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Haunted By Art and The Past

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Parent Issue
Day
12
Month
February
Year
1978
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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Haunted by art and the past

By Bill Dalton

NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Charles Ciccarelli confesses he fought it for years but he finally had to give in.  He was just no escape artist when it came to art.

Sitting comfortably in his home beneath the framed illustrations that finally worked their way out from where they'd been fermenting for years, the lanky, softspoken Ann Arbor man reflects on the conflict that raged within him between being a scientist and an artist.  

The artist won.

"SOMEONE ONCE TOLD me you could escape art for a while, and I did.  But he said you couldn't do it forever, that it'd always come back and haunt you, and he was right," recalls the 43-year old illustrator of what he calls historic art.

But before it did, Ciccarelli had pursued professions ranging from architecture to mathematics, electronics to technical writer/illustrator and even ad design.

He'd labored over "exploded" illustrations of computer terminals to what he characterized as an "eight-day Champion spark plug."

"The plus didn't last that long," he explains smiling, "it took that long to draw it."

Ciccarelli doesn't draw computers or auto parts anymore because the hauntings continued.  Something was beckoning to him from the past, tugging at this artists's sleeve, and it couldn't be ignored.

He recalls the day it finally came to him in a flash while visiting in up-state New York back in 1973.

Ciccarelli had become fascinated sorting through some old photographs his mother had saved over the years.  They reminded him of others he'd seen recently at an in-laws home, candid shots of street scenes during the 1860s.

He remembers a peculiar feeling came over him that he likens to "historical voyeurism."

"I grabbed a magnifying glass and started peering into the past...the quality of those old photos was astonishing and it was a kind of history lesson you couldn't get from reading a book," he says enthusiastically.

For some reason he knew it wouldn't be long before he quit his job, an admittedly odd notion but one so strong he was unable to resist.  And he knew as well that he would find other old photos and use a documentary approach in recreating those historic scenes through his artist's pen.

Ciccarelli's premonition was right.  He soon quit his job, and is now devoting most of his time to depicting Ann Arbor street scenes from the past-a painstaking process taking not only hundreds of hours to do but hundreds of hours to research as well.

STARTING BY PORING over some 700 old photographs of the area compiled in a local collection, Ciccarelli first selected a view of Main Street looking south from Ann Street taken during Oct. 1893.

He selected it because of the unusual perspective and fascinating cross section of American commercial architecture.  His drawing has already sold out of its limited edition of 400 prints.

Other works have followed, including the Interurban and Courthouse circa 1900; Ann Arbor 1862; Cobblestone Farm during the late 1890s; and the Michigan Central Railroad Depot (now Gandy Dancer restaurant) in the early 1930s.

Working through a magnifying glass, he uses thousands of India ink dots and lines to recreate an historically authentic rendering in minute detail that provides the viewer almost with a sense of actually experiencing the scene.

HE USES A CALCULATOR and a certain degree of interpolation, to draw scenes proportionate to how they appear in the photo.

The result is a picture that an observer somehow wants to get closer to, maybe even bumping a nose against the work itself.

And that's what Ciccarelli intended.  But he wasn't satisfied, and knew viewers would somehow feel cheated unless they also knew what they were looking at.

That's when Ciccarelli stopped capturing history with his pen and history captured him.

Now he spends as much time and sometimes more researching the buildings in the drawings, utilizing old city directories; and microfilms of newspapers dating back to 1829 for the one-page histories accompanying each print he sells.

BECOMING A STRUCTURAL sleuth of sorts, Ciccarelli's not only been able to identify each building, but also tell a little about the people who lived and worked in them.

Sometimes it's possibly more than someone might want to know such as C. L. Pack, who ran the boot and shoe store depicted in his "Ann Arbor, Michigan 1862" casting his first vote in 1840 for William Henry Harrison.  He was the last passenger to leave the shipwrecked "Morning Star" and had a Rev. Dr. Haskell officiate at his funeral in 1890.

Probing local historians, Ciccarelli uncovered hauntings at the old courthouse.  Crawford the janitor, he notes, reported seeing "the apparitions of three men, two of whom he thought were S. Pettibone, county surveyor from 1847-1849 and he widely respected Judge Kingsley who died while the courthouse was being built."

EVEN THE FLAG and weathervane are pointing in the right directions, allowing for the westerly wind that probably was blowing that hot June day.

"Other signs helped in the calculation as well.  The Farmers and Mechanics bank was still standing and there were reports it was torn down in July; rubble along one street indicated other construction going on about that time," he adds.

Now noted in his history of the courthouse, Ciccarelli admits, are still unsubstantiated reports that visitors to the building had to keep their umbrellas up because of impolite pigeons.

BUT THE ARTIST detective's immersion into pre-1900 Ann Arbor became almost an obsession.

At times he wasn't always sure what time he was living in anymore.

"He'd come home and say things like 'Judge so and so broke his arm today' or 'Mrs. so and so's millinery is having a sale this week," says a somewhat astonished Louise Ciccarelli.

He now knows more about Ann Arbor of the late 1800s than he does of the city today.

BREAKING NEW GROUND in historical illustration is difficult, admits the artist, but he's found that many people are fascinated with area history and a time when this was a sleepier town-particularly younger people.

"For some reason they're the most interested.  Older residents look and remark about this period or that, but they never want to own it.  Maybe they have memories of those days that suffice," he remarks.

Ciccarelli won't have time to research that because he's too busy.  The Michigan Historical Society has commissioned him to do the State Capitol building, his first illustration of a scene outside this city.  He's also been commissioned to do St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, and later Ann Arbor's historic fire station.

It'll be a grueling pace, sighs Cicarelli, clearing his basement studio as he prepares for another eyestraining stint behind his drawing board.

ABOUT FIVE HOURS of intricate pencil and ink work is a long day.  Since he began this work he's had to get glasses, and admits his vision isn't as good as it used to be.  But he's not worried about ever running out of local material to illustrate.

"There are plenty of street scenes left-the 1840s, for instance, when this town was just getting under way.  But then there's also the 1940s and 1950s," he rambles on, shuffling through a huge pile of old, faded photographs.

None of the shots were of spark-plugs, computers or "exploded drawings" of any kind.

Ciccarelli relaxes in a chair and smiles. The turmoil inside has subsided, he says.

"I'm happy now; I've found it."

'Interurban and Courthouse' is accurate down to the time on the clock.

NEWS PHOTO BY Larry E. Wright

Michigan Central Railroad Depot in Early 1930s

After hundreds of hours of painstaking research, Charles Ciccarelli works through a magnifying glass, using thousands of India ink dots and lines to make his drawings of scenes from Ann Arbor's past accurate in the minutest detail.