Back in the spring of 1995, when I was 25 years old and in college, I worked part-time at McRae’s in Century Plaza in the hosiery and accessories department. I hated that job, and I was always late to it, I think as a subconscious way of getting myself fired. I had to stand for eight hours in dress shoes, with only a 45-minute lunch break and a 15-minute break. The job only paid $5 an hour. I remember my boss called me one morning and offered me the option of resigning, because if I was late “one more time,” he would fire me. I told him I’d try harder in the future to be on time and he said, “OK,” but alas, I was late once again and lost my job. On the day I was fired, I didn’t care, because that night, Weezer, one of my favorite bands, was playing at Sloss Furnaces. Oh, to be young and carefree again with no bills to pay!
Little did I know that 13 years later, I would be revisiting Century Plaza, not to go shopping or to try and get a job, but to view an art exhibit in an empty store on the upper level next to Sears, the only anchor store left inside this mall that I went to as a child in the 1970s.
“Everything Must Go” is the name of the art exhibit, created by Rachel Higgins, whose Web site, http://www.rachelhiggins.com/EVERYTHINGMUSTGO.html, states, “Artists featured in this exhibition utilize the theatrical setting of the failed store to accentuate the void rather than filling it.”
My husband and I went to view this exhibit on January 2nd, the next to the last day of the exhibit, which ran from December 20th, 2008, to January 3rd, 2009. The Web site states that the installations rotated daily, and when we went, what I saw was mostly an empty storefront, with a few paintings here and there, a sculpture, and a mannequin in the storefront window. I am no art expert, and perhaps it was because it was the next to the last day of the exhibit, but it seemed sparse. But after thinking about it, I realized maybe that’s the whole point – to challenge my consumerist expectations not only of what a mall should be like, but to challenge my expectations of what an art exhibit should be like.
Three of the works of art in this exhibit did speak to me: the mannequin in the storefront window whose eyes were bulging out of her head, a painting of a big gray rock in the center of what looked like an outdoor amphitheater, and a sculpture that resembled a tombstone with an “eye of the storm” lighting mechanism in the center of it.
The mannequin, whose eyes were bulging out of her head, appeared not to be wearing clothes, as her body was hidden behind what looked like a door to a fitting room stall, similar to what you’d see in a department store. Perhaps her bulging eyes were a reference to the zombies in the empty mall at night in the film “Dawn of the Dead.”
The mall did have an apocalyptic feel to it, as it was mostly darkened, with only a few lights on, and very few people inside the mall. After viewing the exhibit, my husband and I walked through part of the mall and it did seem like zombies might jump out at us at any time, because it was so dark. It felt eerie, like we were there after hours, after the mall had been closed for the night, like we were there when we weren’t supposed to be.
The painting of a big gray rock in the center of what looked like an outdoor amphitheater made me think of outdoor church revivals or evangelism crusades in the 1970s. In the painting, people were sitting on bleachers surrounding the big gray rock, as if the rock was a preacher at a big evangelistic crusade and they were all waiting for the rock to do or say something. I spent much of my childhood going to outdoor church revivals and Billy Graham crusades, and I remember sitting on bleachers outdoors at football stadiums, with Billy Graham speaking from a stage in the center of the football field. Not to compare Billy Graham to an inanimate object, but the scene depicted in the painting made me think of masses of people at those crusades, sitting on bleachers, waiting expectantly for him to speak. The rock was depicted in the center of the painting, with the people surrounding it, so that is how I drew this comparison. Or perhaps the rock was supposed to symbolize change, or the dawn of a new era, much like the monolith that appeared out of nowhere in the film “Space Odyssey: 2001” whenever a new era was about to dawn for a civilization. Maybe the painting was saying the development of Century Plaza was supposed to change the landscape of the eastern area of Birmingham, because a mall does change the landscape of a city, literally and economically. And the big gray rock in the painting did look very similar to the rock formation in the back of Century Plaza, at the edge of the parking lot.
The sculpture that looked like a tombstone, with an “eye of the storm” light in the middle of it, made me think of those novelty lamps that were sold in the 1990s in stores like Spencer’s, once located in Century Plaza, that were called “eye of the storm” and had purple lines moving around, like electric lightning. Perhaps this sculpture was supposed to symbolize not only the death of Century Plaza, but the death of novelty items such as eye of the storm lamps as well, in such a distressed economy.
I am no art expert, and perhaps my interpretations of these pieces are incorrect, but what I do know is that of the few pieces featured in the exhibit the day my husband and I visited it, those three pieces spoke to me the most. Maybe it’s because I am such a rampant consumer that the exhibit seemed sparse to me. Maybe the whole point of the exhibit was to be minimalist instead of featuring an overwhelming number of works, “to accentuate the void rather than filling it,” as Higgins states on her Web site.
If that is what the artists intended, they succeeded at it.
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