Charlie Brouwer, Rise Up Atlanta (detail), 2011, donated ladders bound with cable ties, 45 x 40 x 40 feet. Photo by John Morse.

It was a bright Saturday afternoon in Freedom Park when I met Charlie Brouwer standing before his completed sculpture, Rise Up Atlanta, a 45-foot-tall pyramid-like tower comprising 188 ladders on loan from neighbors and local businesses. Sparkling in the sun, the ladders sprout like steely bamboo from the hill overlooking the traffic light at Moreland Avenue and Freedom Parkway, bestowing an incongruous magic to the normalcy of green grass, clear blue skies, and the humdrum cars speeding over the asphalt below. Presented by Flux Projects, the structure is completely self-supporting — without the use of nails, screws, or glue — and was strong enough to survive the stormy winds of the week before completion. Although Atlanta’s weather last month was downright peaceful compared to Tuscaloosa, Alabama (where at least 32 people were killed during the United States’ greatest outbreak of tornadoes since 1932), the sculpture’s metal-and-wood skeleton certainly looks like something twister-blown from Oz.

Charlie Brouwer, Rise Up Atlanta (detail), 2011, donated ladders bound with cable ties, 45 x 40 x 40 feet. Image courtesy Flux Projects.

An artist based in rural Virginia who often wears a fishing vest in homage to Joseph Beuys, Brouwer created his first large-scale ladder installation in his hometown of Holland, Michigan. Since 2008 he has completed at least nine variations on the theme. Some of these appeared indoors including his Hope Remains installations at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts in North Carolina, but the majority were outdoors, most notably his 272-ladder Rise Up Grand Rapids in Michigan last year. (Click here to find a video on Rise Up Grand Rapids and here for more info on Brouwer’s installations.)

Charlie Brouwer pauses before installing the final ladder of Rise Up Atlanta. Image courtesy Flux Projects.

“If I could have my wish, I would install one in the plaza in front of the United Nations building in New York, borrowing ladders from every country represented there,” said Brouwer when asked what his ideal location would be. “Another idea is on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., with ladders representing every state, one from every Senator and Congressman.”

Public participation ranks highly in Brouwer’s philosophy. The list of ladder-lenders ranges from private individuals, such as the informally credited “Gilly & Suzanne,” to higher-profile organizations, such as The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Each donor’s name appears on a prominent tag attached to every ladder.

“It’s always helpful if the work has a way of connecting with the community,” explained Brouwer, adding a bit of advice for fellow artists. “It would be a great risk for a public artist to make an individual statement without input from anyone else.”

Anne Dennington, executive director of Flux Projects, said that the cash budget for Rise Up Atlanta was $10,000, but production costs would have been higher without outside help. “We are extremely thankful,” she wrote in an email, “to the neighborhood volunteers and other organizations that helped us to secure ladders, to Keif Schleifer for her assistance with construction, and to Concrete Ideas LLC for loaning the location for ladder collection.”

Brouwer climbs to secure a joint on the first day of installing. Image courtesy Flux Projects.

This concept image shows Brouwer's design for a spherically shaped installation that was later compromised. Image courtesy Flux Projects.

Brouwer’s original plan for Freedom Park aspired to top the grandeur of his Grand Rapids installation. He calculated that, with enough ladders, Rise Up Atlanta could realize a fully spherical shape — a perforated shell around a nucleus of turbulent energy that, escaping outward, emerges as spokes extending from the sculpture’s body. The design, however, had to be scaled down and adapted to the materials on hand.

“Atlanta is known for growth and expansion,” Brouwer continued. “The interior would be this chaos, but it would organize itself out of that and grow outwards. It would be celebratory in a spirit like the Olympics and Atlanta’s history in organizing for that.”

William Blake, Jacob's Ladder, c. 1800, watercolor. British Museum, London. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Ladders are so ubiquitous in everyday life, it’s easy to forget their symbolic history in cultures throughout the world. In the Book of Genesis, Jacob’s Ladder appears in a dream as a connection between heaven and earth. (Brouwer rightly identifies Jacob as a figure recognized by Islam as well as Judeo-Christian traditions.) Psychologist Carl Jung even cited Jacob’s Ladder as an example of the axis mundi, an archetype representing the sacred “center of the world.” Native Americans such as the Pueblo used ladders in spiritual ceremonies, most notably seen in the layout of Southwestern kivas that still survive today.

In those traditions, the symbol fulfills a desire to transcend the mundane — an idea that resonates with Atlanta’s phoenix and its cyclical attempts at escaping the Civil War but also preserving its heritage and endlessly remaking the present. In a town known for its corporate culture and for long commutes, Rise Up Atlanta injects a healthy dose of strangeness into the workaday routine of waiting for a busy traffic light.

Associated with firefighters, ladders also have a strong contemporary significance: They provide means of rescue, escape from danger, and access to higher ground. Homeowners use them to finish DIY projects, and neighbors borrow them to retrieve their beloved cats and Frisbees caught in trees.

Ladders come in all ages, sizes, and types, a variety shown in the sculpture with a modest footstool (on loan from the public library on Ponce de Leon Avenue) that appears dwarfed alongside an ancient multi-segment ladder composed of weathered wood. It even includes an original ladder-shaped artwork by Kyle Brooks. While scouting the installation site in March, Brouwer discovered an example of Brooks’s “free art” hidden in the bushes, contacted its mysterious creator, and invited him to participate in the project.

Rise Up Atlanta is distinctly visible from as far as two blocks away. Photo by Jeremy Abernathy.

If Brouwer's project was installed alongside Evan Levy's 1996 installation in Freedom Park, Wire Tornado (above), viewers might be amused to think that the ladders were blown in by a storm. Image courtesy Evan Levy's website.

Unlike previous versions, Rise Up Atlanta organized without the aid of the mainstream media. In other cities, TV and radio networks bolstered support and increased ladder donations well in advance. Brouwer credits Atlanta’s artists with spreading the word directly, comparing them to contemporary musicians who pioneered Myspace and other social media for reaching audiences without waiting for big record companies to find them first.

Then again, compared to number of ladders collected in Grand Rapids, Atlanta’s effort could have benefited from stronger promotion earlier in the game. The initial collection drew less donors than Brouwer had hoped, and emails began to circulate urgently asking for help. One of Atlanta’s strengths is that many artists maintain a tight network of support. But that also comes with the territory in a city that often fails to recognize the great economic and cultural value that the arts represent. (Click here to learn about the City of Atlanta’s recent budget cuts for arts funding.)

“It’s amazing here,” said Brouwer with a big gesture toward the skyline over Freedom Parkway. “It’s like if the High Museum had a freeway running right through the middle of the building. Too bad for them, but they can’t reach people like this. The cost of admission at the museum and the walls surrounding it put a divide between art and regular life.”

Freedom Park’s visibility makes it a prime location for public work in Atlanta. In 2005 Evan Levy‘s Art in Freedom Park opened the fountainhead for sculptures like Rise Up Atlanta that, in turn, pave the way for bolder, more conceptual, and more risk-taking projects in the future. Smart proposals in the hands of the right people will continue the effort towards elevating unique, thought-provoking artwork where everyone can see.

Disclosure: Louis Corrigan of Flux Projects is also the founder of Possible Futures, the foundation that provided a significant grant to this publication in September of 2010. In pursuit of featuring work that contributes to important cultural discourse, as well as our commitment to transparency, our policy is to disclose instead of exclude.

The installation, Rise Up Atlanta, is on view in Freedom Park through May 31, 2011.