Chakaia Booker Sculpture at
DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum

LINCOLN, MASSACHUSETTS -- Two new shows at DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln will get viewers thinking about what they're seeing.

The photo collages in "Barbara Norfleet: Landscapes of War" are made up of cropped black-and-white photographs from her 1990 "Landscapes of the Cold War" portfolio -- turned into a kind of widescreen format -- with pieces of postcards showing hand-painted photos of botanical specimens on either side of them.

In the 1980s, Norfleet, who has been the director and curator of the photography collection at Harvard's Carpenter Center for 30 years, traveled around the country investigating and photographing various sites of the Cold War. Some were active military bases, others were just remnants. Of the hundreds of images that made up that project, the 12 that became "Landscapes of the Cold War" are on display here.

The sinister "Remaining House on Fringe of Simulated Town" shows a distant lone house in a "town" built by the military solely for nuclear tests. "Laboratory Dealing with Radioactive Materials" presents a close-up of the large protective gloves seen in so many '50s-era science-fiction films that featured scientists and isotopes.

Nearby many of these original photos are the collages they've become part of, now bookended by photos of the hand-painted dead flowers.

Looking at the crisp photos -- some of them showing vast stretches of potentially dangerous inanimate objects, others featuring people in radiation suits surrounded by machinery or weapons -- can be downright frightening. When they're paired up in triptychs with old and faded pieces of postcards (which Norfleet reportedly found in a Harvard library trash can in the '60s) of once-living flowers, the result is nothing less than unsettling.

The mostly large-scale artworks both inside and around the grounds that make up "Chakaia Booker: In and Out" help explain why the institution recently changed its name from the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park to the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

"It's a big change," said Nick Capasso, the museum's senior curator. "We're still showing other things and doing things indoors, but we're putting a lot of energy and emphasis on the sculpture park."

There's energy emanating from the sculptures in Booker's show.

A peek into the airy 4,500-square-foot Linde Gallery reveals six of her huge sculptures spread throughout the white-walled room. They're all made of old tires -- from cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, you name it -- that have been cut up and torn into all sorts of large and small shapes, then arranged and bent and twisted into sculptures, and affixed to either wood or steel frames.

"It's So Hard to Be Green" is a big, dark, swirling mass of what must be thousands of tire pieces that have been set in a sort of frame along part of one wall. Looming at 12<+>1<+>/<->2<-> feet tall and 21 feet wide, it appears to be alive. Stand 10 or 15 feet away from it, and it looks like a nightmarish landscape. Get closer, and it completely fills your visual field...and gives off one strong whiff of rubber.

Nearby is "Anonymity," an almost 9-foot tall piece which will strike many people as a perfectly curved figure 8 -- depending on where you're standing. One of the best parts about the exhibit's set-up is that there's plenty of room to walk completely around the sculptures and get different points of view from these three-dimensional works. No doubt about it, "Anonymity" is definitely a figure 8 as seen from one angle. But walk to a different side of it, and there's no describing its shape.

And there shouldn't be. Most of Booker's work consists of abstract sculptures. So while the piece titled "Holla" might look like a chicken to one person, it's a dragon to another. "The Fatality of Hope" could remind someone of a big insect. But they're not representations of other things; they're whatever each viewer sees them as.

Two of Booker's large-scale sculptures -- the tepee-like "No More Milk and Cookies" and "The Conversationalist" -- have been in the Sculpture Park for a few years, and can be seen on the right as you drive in.

Quite a few newer Booker sculptures now grace different outside areas, all of them selected for their relationship to the space and the surrounding architecture.

Sitting on the Pollack Family Terrace is "Added Substance," featuring six separate textures across the surface, and a large hole in the middle.

The Museum Terrace, overlooking Flint's Pond, is the current home of the two pieces Booker calls "Gridlock." Their placement is interesting because the shapes on them are similar to the ivy on the building's wall and to the curve of the architecture on the nearby turrets.

Look close at "Hybrid," which shares space with "Meeting Ends" up on the Roof Terrace, and you can see a sample of Booker's freewheeling attitude. While her shapes are carefully formulated, it's OK with her that the word "Bridgestone" appears blatantly on one section.

Back inside, she shows a flair for getting two very different responses to her work. "Mixed Message" is a scary mid-sized piece that has something resembling tentacles coming out of it. But over by a wall, off on its own, is a sparkling example of her humor: a small, bright red sculpture -- the only one in the show that's not black or gray -- titled "Dorothy's Shoes," a direct, without-a-doubt reference to "The Wizard of Oz." The piece may be small, compared to the other sculptures, but they're darn big shoes. Just look inside. They're size 29-1/2.