A husband and wife collaborate on art that places our own Planet Earth in a cosmic context

By Arlene Distler

The drive to Old Manchester from Bennington on Route 7A takes in historic mansions, the poet Robert Frost’s modest home, numerous old stone walls and foundations, lovely meadows, and majestic trees. It was difficult to concentrate on driving, but eventually I arrived in the manicured and elegant part of Manchester that is quite distinct from the Manchester of shopping outlets and cafés. Here was a steady hum of lawnmowers and leaf-blowers getting things spiffed up for “the season” that would soon be upon the Shires.

Pat Musick and Jerry Carr are getting ready for the opening, at Southern Vermont Art Center, of a major collaborative work. It’s made up of eight single pieces, series, and installations known collectively as “Our Fragile Home.”

The couple live in a beautiful independent-living retirement village not far from Manchester Center. They are, however, far from retired. They are so busy, in fact, that they each engage young assistants from the nearby Burr and Burton school: he for help with fabricating pieces that go into his wife’s sculptures; she for help archiving and keeping track of things on the business end, something, she notes wryly, art schools do not teach.

At the door to the couple’s apartment, out in the hall, is a small mini-installation of two smooth alabaster eggs nesting on paper and wood.

Jerry greets me at the door, and guides me to the comfortably upholstered couch.

The coffee table is laden with books the two have published, and catalogs of past shows. Then, with little time spent on chit-chat, they get right to it: Carr was based in Houston for 11 years as an astronaut and support person on NASA missions (for many years he held the record for weightless hours in space, and his mission, Skylab 4, circled Earth for 84 days, a record for manned space flight); Musick has been an art therapist and spent more than 20 years teaching art.

The apartment, while spacious, hardly seems suitable for constructing the large pieces that will comprise the show at Southern Vermont Art Center. Eventually they revealed their modus operandi: the couple maintain a studio/warehouse/workshop in Sunderland, a short distance away. The business of Pat’s art-making and Jerry’s fabricating comes under the name Camus Art, Inc.

Musick describes Carr as always having supported her artistic endeavors, even back as far as their Houston days. He sits attentively during my interview with Pat, and offers a detail or clarification where needed. When I ask about his fabricating work, his eyes take on a whole new brightness. The couple’s collaborations apply his engineering skills in ways I suspect he never dreamed of from orbit.

In an email, Carr described their method of collaboration:

“Pat comes up with the concept of the design, we work together on the development of the piece, and then I and a studio assistant do the fabrication of the glass, steel, and stone elements. Pat creates the works on paper, and I assist her as necessary,” he wrote.

One thing astronautics gave Carr was a profound appreciation for planet Earth. In fact it was at an Earth Day celebration in 1990, to which 40 astronauts were invited to the United Nations, that the seed for “Our Fragile Earth” was planted.

At the event, six astronauts, representing different nations, were asked to describe what they saw — how they felt — on seeing the Earth from space. And each, independently, in his own language, gave an answer, which the audience received in instant translation over headphones.

After, Carr asked Musick what his peers had said.

“You’re not going to believe this, but they all said the same thing” Carr had, his wife exclaimed. “They all used the words fragile, beauty, protect, sustain, nurture…”

Musick said she’d been trying to find a way to express through art the profound truth of that occasion ever since. And then, two years ago, “my mind began to create the images I had been searching for, and ’Our Fragile Home’ was born,” she said.

But of course this vision did not spring from thin air. Musick’s art has been steeped in concern for the Earth, love of nature and place, and its interstices with human history for quite a few years.

“Epilogue,” in 1992, was her first installation piece to exhibit at a museum. The piece came about after the couple had been through a forest fire that destroyed some of Musick’s work. Then came a flood.

“I was devastated,” she says. “I didn’t realize then the Earth’s ability to survive.” Seeing the resurgent growth inspired “Epilogue.” It has a sense of elements lifted up, new growth coming through, says Musick. It was composed of large abstract canvases, 12 to 18 feet high, steel-shaped stone, and hydrocale, a plaster-like substance.

Several of the pieces were acquired for permanent collections in museums and art centers across Arkansas.

Musick says propelling her art is her desire to create work that reconciles two forces: the destructive and creative powers of the Earth, and that which is man-made. Her work, she says, “contains both natural and man-made elements in a harmonious whole,” and that in reconciling those forces, there is an evocation of “peace, beauty, harmony.”

And has she’s been so adept at expressing peace and harmony visually, she also applies her talents to interrogating mankind’s darker nature. Earlier work, particularly during the Vietnam War era, investigated ancient and contemporary man’s involvement with war. A series of large paintings, “Continuum,” resulted.

“Yokes on the Trail of Tears” (2003-’04) drew on the fact that a portion of the Trail is in Arkansas, near property their home sat on. The Trail of Tears describes the forced relocation and movement of Native American nations from southeastern parts of the United States to Indian Territory in eastern Oklahoma following the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

The wood “yokes” in the installation, with a tear-shaped piece of stone hanging from the center, were placed at various points along the Trail.

The sculptural design was in part inspired by Andy Goldsworthy’s stone “Arch,” a built structure that he moved along a trail in England; Christo’s “Gates” in Manhattan’s Central Park were also an inspiration. Musick has met both artists.

Carr describes his work on that project: “I acted as her studio assistant… The fabrication consisted of finishing the wood, drilling holes in the stone and wood and blacksmithing the attached fittings out of old parts of horse harness.”

I asked Musick and Carr about the transition from the South to New England. “Easy,” she said. “Arkansas is very rural. It’s a lot like Vermont: lots of dairy farms and small industry.” And, she pointed out, “I had lived in Vermont and New Hampshire in the ’50s and ’60s. I raised my children here. They always felt this was home. They are here and we wanted to be close to them.”

Musick said that as an artist she appreciates all the “informal” networking that goes on in the state. “One of the exciting things about the art scene here is the variety, from realistic to abstract. VAC does a tremendous job supporting and encouraging the individuality.”

It seems that Vermont is embracing Musick and her muse as much as she is embracing Vermont. She will have work in the Governor’s Gallery at the statehouse in Montpelier this July, August, and September, “a great opportunity,” she says.

She describes the work that will be shown as stressing the fragility of our Earth, but also one suffused with hope. “It is a set of trees in the autumn, when leaves grow fragile and fall away, but the ’core’ of the tree, the trunk, stays strong and vibrant.”

For “Our Fragile Home,” Musick has taken eight words that were threads in the astronauts’ descriptions looking at our planet from space: fragile, beauty, harmony, balance, protect, sustain, nurture, and steward, and found ways to symbolize them, incorporate them.

“Our Fragile Home” is the show title, but also one of eight separate installations, single pieces, and series that make up the exhibit. The “Our Fragile Home” installation is made up of eight tables, each balanced with progressively more fragile materials, including steel, stone, and Lexan, and topped by an alabaster egg and “branch” made of brass.

Other works are made of sheets of kozo paper coated with beeswax that are covered with delicate organic markings, or, as in the pieces “Thought Streams,” “Comfort,” and “They All Said the Same Thing,” focus on those eight words in Arabic or Cyrillic characters.

Musick’s work is delicate and strong, idealistic and grounded. It challenges us to think more deeply — and more personally — about the spinning orb we live on, our only Earth.