CLAY CENTER: A Better Front Yard
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Those of us who patronize the place have had many a fine evening’s entertainment at the Clay Center. Yet the place has had its problem finding its stride in the years it has been open. A chief conceptual design flaw was the decision, at least initially, to not place any available parking or gathering spaces in the expanse of lawn, asphalt and sidewalk that fronts the citadel of culture. (You have to wonder whether this was partly so the moneyed classes would have an easier drop-off point at the front door through which to swish and rattle their jewelry. Yes, school buses, do, as well, but still…) The net result of no parking out front (or out back in front of the well-concealed entrance to the excellent Walker Theater space) has been to make the place seem empty and unwelcoming. It should have knots of people out front, coming and going, popping in and out of cars. There should be people eating lunch from coffee stands and food vendors under parasols, a bustle of activity.
A step in the right direction is the new amphitheater nearing completion in a corner of the Clay Center’s big front yard. Nicely designed in concentric circles of stone, grass and trees, this will be a lovely place, especially once the trees fluff out, grow up and intermingle leaves to create colonies of shade. I still don’t much like the sculpture of cavorting kids at the other side of the plaza, dancing around not a mulberry bush but something from a bad acid trip. Another sculpture is planned for the bumpy humps — there’s no other words for it — at the plaza’s center. Let’s hope they commission a Lysergic acid diethylamide-free sculpture that’s as inviting as the new amphitheater.
