Bill and Yvonne Tarr: Moving To Florida
In the midst of moving, Bill Tarr wishes he might have done it the way Picasso did - simply walking away when the house became filled with artwork and going to live in another place.
Instead, Mr. Tarr and his wife, Yvonne Young Tarr, are loading several vans and a large flatbed truck with their accumulated goods and lives' work, and taking it all with them to a new house in Sarasota, Fla.
Just days ago, some of Mr. Tarr's large wood and metal sculptures towered in their Fireplace Road, Springs, yard. His studio contained more, plus numerous paintings and maquettes, and Mrs. Tarr's own studio was filled with notes and recipes from the 23 cookbooks she has written, as well as recently created photo-collages.
Turn And Look
Now, as they prepare to leave their house on the edge of Accabonac Harbor, the sculptures lie piled like puzzle pieces atop the flatbed, girded by hay bales and tires, in what promises to be a look-again highway sight.
Twenty years ago the Tarrs, then living with their sons Nick and John in a SoHo studio, were invited by a friend to stay for the summer in his historic farmhouse, once the home of George Sid Miller. After a second Springs summer, they bought a house across Fireplace Road, another Miller family house.
"I always regretted the fact that I didn't discover East Hampton sooner," said Mr. Tarr, who left a job in advertising and publishing to pursue his heart's work, sculpture, full time.
Dr. King Sculpture
Mrs. Tarr was a fabric-collage artist and playwright, the author of a prizewinning work called "Clap Hands Till Daddy Comes Home" and of "Decameron Nights," which was produced Off-Broadway in 1960.
Both found inspiration in their new house's view of wetlands, islands, and beaches, and in friendships with such neighbors as Willem and Elaine de Kooning and Ibram and Ernestine Lassaw.
Mr. Tarr used the cavernous space in his potato-barn-turned-studio to paint and to weld steel. His tribute to Martin Luther King, which, at 120 feet in girth, is one of the largest welded-steel pieces in the United States, if not the world, took almost five years to make.
It was erected on the grounds of the high school named for Dr. King, near Lincoln Center, in 1973, and was soon afterward declared the "best monument in New York City" by New York magazine.
"Morningside Heights"
Another massive Tarr sculpture, "Morningside Heights," achieved questionable renown when it rusted prematurely and dangerously and had to be removed from its Amsterdam Avenue and 123rd Street site.
The quality of the steel was "not consistent" with what U.S. Steel, the manufacturer, claimed of it, said Mr. Tarr, though U.S. Steel ran a picture of the sculpture on the cover of its 1967 annual report.
The rusty-brown "Morningside Heights," a playful piece adorned with alphabet-block letters, has lain alongside the Tarrs' driveway since its recall. Mr. Tarr wanted to rebuild it in aluminum but could not interest an aluminum company in the project.
Holocaust Museum
The sculptor's best-known work is probably "The Gates of the Six Million," for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The project began 25 years ago with a model called "The Gates of Hell," which was purchased by William Mazer.
Many years later, James Ingo Freed, the museum's architect, saw it in Mr. Mazer's East Hampton house. Mr. Freed had a similar vision of sculpted gates, Mr. Tarr said, and he was commissioned to create it.
His latest metal work, "Broken Victory," is a 3,650-pound bronze memorial to Vietnam War veterans who, Mr. Tarr feels, have not gotten the recognition they deserve. He hopes the piece, which is now headed to Florida, will be bought by a town or village and stand someday as its memorial to its Vietnam veterans.
Carved From Tree Trunks
Downed trees - willow, maple, and walnut - brought to Mr. Tarr's studio by friends, form the core of his wood sculptures. "I was basically a welder, then guys started bringing me these trees," he said. "There was something interesting and mysterious about them."
The carved trunk forms, which look like exaggerated super-versions of themselves, display black pen-and-ink-like lines formed by spalting, a cracking process that occurs when the wood begins to rot.
"The deeper you get into the wood, the more you see. When you work that intimately with something, you see it in a new light," said the you see it in a new light," said the sculptor.
Like their parents, the Tarrs' two sons are both in creative fields. John is a writer who lives in Connecticut. Nick, who lives in Springs, creates boxed sculptures containing mysterious worlds. He "really has all the characteristics I think an artist should have," said his father.
"Now You See It"
Sculpture is not Mr. Tarr's only area of expertise. He is also a magician, a master of sleight-of-hand since the age of 9 and the author of four books on the subject. "I joined the Boy Scouts just to give a magic show," he said.
"Now You See It, Now You Don't: Lessons in Sleight of Hand," is a best-selling two-volume set credited with inspiring many young magicians. Following "101 Classic Magic Tricks You Can Do," his soon-to-be-published fourth book, "Bill Tarr: A Retrospective," is "all pure magic," he said.
Yvonne Tarr, for her part, grew up in Pennsylvania, where she learned about cooking, gardening, and other homestead chores. She "loves to cook and eat," she said.
Last-Minute Guest
One night, when friends brought unexpected guests to a dinner party, she whipped up a complete extra meal to feed them. One of them was the publisher Lyle Stuart, who was sufficiently impressed with his last-minute dinner that he asked her to "write it up."
Thus was born "The 10-Minute Gourmet Cookbook," which was followed by "The 10-Minute Gourmet Diet Cookbook," because, Mrs. Tarr said, "It's always natural to think of a low-calorie way to do it."
"The Complete Outdoor Cookbook" and a book of fish recipes grew out of the Tarr family's camping and fishing experiences at upstate Lake George and in the Caribbean.
"The Tomato Book"
Mrs. Tarr tended a big vegetable garden in a sunny spot between the family house and Accabonac Harbor, where she grew vast numbers and varieties of tomatoes. "The Tomato Book" catalogued uses for them.
It was illustrated with etchings and drawings from old seed catalogues and newspapers she had collected, from Civil War times to World War II, in what she smilingly called the Yvonne Young Tarr Turn-of-the-Century Archive.
More of the old-fashioned and homespun is contained in Mrs. Tarr's "The Up-With-Wholesome, Down-With-Store-Bought Book of Recipes and Household Formulas," which includes instructions for raising livestock as well as recipes and formulas for homemade cheese, beer, sausage, household cleaners, and natural cosmetics.
Paper Collage
Mrs. Tarr's friendship with Herb Nagourney, then of The New York Times, led to several more books, including "The New York Times Bread and Soup Cookbook," which, Mrs. Tarr said, editors initially rejected as a "Depression-era" idea, but which was popular with cooks.
A book called "That's Entertaining," for which Mrs. Tarr did the styling, design, and photographs (of picnic repasts at Town Pond and outdoor table settings in her own backyard) led her to explore photography in more depth and to revisit the art of collage.
"Four or five years ago, I said, 'No more cookbooks for a while.'"
Paper collages, on which she paints, and collages made from old family photos found when packing up her mother's belongings, are her latest endeavors.
At The Benson
"I love being an artist," she said, "because all these years I've had artists around me saying, 'I'm creating,' and I was just working for a living."
Actually, Mrs. Tarr has worked on a number of artistic projects over the years, "intensely, for short spurts." She has made jewelry of crystal and stones that she describes as "luscious" and "very ethereal," some of which she has kept, and some which has sold.
Seven or eight of her collages will be included in a show next May at the Elaine Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton. Encouraged by friends to show her work to Ms. Benson, she hesitated, but finally did, whereupon the gallery owner asked if she would mind showing her pieces in an exhibit of "emerging artists."
Mrs. Tarr was delighted. "That's sort of what I am," she said.
A New Landscape
She is hoping to corner a small space in her husband's new studio, which was bought, along with the house, from a relocating Florida sculptor.
Both artists will, as Mr. Tarr said, "try to get as quickly as possible into the same groove" in Sarasota.
"It's so hard to leave in the fall, when it's so beautiful," said Mr. Tarr. "We wish at least there were a frost."
And though both love and will miss the Accabonac landscape, "We'll be looking at the live oaks," said Mrs. Tarr - "different, but beautiful."