by Carlene Phillips ·
Friday, November 29, 2024
At the end of Quarry Road in North Acton, near Nara Park, is an art museum and sculpture park. But those descriptors don’t even begin to capture the unique and diverse pieces and the interactive experiences of the YV Art Museum. There is something amazing at every turn—so much so, it’s hard to absorb all that’s going on there in one visit. The museum is open every day; details are on the website.
“Acton Bigfoot,” made of rusted steel, rises to 23 feet tall.(Courtesy photo)
Arriving at 68 Quarry Road, you’ll see a sign for the museum and two giant steel eggs marking the driveway entrance. A winding road takes you past the abandoned granite quarry, the surface of its 60-foot depth covered in lily pads. You’ll pass another giant egg, this time composed of intricate meshing. (A smaller version of this egg is at Old Frog Pond Farm in Harvard.) Out of the corner of your eye, you may glimpse a huge wooden hammer balanced on a fallen log. Then a bright red building of metal siding emerges from the surrounding woods, a steel triangle attached to the facade, its apex rising above the flat roof. A number of sculptures are in the clearing in front of the building, notably, a tall female figure of a light bronze color leaning against a large T-shaped structure, on top of which is a portrait sculpture of a man.
Yin Peet, artist and executive director, gives short tours, and visitors may also take a self-guided tour, using a QR code to learn about the sculptures. In a recent tour, Peet talked about the vision and history of the museum. She explained that on the sign at the driveway entrance, “YV = Why We,” the YV stands for the first names Yin and Viktor, with “v” pronounced “w” in Hungarian. Viktor Lois is the artistic director of the museum. The “We” also stands for the collected artists whose works are at the museum. The nonprofit YV Museum is administered by Contemporary Arts International.
Peet came to the United States from Taiwan in 1982 with a passion to pursue art and having “dreamed the American Dream.” She studied art of the Western world in New York and spent from 1984 to ’88 in Nepal learning about South Asian art. Many of her works represent a blending of Eastern and Western religions and philosophies. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Massachusetts College of Art. In 2000 she met Lois, a Hungarian artist, when they both attended a stone carving workshop at Andres Institute of Art in Brookline, New Hampshire.
They shared a vision for a sculpture park in Massachusetts where they could promote the creation, understanding, and appreciation of contemporary art in a global context, holding symposiums and exhibitions. In 2003 Peet bought the 10 acres of wooded land on Quarry Road, a perfect place to display the sculptures each had already done and to have a workplace for themselves and others to pursue their art. Peet recalled that Viktor had said to her, “This is going to be your grave.” She said she was angry at him for saying that, and it was only much later that she understood what he meant—that this was the perfect place where she would continue and end her life’s work.
A lizard is one of many carvings on the massive Stone Pile. (Courtesy photo)
Bringing their work there was no small feat since some of Peet’s stone sculptures weigh over 5 tons, and Lois’ kinetic metal sculptures are large and also heavy. Between the two of them, they have 120 pieces spread out on the cleared ground and the trail through the woods. Other artists have contributed another 100. Peet told the story of bringing 10 of her works that she previously had to move from a quarry in Chelmsford to her home in Wayland. They were too large for her house and she had to store them on her front lawn. She could sort of understand why the neighbors objected, but she had trouble explaining to the police that she couldn’t just pick up and move five- to 10-ton sculptures. She had been very happy to find the property in Acton.
Lois’ outdoor sculptures are large metal compositions made from junk parts, most of them kinetic—“Viktor makes everything move,” said Peet—and look like some kind of futuristic machines. An exception is “Acton Bigfoot,” a 23-foot tall, 7½-ton figure made of rusted steel bought from a junkyard in New Hampshire. The figure was created on the ground and then hoisted upright by cranes.
In 2007 Peet and Lois built the “red box” building. The main room is dominated by a 40-foot shipping container that opens to become a stage for concert performances featuring Lois’ sculptures that produce the sounds of various musical instruments. On the wall at one end of the room Peet has painted large portraits of herself and Viktor, complete with hats and sunglasses. Above are several portraits of artists who have inspired Peet, done in acrylic paint. She based each work on a picture of the artist but included a detail with which she associated that particular person. Dali has a bent fork and spoon above his head, Rembrandt holds an orange, Monet an open yellow umbrella. She herself is sitting on the edge of a pool of water.
An adjacent room serves as a gallery for rotating exhibits, with a new artist featured every three to four months. Peet has painted a 38-foot long, 11-foot high mural, based on Zen. Called “One Day on Earth,” it is a female nude lying on her side in a lotus pond, her arms stretched in opposite directions; one hand holds the sun while the hand stretched above her head holds the moon.
Upstairs in the Viktor Lois Gallery are four or five large metal compositions made from reused material that are also musical instruments and take more than one or two people to play. For example, “One Man Band” contains 15 instrument sounds. Looking closely, one sees the “instruments” are made up of hundreds of pieces, like parts of a tennis racket rim, a bicycle bell, gears, and many different parts of a typewriter. Yin said Viktor worked for the Hungarian government repairing typewriters. He had told her there is nothing as fine mechanically as a typewriter. Each sculpture took him two years to complete, creating it in his indoor workshop and then reassembling it in the gallery.
Out back, the “Stone Pile” is a collaborative work in progress, a huge heap of granite blocks excavated for the museum building. Each August for the past 12 years, Peet has held a stone carving symposium, where artists are invited to spend three weeks creating something from one of the granite pieces on the pile. The requirements are that the carving must be figurative, not abstract, and that it must remain in place. Given the tonnage of each granite boulder, the second rule is readily followed. Peet carved Lois’ profile on a pillar at one end. Walking around the pile, one sees a dragon, turtle, snake, Native American face and headdress, and various faces. Peet said at this point, the “archeological site for the future” represents 79 pieces, carved by 32 artists from 11 countries.
Peet said she wants the museum to be a place of learning, where visitors can discuss and critique art. When people come to visit or attend a special exhibit, she doesn’t want them to relax but to be “provoked” to wonder.