a a"simple" painting, luminous and vivid.

Curiously Baron died the same year as Sanchez, where Sanchez underplayed his own technique his focus on Key West as it was gained him fame for subject matter as well as his folk art technique. I find this stuff fascinating, even if it lacks the historical context of the work down the hall.

http://www.gingerbreadsquaregallery.com/Paintings/Baron/baron-bio.html

 

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