Art Beat: Installations at UMass Dartmouth honor proprietor of Upstair Used Books

My previous review extolled much of the work in “Ira / 30 Years of Standing Still,” the current exhibition at the University Art Gallery. The dozens of drawings, paintings and sculptures on display make up a fitting and exhilarating tribute to the late Ira Cohen, who modeled for life classes at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s College of Visual and Performing Arts for over three decades.

But two works in the exhibition were not focused on Cohen’s — hell, I’m just going to call him Ira as everyone else did — on Ira’s lengthy career as a figure model but rather on his proprietorship of Upstair Used Books, a quirky independent bookstore in downtown New Bedford.

Sidenote: the absence of an “s” at the end of the word Upstair is not in error, it is of Ira.

I don’t know that I’d been in Upstair Used Books more than two or three times in my life. I wasn’t a fan. It stank mildly of stale cigarette smoke, old coffee and dust. Ira barely looked up when I entered, content to continue doing whatever he was doing at his desk. He certainly did not seem to be too concerned with facilitating a sale. I wouldn’t call him cantankerous … just indifferent.

Internationally acclaimed conceptual artist Mark Dion (born in New Bedford, raised in Fairhaven) has a simple piece in the exhibition. Called “Upstair Books,” it is little more than a short shelf mounted to the gallery wall.

The shelf contains about six dozen field guides, yellowed with age and many with cracked spines, covering a wide variety of subjects: spiders and insects, rocks and minerals, oceanography, the Rocky Mountains, pond life, reptiles and amphibians and so on, all held in place by a pair of bookends.

But it is the text that Dion posted alongside the shelf that reverberates.

In part, it reads: “Ira Cohen was an important person in my life, who I respected, admired and considered a friend. However it was clear that he did not want to be my friend. On many occasions, when Dana Sherwood (Dion’s wife and accomplished artist) and I would invite him to dinner, he would say, “I think I prefer our relationship as it stands now.”

His statement ends by noting that “We could use more brilliant eccentrics … populating the cultural landscape of New Bedford.”

That is a sentiment that is certainly shared by Carl Simmons, who has mounted an astonishing installation — with the invaluable assistance of his architect wife Rachel Stopka — in an alcove within the gallery that, to a certain degree, mimics the interior space of Upstair Used Books.

Simmon’s “In Memoriam: Ira’s Bookstore Installation” is barely contained within the alcove. Along much of two walls, wooden crates and makeshift shelves hold hundreds of books covering a myriad of studies and disciplines: world history, politics, fine art, film, theatre, photography, birding, biography, literature and more.

But the alcove doesn’t just contain stacks of books. There is all the other “stuff”... the everyday stuff of life: art postcards and posters, Elmer’s glue, Scotch tape, bowls containing loose change and thumbtacks and paper clips, pencil stubs, an olive green Thermos, an old Panasonic transistor radio, lip balm, hand lotion, road maps, bus schedules, Bic lighters, and knickknacks.

If that all sounds like an inventory list, it sort of is. Asked about his favorite object in the installation, Simmons pointed out a few hand rolled cigarettes, nestled in an ashtray.

Simmons is enough of a completionist that he removed dust bunnies from the bookstore (and as with everything else he relocated from the store, with the blessing of Ira’s family) and curated them into the installation, under the desk and shelves and behind books, where no one might ever see them.

Ira’s red leather chair is at the desk. Many visitors had plopped themselves in it. And Simmons encourages everyone to thumb through the books, to browse as if you were in Upstair Used Books.

In one corner, there is a dirty green-and-white striped curtain, partially obscuring an even dirtier handwashing sink (not plumbed). Simmons noted that when he used to visit the store, he always was curious about what was behind the curtain, a space that lingers somewhere between the private and the public.

It should be noted that it is not an entirely accurate reproduction of Ira’s domain. Simmons is a serious local historian and is much concerned about veracity. But in this situation, he is wearing his artist hat.

He is only beholden to the essence of the place, not the exact replication of it; a spot that he described as a “special sacred space.”

The installation is a spectacular curiosity. And Simmons might very well be one of those “brilliant eccentrics …populating the cultural landscape of New Bedford” that Dion longs for.

Mark Dion’s “Upstair Books” and Carl Simmons' “In Memoriam: Ira’s Bookstore Installation” can be seen as part of the “Ira / 30 Years of Standing Still” exhibition at the University Art Gallery, CVPA, UMD, 715 Purchase St., New Bedford, through Sept. 3.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Art Beat: Ira Cohen, Upstair Used Books remembered at UMass Dartmouth