Waiting for Calder

Before I moved to Connecticut I told my friends that if I ever had to move back I would want to live in New Haven. Not that Connecticut would be a place where I would opt to live, but that of all other places in the state, I felt it had the most to offer and a direct rail line to New York. I did move back to Connecticut on my own volition but ended up in Waterbury, not New Haven to be close to my mother.

Whenever Steve and I wanted to dine somewhere other than American or Italian-American we would pass this mid-century building on our way to New Haven where they offered more variety of food. This site is a mile southeast of what was the Peter Paul headquarters/factory (home to Mounds and Almond Joy). We passed it often. It intrigued me by its stunning cantilevers and awkward shape; a vertical brick 2-story box, radiating from it two large circular suspended shapes on either side, one covered in black glass, the other in white concrete and in the back a white box suspended in the air by a singular column. To me mid-century modern architecture symbolizes promise, adventure, the future and space, usually in a sleek, refined manner. What comes to mind is Eero Sarinen's TWA terminal at JFK Airport. There is something off-putting by this structure. The circular wings with the sturdy square central core just make it graceless, reminding me of an oafish bird with deformed wings trying to fly away. Perhaps that metaphor is what intrigues me. Underneath one of the round "wings" or cantilevers was a human-sized bright red Calder-esque statue. The statue was not as dynamic as Alexander Calder's more famous pieces. It too was awkward, just as awkward as the building itself. However, the two in relationship to each other somehow worked. They created a conversation between themselves in a language only they could understand. The red colored sculpture filled an uncomfortable void below the round wing which protected it from above and gave life to this dead space. It took me many trips passing at 40 miles an hour to consider the juxtaposition of the two and enjoy it.

Alexander Calder lived in Roxbury, Connecticut and many of his smaller and mid-sized sculptures were fabricated in Waterbury. Perhaps this was one of his pieces, I don't know. I did not stop to see if there was a signature. One day I noticed the business was closed. Another time I noticed weeds growing, then torn curtains and eventually broken windows. But the sculpture was there and I thought to myself that if it is Calder's it's worth a lot of money and no one realizes it. I appreciated it more each time I drove by feeling it was a secret in plain view, a precious object someone will one day take away. That day came. I still don't know who was the architect, who created the sculpture, who decided to put them in that setting or who took the sculpture. But I do know the conversation is over and the language is lost.