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PODCAST: An Imaginary Kingdom Born on the Upper West Side

By Emily Frost | October 16, 2015 11:03am | Updated on October 19, 2015 9:02am
 Curtis Wallin is an emerging artist living on the Upper West Side who decided to create his own kingdom, complete with a history, imagery and a love story. 
Artist Curtis Wallin Creates Imaginary Kingdom in His Honor
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UPPER WEST SIDE — A set designer, a sculptor, a painter and a topiary artist: Upper West Sider Curtis Wallin doesn't like to be boxed in when it comes to his art.

So, about nine years ago, he created the perfect umbrella for his creative spirit — his own  country, "Wallindia," named for him and over which he rules.

From an initial brainstorming session about the slogan of his mythic nation ("fun and pretty") to deciding on the rulers (him and his wife), the country has blossomed. 

 

Complete with its own currency, history, battles, passport stamp and national anthem, Wallindia has become a collaborative project among Wallin and a growing group of fans. 

"A wonderful way to be an artist," Wallin said, "is not to be so insular."

When he's not in his studio, at an opening or painting down by the Hudson River, Wallin is tending his topiary in Riverside Park. A member of the "Garden People" group that maintains the 91st Street garden inside the park, Wallin said he lives for the effusive appreciation of his neighbors.

DNAinfo reporter Emily Frost sat down with Wallin to discuss all things Wallindia, his art and what makes the neighborhood special. 

Emily: Hi Curtis.

Curtis: Hello Emily.

Emily: Now you're doing watercolors, and painting.

Curtis: I do watercolors, painting, and run a country, what do you want here?

Emily: What is it and how did you come up with the idea?

Curtis: Wallindia is a country that my wife and I are the king and queen of. Our reign will run for our lives, supposedly it was founded in 1682 by our forefathers, my forefathers. How did I come up with it? That's a good question. Years ago, we were watching the early developments of Gulf War 2, and in the background you would always see these monuments and different things. I started to study ... At the time, I was very obsessed with iconography. I had been in Russia working on some musicals. I was really obsessed with icons, and I thought, "Well, there's a series of icons out here." I'd seen how the icon is now updated into ... How a person like Saddam was using it.

 Then I started to look at other people. Of course, Putin uses them. Then, of course, Napoleon is the king of iconography, and having all these things built for him. I said to my wife, "What if we had a country? What would the monuments look like?" She said, "Well, what would you make?" Knowing that I'm the creator of it. I said, "Well, I'd make monuments to me, first and foremost. They would be monuments to me." She said, "And what would the name of our country be?" I said, "Well, Wallindia," because our name is Wallin, and you have to name it for yourself, if it's your own country. Then she said, "Well, what would our motto be?" A very wise question. I thought about it, and I said, "Well, Fun and Pretty, of course, because all life should be fun and pretty." I've been known to wear five different plaids on a day as my wife said. She'll call it, "Five plaids until Tuesday," she said, should be on my gravestone.

Emily: So, very expressive.

Curtis: It's very expressive, yes. I live in a technicolor world, and I wanted to work on ... In a way, it came about as a way, then, that I realize, that was actually encompassing what I had learned in theater, what I had learned in art, and all these skills that I possess, and how can I create something that would encompass all my abilities and not pigeon hole me just into being, say, a painter of abstract, or a painter of landscape. I worked how I like to work, which is whichever ...

I wake up in the morning. Everything is an influence. I might see a little, tiny photo in the newspaper, which there's one, I'm sure, on the table, of something that is leading to a new idea, to walking through a playground and I think, "Well, maybe I should be making playground toys of the king and queen, and how does that go?" Those rockers that you used to get on as a kid, and they have those giant springs, and I think, "Oh my gosh, these giant silhouettes of the king and queen in quilted, glitter vinyl with streamers to grab on to, that you could ride ..." Everything is open and free to me, and I love that. Everything's an influence, and that's my day.

Emily: It's a framework that you can fit anything into. Some of the things that I've seen images of ... You painted iconography related to the kingdom on the side of a barn in Michigan?

Curtis: Yes.

Emily: Can you talk about that project?

Curtis: Oh, that was fun. Wondrous Wallindia. I was talking with some people and they said, "You know ..." I said, "We've just driven out to Michigan." We drive to Michigan a lot. My wife and I are both from Michigan. I come from a little town and my wife is from Grosse Pointe. We met in New York on the Upper West Side. Every year we drive I-80, a couple times a year, out to visit our parents on the tour, and we see all these barns. A few of them, especially at the Ohio border, you get the Ohio bicentennial barns, my favorites. In Pennsylvania you have the large quilt patterns painted on the side of barns, and there's that whole history of barn painting, and billboards on the sides of barns, et cetera. I thought, "Well, I would love to paint a barn."

 A friend said, "Well, why don't you come paint ours." I said, "Well, what a terrific idea." There's a beautiful 1860s barn that, they said, "Well, the only thing is, just you can't paint anything with boobies on it," they told me. I thought, "That's fine." I love that that's the only thing they had said, "Banned." I was like, "Okay." It was this beautiful old barn, and off I went. A few months later, I came up with a design for a large billboard, and it says, "Wallindia, Fun and Pretty." I originally envisioned it, initially, as this great work of art. What do you do with? How do you see it? I thought, "Well, what it really wants to be, if I'm doing a billboard, is an advertising." I liked the idea that maybe this farmer had come out and just painted this billboard in great appreciation for his king and queen.

Emily: Right.

Curtis: In the great world of adoration, there's four king silhouettes and one queen, so there's five silhouettes. The piece is 22-feet long by 11-feet tall. It's gigantic. It took three days of full-on painting. Luckily I know how to work large. I did all the prep work here, and then flew it all to Michigan and painted it. Luckily on my last day, a most beautiful sunset came out, lit the barn perfectly, snap, snap, pictures, and off I went. We're looking for another barn at this point.

Emily: Yeah, a lot of people ask questions about it. "What is this?" That's a broader question  — have people asked you about this? What is it ...

Curtis: It's in rural Michigan, and I'm sure they field ... I know they fielded a lot of questions. They just say, "It's just some artist friend of ours. You know."

Emily: Yeah.

Curtis: This is farm country. They just looked at it...

Emily: Some New York artist...

Curtis: Some New York artist. That's all they say, and then they don't worry about it from there.

Emily: Yeah.

Curtis: I field a lot of questions on it, but most of them are more, when people are in my studio, or at openings, they interact with me in a way, say, "Oh, have you ever thought of doing currency? Have you thought of doing this?" They start to get into the expansiveness of the idea, and they start to understand that this world is built, and we have stamps for your passport. You can get your passport stamped, and people have traveled with it.

Emily: Oh my gosh.

Curtis: People have traveled with it. A friend was recently just in Prague, and she said the guy was flipping through and looked at it, was like, "Huh, interesting." Kept going. If available I do stamp where Abe Lincoln is. I'm sure this is all illegal. Now I'm going to be arrested. Most of the time we stamp expired passports. There we go. There we go.

Emily: Right. Yes.

Curtis: That's where mine is. You can get your passport stamped. You can do everything. You can participate in Wallindia.

Emily: Yes.

Curtis: We have a whole thing called “the postcards to Wallindia,” where people create postcards and they make the image either a drawing or a photograph. A lot of people do these great Photoshop pieces, et cetera. After they've created the card, they turn it over and they write about their trip to our country, so they have full creative control of participation, and then they send it to our PO Box. "Dear King and Queen, it was so lovely to have tea with you this afternoon, blah blah blah." There was somebody who wrote about the original settlement, created a whole mythology of the original settlement of Wallindia. It's just ... An original seal with a tree growing through something. It's just spectacular.

Emily: Yeah, you're going to need a historian at some point.

Curtis: There's a historian, and people have written stories about it now. We have a national anthem that my brother wrote for me in honor of my 40th birthday, and just sent it to me. It's spectacular. People have written words for the national anthem. It just goes on and on.

Emily: Yeah.

Curtis: I like the open source-ness of it. People always bring opinions and ideas and I love to listen to that. People have different experiences who have come from countries with dictators, and bad people, and those dialogues also inform me of what a country is.

Emily: You've done neon signs for Wallindia.

Curtis: Oh, neon is my latest obsession. When I originally started to think about my last show, which was called “My Hero,” which was based on a whole mythology, where I have to wrestle this great white bear in a show of virility. I was going to bring the electric light into Wallindia and have the first nighttime wrestling match in the history of the country, but the lights, the electricity failed, and we had to have it during the day. At that wrestling match, with the bear, the young princess from the next town over, Juliettita, my wife, showed up with a little, miniature portrait she had of me, and after I had won the wrestling match, she said, "My hero." I had sketched out a little comic book story of all of this. That's what started the whole thing.

I thought, "We should have something with this ‘My Hero.’" It started to build, and the whole thing became this beautiful…first drawings of it, and then I thought, "In neon, there's something nice about this word My Hero in a thought bubble, in neon." I said, "But what would I say back to my wife?" A friend of mine who is from Paris originally said, "Mon heroine.” You would say it in French of course, because if you're a king, you have faux sophistication, and you must speak French." That's where the French comes of it. That was one of the initial signs. The other was just this beautiful idea. We'd been in Paris the spring before, and it's really a city of neon. It's where neon's invented. They have the oldest continually running neon side.

 I looked at that, and neon just started sticking to my mind, and it has such a utilitarian beauty and artistic history that mixes together. That really appealed to me as an artist, is this cross-section of utilitarianism and art. The Wallindia Fun and Pretty blinking sign, which is the structure of a Tabac sign turned ninety degrees on itself. It's original structure was in the idea of Tabac, then put through my own world. It's just a fun medium. I do not bend neon, though. It's just ... I leave that to the pros.

Emily: Yeah. Are there ways for people that aren't your friends or family to collaborate and join in this world?

Curtis: Sure.

Emily: How would someone do that? How do people that you don't know do that?

Curtis: One big way is open studios, which I ... My shows, last fall I had a big show at West 40 Arts on 40th Street. Then, this coming weekend is the Gowanus open studios which I'm participating in. You can come to my studio. It'll be open for two days from twelve to six. People join in. They find you via the website, via other people, word of mouth. You can always email me through the website, wallindia.com, or curtiswallin.com. It's all the same.

Emily: Mm-hmm.

Curtis: Find me if you have ideas and want to participate. I just so welcome it. It's a wonderful way to be an artist, is not to be so insular.

Emily: Would there be an event in the future, or some sort of celebration?

Curtis: Oh, there will be. The next celebration coming up, actually, is a large sculptural piece I'm doing in conjunction with the Parks Department here in New York. It's called Diana. It's based on the mythology of Diana the Huntress.

It's a series of large arrows that have been shot from the angle of where Diana was on top on Madison Square Garden. She was the original illuminated sculpture in New York City. I took that as the mapping point, as if she had shot these arrows from the top. She was 18-feet tall. They landed in this park, and that's where the name comes from. That piece will load in April, whether-depending.

Emily: That's a park in TriBeCa?

Curtis: That is a park in TriBeCa. Albert Capsouto's a relatively new park. It is the southwest corner of Canal and Sixth Avenue.

Emily: Was there a turning point, or has there been a turning point in your artistic career post-set design?

Curtis: In what way a turning point?

Emily: I guess a feeling of arrival, or getting noticed...

Curtis: Yes, yesterday. I woke up this morning. I said to my wife ... I just finished a big new canvas last night, I said, "You know, I finally feel like I'm just learning how to paint after thirty years of painting, now I feel like I've ..." You get a handle on it for a day, and somehow or another, that's always the magic of it. You think, "Will I create today?" And it happens. It does happen. It happens all day, every day, but still. When does it really happen? Throughout my life, every piece to me seems to be something where think, "I've arrived at this," because I've come through a creative problem. I've solved it. I've come up with this beautiful solution, in my opinion, and it drives it, and it moves forward, and it's time for the next piece. The next piece is then almost starting over. You think, "Oh my God. It's magically happened again." I arrive, and I arrive, and I arrive. I think that's great for me because each day is new, each creation is new, each moment is new.

Emily: Your painting is very much related right now to where we are, on the Upper West Side, with Central Park, Riverside Park, the Hudson River, and this beautiful view you have of all these buildings. Can you tell us about what your painting, and what your routine is with that?

Curtis: Oh, most certainly. I've been doing a series of cloud paintings that started in 2011, where I just started going down to the Hudson River at night. I set up, and I bring a book, and I sit out there, and I look at the clouds on a particular night, and if they're correct for a painting, I paint them. Each painting happens in a rather rapid succession. It's about anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour, depending on the moment, because the clouds are so ethereal, and you have to, at one point, commit to them. An average cumulus cloud lasts ten minutes. Even though they seem like they're up there forever, doing their little dance, they're not. When the light is right, I go to work. There's a lot of preparatory work that happens ahead of time. I do these chronicle of lights. I go on to the next night. Some nights you get out there and it just doesn't materialize. You'll see, it's just a crackling, beautiful sunset, and you sit down, and it goes flat grey, and goes away, and you watch the sunset over New Jersey. It's not bad.

Emily: You spend a lot of time in Riverside Park for a different reason as well. You're part of the 91st Street Garden.

Curtis: The Garden People. I'm ...

Emily: You're part of the Garden ...

Curtis: I'm the current president.

Emily: For people who don't know, the garden within Riverside Park, made famous by “You've Got Mail” ...

Curtis: Right.

Emily: They meet at the end in the Garden ... Is managed by a group called the Garden People.

Curtis: Yes. I am a member. My wife is a member of the Garden People. We've been there since 1981. The original group dug up the earth where you see those two plots of land, there's an octagon and a rectangle. Those early years, there was a lot of bricks, and syringes, and dog bones, and you name it, chicken bones. They developed it. It originally started off as annuals, and then it's progressed, and now here we are, thirty four years later, we're celebrating our thirty fifth year next summer, and it's a great community institution. People come by every day, say, "Oh my God. I live to come by this garden every day."

It's great to be a part of that. I get to work in a very public forum where, in the studio every day, I'm in a private forum. I work, and people have to find you. They have to get to a warehouse in the Gowanus, New York's first superfund site, and get into a building and visit you. That's a very hard thing to do, and it's a very committed thing to do. Here, they walk by and see your work every day, and they say, "(gasp) You have that?" I've been making these topiaries. I have a topiary cat based on my own cat. People say, "Oh my God. I love the cat. Every day I bring my friends by to see the cat. I do this." Then, "Oh, I love this plot over here, this rock garden. I love the rock garden. It's my favorite thing on earth, and I live for that rock garden."

Emily: Wow.

Curtis: To know that you've got a connection deep within your community, that's so rooted, is just terrific. I love that.

Emily: They're so effusive. The cat, how did you develop the cat, and how did you learn how to do topiary?

Curtis: I decided I wanted to make topiaries. Like anything in my life, if I decide I want to make it, I figure out how to make it. There's a process. I did a little research. I happened to be, that spring, I was in Santa Monica, and they had two dinosaurs made of topiary, and I went (gasp). That started this, "Oh, that's what they're doing." Those are ... Have some more chicken wire in them, but they were all vines growing through them, a lot of English Ivy. I started to talk, there's a man in our garden, Ed, we call him Coach, he said, "I've always wanted to do a topiary."

 We got discussing it. I said, "Well, what do I need to do?" He said, "Well, you need to probably make an armature." We discussed it. He said, "I'll get the vines for you. We should get some very long-growing English Ivy, so we have a good start to wind it in at first, so it just doesn't look bare." Sure enough, I took a photo of my cat, I drew it up, I drew it out on a large piece of paper. She's about 5-feet long, and 3-and-a-half feet tall or so, in the garden. She's got one paw up as if she's walking through, lifting up to look at something. Ordered a bunch of aluminum rods.

 They arrived, and for three nights I sat here on the living room floor making a large topiary form. Then my wife and I carried it up to the garden and installed it. It's slowly grown in over the years, and I grow a secondary vine into it, either a cardinal vine or passion vines I've grown into it. The passion flower comes up. I try and grow that into the tail, so at the end of the year, the tail has a floral bouquet coming out.

Emily: Oh, nice.

Curtis: Because my cat has a big, fluffy tail.

Emily: Is that the only topiary that you've created there?

Curtis: I also have a spiral. You feel like Edward Scissorhands when you take it down. In the first year, it was very barren but shaped, and it's grown in. You play with it and shape it, and now it's coming into its own on a full thing. They're just a terrific way ... I keep wanting to do another one.

Emily: Each person gets a little plot? How does the community work together?

Curtis: The community works together. There's 34 separate plots. Part of it is you start ... The original people who came down did a really nice layout of it. It's based on concentric circles. There's one of the air vents for the Amtrak train in the center of our area, and it's laid out in circles from there. Then there's a pinwheel in the octagon. If you look at it from above, it spirals into five different plots. From there, newer volunteers, now, you come by the garden and talk to people, but there's always a list of volunteer hours on a door of the octagon. You can just ... You show up during those times, and you start to become a volunteer, and if you'd like a plot, you pay your dues to get you on the list. As you go forward, as plots become available, people move in from being general volunteers to a plot-holding volunteer.

 We all actually have our own little plots on the Upper West side. We're not allowed to grow fruits and vegetables, because of rats and people, or people and rats, whichever way you want to look at it, because they would both be troublesome if we had food in there. It's just open. We have met so many people being out in the park. It's just a terrific way, and to be attached to New York through the earth, which is so funny in a land of cement and pavement. My best hours are spent digging. It's just terrific. Love it to no end.

Emily: Yeah, do you go down there during the winter, or is that a hiatus?

Curtis: We visit during the winter. It's about a 15-minute walk, and we'll say, "What's the garden look like today?" We bundle up on even the coldest days, where, last year, where the big ice flows were coming down the Hudson, we walked down. It's beautiful to see the garden covered in snow and ice, with plants that are coming up through it. There's a Japanese Beauty Berry, and there's all the purple, little berried, and certain plants that have gone to seed still coming up, and the cat topiary sticking through, so you see her prancing through the snow. It's just majestic, and certain ...

 Once, we showed up this year, and there was a whole butterfly bush that had been, after an ice storm, it had peeled open, and it looked like it was a fountain that had frozen in the garden, and it was just ... A little evening light was flickering through it, and we thought, "Well, do you get anything more beautiful than that?" Here it was, winter. The winter beauty in the garden is almost as good as the summer. Not quite...

Emily: Yeah, I was going to say, what is your favorite time in the garden?

Curtis: I show up in spring and I'm always in a panic that it will never grow again, as every gardener is, I've learned. It's not just me. I guess it happens with art. I show up every day, "I'm not going to work." By twelve minutes later, I'm working, after a cup of coffee. This garden's the same. The bulbs come up, the snow drops peak through, then the bulbs come up, and then it starts. All the sudden you're like, "Oh my gosh. My lavender's back. It's creeping through." Your perennials come back to life, and it just ... It's magical to watch, and then April hits, and May, and everything shoots up, and June it's in full bloom, and your roses have opened, and the scents, smells, and how the garden changes throughout the year.

 The witch hazels open, then the Linden trees open. You have that giant perfume in the air. You don't know they're ... You know it's the beginning of June when you get off the subway and this perfume wafts up Broadway. You think, "Oh my God." It's just the most terrific time. Then the eastern redbuds are in. The park is just a magical ... Once you're related to the park, and look at the growing cycles, it's just magical what they've done as a design, and a way of involving people into it. The Riverside Parks Conservancy is just a wonderful organization.

Emily: Yeah, I think it gets overlooked a little bit, because everyone's focused on Central Park, and Central Park Conservancy is so good at fundraising.

Curtis: Yeah, they are the mothership over there. They are the big guy. They're the big boys in town, and everybody else is ... It is secondary. Park Slope, Prospect Park is coming on much more. It was really the first restored park after all the downturn, was Central Park. It's the main focus. It's where people want to go, unless, of course, you've seen “You've Got Mail,” and you want to come and visit us. Riverside Park has its own charm. The river is there. They've done that beautiful bypass. They've made it friendly to people. The restaurants have come on. They've involved the community, and gotten the community involved in the park, and that's what's terrific about them.

Emily: Yeah, do you think that it's less crowded and more of a local scene?

Curtis: Yes.

Emily: Yeah.

Curtis: You don't get as many tourists up here. I do get asked ... We have three to eight different people who have managed almost every weekend to come down and ask about “You've Got Mail,” though. It's very funny, still to this day. It's like, "We have a marriage ..."

Emily: "Am I in the right place?"

Curtis: "Are we in the right place?" Since mine is the plot where they all ask, I know them all.

Emily: Oh.

Curtis: We've had wedding proposals there. It's just, it's very special to see somebody come up and propose as you're gardening, and then photograph, and the flood of emotions people have. It's just terrific.

Emily: Why did you move to the Upper West Side in the first place? You've been here about two decades now?

Curtis: I have. I will be celebrating my twentieth year in this apartment. I was looking around at the time, and I had been living in Hell's Kitchen on 47th Street, which, at that point was interesting in terms of its traffic pattern, in drugs, and prostitution, and the good old Time Square. I knew there were ... As I'd come up to the Upper West Side and look around, it had Riverside Park, which was just such a draw to me, to have a park and be able to have a respite from the city. Central Park is as well. Twenty years ago, it was a much less crowded park. Its traffic was way down, and you could really be in there, and I could ride my bike, rollerblade all the time. God bless, what ever happened to rollerblading?

 It just made a terrific place to be to get out of the grind of the city for me. I need a respite, I need the quiet, and I need the trees. If I'm missing trees, and earth, I'm missing a segment of my life. That's what I realized, being in Midtown. I moved up here to have access to the parks, and I love ... Then, of course, once you start to look around, once you're here, Zabar's is on your corner, and H & H was here at the time. Of course, you go down and you have Fairway, Citarella. You can't go wrong, food-wise. I was in heaven. I love to cook. It's my second passion, is cooking, so it's terrific.

Emily: Do you worry that it's changing, or are you not bothered by what you've seen in twenty years?

Curtis: It will change. New York always changes. I think the people who are arriving here today will do the same thing we're all doing in twenty years. They'll say, "Oh my God, twenty years ago it was such a nice city." Who knows what twenty years will bring? You read great accounts of people who were here in 1890, and they talk about, "In 1910, it just went all downhill." I was talking with somebody the other day, and they said, "When your building was built, it ruined the neighborhood." Their building was built ... Their parents had lived in the same brownstone for years, and they had moved into the apartment building that was built next door in, I think, 1922 or something. It was hilarious. These women had been there, and they were in their nineties, and they were still angry about that building.

 It will happen. New York evolves. It's just a lifecycle of New York. It's change. Has it changed for the better, currently? I don't know. But am I giving up on my neighborhood? Certainly not. I find it just terrific to be up here. I do miss the mom and pop shops. I missed our corner guys at La Chandelle, the brothers were here, Joe and Mike and Sam. They were just terrific. You go and, "Oh my gosh. How is Sue? Your father was here last week. Where's your father this week? What? What?" They even knew my father's coffee order.

 He would come in every six months, and he would go up, and Joe would be like, "Oh, I got your coffee ready for you." The guy remembers your father. That doesn't happen now. All the new coffee shops are ... They're manned by people who come in, probably ... Young, post-college kids who make you a terrific cup of coffee. It's well-tended to, but it's not ... Nobody who owns the places there anymore, that special care ... Zabar's is the last of that. That's truly sad. Great Burrito is still family-run over there, and they're terrific. It's slowly but surely ... Less shoe repair guys, all that. When those go, that's going to really ... It changes the last tenor of the neighborhood.

Emily: Yeah, but it sounds like you're still finding a lot of community.

Curtis: I love the community here.

Emily: A lot of people that you've met through the years are still here?

Curtis: Yeah, I have great friends who I've met on the street. My wife and I both are on the street a lot, and we both have great friends, and it's the wonderful thing about being a pedestrian. You walk by, you run into everyone. "Oh my gosh. How you doing? What's going on?" Where, we grew up in car culture, where you have to specifically drive to somebody's house. It's terrific.

Emily: Yeah. Well, thank you for talking with me. I really enjoyed it.

Curtis: It was my pleasure. Thank you.

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