For two years, Tom Devaney kept a watchful, sometimes unsettling eye over the intersection of Main and Pleasant streets.
Earlier this year, the Bow artist closed “The Eye” (literally, a peeper – most often his own – projected onto a 3-D canvas). Now, he’s hoping people see more of themselves in his latest installation.
“The Face of Concord” wouldn’t be out of place in a futuristic novel. Usually a woman, it appears from the shoulders up after nightfall in the Pleasant Street studio window, massive and eerily still. She smiles and occasionally speaks to the viewer. If you break her gaze, she follows you – sometimes whipping around to track a car turning west onto Pleasant Street.
But fear not, this apparition is just a projection. “The Face” is a video loop projected onto a 10-foot tall concave plaster face in Devaney’s studio. That plaster is propped up on a sturdy wooden base that keeps the face secure. Devaney can monitor the piece from home and has a camera to watch people watch the window.
The tracking gaze is just a trick of the eye – the concave mask produces a hollow-face illusion, giving the viewer the perception that the face is turning to watch you.
Devaney hopes it will inspire residents to look inward. “It’s supposed to be like a mirror and a reflection of what is Concord,” he said, “and maybe a sort of challenge to what our perception is.”
The young faces, who are actually studio assistants of Devaney’s, are meant to evoke a younger feel that has come into the city over recent years, particularly on Main Street, Devaney said. After 13 years of working out of the same space, he’s had a front-row seat to the new look of downtown and the rise and fall of various businesses.
While “The Face” will be around for a while, Devaney expects it to change quite a bit over the years. Maybe, he said, it will feature more well-known figures of the Concord community. Maybe he’ll set up an interactive booth, so people on the street can be part of the story.
Maybe, one day you’ll be “The Face of Concord.”
But while Devaney has his eye on Main Street, “The Face” is more than about the Capital City. “You know, in the recent political state we’re in, I think it’s important to define who we are and reach some sort of understanding of who we are,” he said. “It’s not overtly political, but it has its political undertones.”
Devaney said his art is meant to create a dialogue between him and the community. This is one of the more on-the-nose parts of the piece – some of the video loops include a few lines of spoken dialogue. What they’re saying is left up to you.
“Even though you don’t read lips, when you see lips moving, I think your brain understands,” he said.
(Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)