Galleries: 'Utopian Benches' by Francis Cape at Arcadia University Art Gallery

Arcadia University Art Gallery frequently goes out of its way to accommodate both artists and exhibitions. Until now, though, three arched windows, covered 30 years ago to transform the former power plant into a more gallerylike space, remained hidden. Then came sculptor Francis Cape, who knew what a little more daylight could do for the site-specific installation he envisioned there.

Asked how he would like to alter the gallery's architecture for "Francis Cape: Utopian Benches," Cape, a British wood carver-turned-sculptor based in Narrowsburg, N.Y., took a look around and had a single request: Uncover those three windows.

"I think I had two reasons," Cape says, "the first being to make the space more closely resemble a meetinghouse, the second being to attempt to break down the distancing of art from life - an inevitably hopeless pursuit, but one which seems particularly relevant to this project. Oh, and of course, why cover up all that beautiful architecture in favor of a white box?"

The natural light has given the space an unfamiliar openness, and the windows are beautifully preserved relics of the 1893 building's arts and crafts interior architecture. But it is Cape's 20 unpainted carved-poplar benches, based on the designs used in American utopian communities and arranged here in tidy rows, that lend the gallery its present meetinghouse character.

In planning his project, Cape studied available examples of benches, made measured drawings of them, and visited a number of U.S. communities - defunct and extant - including those within easy reach of Arcadia, such as Ephrata Cloister. His benches are reconstructions of ones used for various purposes by the Hancock and Mount Lebanon Shaker communities; the Harmony Society; the Society of True Inspiration in Amana, Iowa; the Hutterites; and the Society of Separatists at Zoar, Ohio, among others.

Cape's exclusive use of poplar for his benches has the interesting effect of highlighting the nuances and disparities in their designs while simultaneously uniting them visually. Cape, helpfully, has provided a sheet of Xeroxed photographs identifying each bench and the community from which it sprang; even so, some careful looking is required (sitting on the benches is encouraged, by the way).

Where the installation succeeds most eloquently is in displaying the commonality between furniture and sculpture and the sense of community that can be engendered by something as simple as sharing a bench.