Unwrapping Francis Hines’ Fabric Village Legacy
The 1975 Daily News Headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” has become symbolic of the state of New York City during the 1970s. Bankruptcy was looming, and as many middle-class and wealthier residents left for the suburbs, the City was unable to fund key public services. While President Gerald Ford never actually used the words “Drop Dead,” he had pledged to veto any federal bailouts, amplifying the sense of despair and abandonment felt throughout the city. The fiscal woes would hit our neighborhoods like much of the rest of the city, with funding for basic services like sanitation and graffiti removal slashed, and in places like the East Village, high crime rates, housing abandonment, arson, and destruction.
Artist Francis Hines (1920-2016), saw something more in the blighted East Village during this time. Born in Washington, D.C. in 1920, he began his career as a commercial artist in the 1960s. Hines would eventually move to 3D works, focusing on wrapping and combining found objects in foil and other fabrics. His works would grow, evolving into larger wrapped free-standing pieces.
By the mid 1970s, Hines was living in the Village. He bought an apartment at 377 West 11th Street and reportedly took a studio in 325 Bowery, at the corner of East Second Street. In 1978, Hines wrapped up an abandoned tenement building on East 10th Street between Avenues A and B. The following year, he would do it again, wrapping 605 East 5th Street in heavy white gauze.
Hines would deny that either of these works had any socio-political implications. “The wrap has nothing to do with any social statement,” Mr. Hines said. “I’m interested in the enormous energy that takes place when these forms are under the tension of binding.” Newspapers and Hines’ friends would report a different story, feeling as if these pieces brought a new sense of life to a neighborhood on its last legs.
The following year, 1980, Hines was approached by New York University, who wanted him to wrap the Washington Square Park Arch. Like much of New York City, the arch was covered in graffiti, the piece was done as part of fundraising efforts to restore the arch, led by Friends of Washington Square Park, a coalition set up by the Washington Square Association, New York University, and the Greenwich Village Chamber of Commerce.
This would become Hines’ most famous work. He worked with 15 volunteers to wrap the arch in polyester gauze, and after 28 hours of work the project was completed on May 4th, 1980.
Whether Hines meant anything political by these works, they nevertheless brought new eyes to these neglected places. Hines would complete several other similar works throughout the city, including an unauthorized wrapping of the elevated West Side highway while it was undergoing demolition, and an installation at JFK.