Dwell Time: a memoir of art, exile, and repair

Dwell time, the time in which it takes for a cleaning product to work on a targeted material in art conservation, serves as a profound metaphor for the immigrant experience in author Rosa Lowinger's book of the same name. "Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair", begins with Rosa's family's escape from Jewish persecution to their new home in Cuba, and then eventually to their new life in America, sharing how these experiences laid the foundation for her career in art conservation. Inspired by Primo Levi, Rosa’s memoir is uniquely organized around different conservation materials, blending her professional expertise with deeply personal stories. Art isn't just about aesthetics; it’s a powerful storyteller and a cornerstone of community identity. 

Show Notes:

• Further Reading: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (fiction book about a family revolving around a building and house and its relationship)
• To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book through our Amazon Affiliates page at https://amzn.to/3YmbbYB or even better, get a copy through your local bookstore!
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Chapters

• 0:00 Crafting Tomorrow's Workforce and Housing
• 11:31 Art's Role in Storytelling and Conservation
• 16:53 The Importance of Conservation in Planning

Transcript

Stephanie Rouse: 0:00

Join your planning, colleagues, in Sioux City, Iowa, for the 2024 APA Iowa Chapter Conference being held at the Sioux City Convention Center on October 16th to the 18th 2024. This year's theme is Beyond the 9 to 5, Crafting Tomorrow's Workforce Housing and Economy.

Jennifer Hiatt: 0:16

Take part in educational sessions, mobile workshops and networking events on how you can craft tomorrow's workforce, housing and economy. For more information on the 2024 Iowa APA Chapter Conference and hotel booking information, please visit iowaplanningorg.

Stephanie Rouse: 0:43

You're listening to the Booked on Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode, we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked on Planning. Well, welcome back Bookworms, to another episode of Booked on Planning. In this bonus author episode for July, we talked with author Rosa Loewinger about her book Dwell Time a memoir of art, exile and repair. It's perfect timing to release this episode, as I'll be headed to the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions conference later this week to hear Rosa talk in person about her book and meet her.

Jennifer Hiatt: 1:29

It's a little different from our usual episodes, but I think it's a great conversation and a really compelling book. I'd recommend everyone pick it up. I learned a lot about the art conservation and preservation world. So let's get into our conversation with author Rosa Lowinger about her book Dwell Time.

Stephanie Rouse: 1:47

Well, Rosa, thank you for joining us on Booked on Planning to talk about Dwell Time a memoir of art, exile and repair. This was my first time hearing the term dwell time and I'm sure it will be for some of our listeners as well. Can you start with what dwell time is and why you chose this as the title for your book?

Rosa Lowinger: 2:04

what Dwell Time is and why you chose this as the title for your book. Sure, it's a great question to begin with, because that's sort of where the whole idea originates. This book began with the title. I had been thinking about writing another book and came up with this title, but I transferred it over to this book because it was appropriate for what I'm writing about, which is the notion of immigrants and places where they live. But in conservation, it means something very specific. It refers to the way chemical activity works upon a surface. So, for example, the best way to describe it is when we were told during the pandemic that you have to wash your hands for 20 seconds. That's because that's the dwell time that it takes for soap to kill a virus, whereas when you use a hand sanitizer, alcohol is a much stronger material against viruses. So the dwell time is shorter. And the same is true for chemicals on how they work on works of art or historic buildings.

Stephanie Rouse: 3:04

So your family landed in Cuba to escape the prosecution of being Jewish, but eventually had to also flee Cuba, landing in America when you were very young, and your education eventually sent you into the field of art conservation, which played a significant role in how you organized this memoir. What spurred the idea to organize each chapter around a type of material that you work on during conservation?

Rosa Lowinger: 3:25

Well, the idea comes directly from another book, a beautiful memoir by the Italian Jewish chemist, primo Levi, that I found in a library in Rome when I had a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome and Primo Levi was a very famous writer, he wrote a lot about the Holocaust this particular memoir that was organized around the elements of the periodic table, gave me a very strong feeling that that would make a great idea for how to organize a memoir about conservation, because materials are the root of the matter and especially because most people think of conservation they think of paintings, and what we do, those of us who work in the historic preservation world, is really something that nobody understands, needs a professional approach.

Stephanie Rouse: 4:15

Yeah, I thought the organization was just really impactful because you'd start out talking about the material and the physical processes for preserving it and then you tie that into your personal story and your personal experiences and I just thought it went together really well, thank you.

Jennifer Hiatt: 4:33

And I was struck by the amount of times, as you are talking about your family and whatnot, that the past seemed to almost like reach out and grab you. There was an anecdote in the story where you tripped over. Was it your grandmother or your great grandmother's grave? My grandmother, your grandmother and no one even realized that that grave was there. So can you discuss how your ancestry formed your journey?

Rosa Lowinger: 4:57

Well, I think my ancestry formed my journey in the way that all of our ancestries form our journey, and it goes even beyond what I was able to describe in this book, because I feel that, just like materials are a product of their composition, we are a product of our stories. But we're also a product of, like, the physical matter that makes our families up. But in terms of you know this history of serial immigrations, it's a weird thing to have to leave one country and then leave another country. Most immigrants are leaving one place and that's a story that kind of gives you a feeling of uprootedness but that you also find I find in my case roots you very tightly to the places where you live. Some people think it's the opposite, that people who immigrate to a place are not concerned about the material culture of that place, but I think sometimes it's quite the opposite, that you feel it to be more yours even.

Rosa Lowinger: 5:55

Let me tell you a funny story In my neighborhood where I live in Los Angeles, because I live in Los Angeles and Miami. In my neighborhood here in Los Angeles, I have a roof deck and I live at a place in the city where, to the west of me, are Santa Monica, beverly Hills, the west side, which are kind of upscale neighborhoods, and to the east of me is South Central Los Angeles, the mid cities area, koreatown, the areas that are more populated by immigration, and on July 4th the fireworks are all going off in the immigrant neighborhoods, in the fancy neighborhoods on the west side. You don't see anything in the sky. It's all immigrants who care and love their country because we all feel what it has given to us, and I think that's true of historic buildings as well.

Stephanie Rouse: 6:41

Yeah, that's really interesting. And in the concrete chapter you discuss how material defined the post-war modern architecture in Cuba and in the marble section, how Caesar used it to modernize Rome. Why do you think material has such power over how we feel in a space or a building?

Rosa Lowinger: 6:59

Well, I think that physics is going to teach us that it's more than I'm about to say, because I do believe, as the more we learn about physics and the way all matter is energy, we're going to start to recognize that the energies of materials are not just woo-woo stuff.

Rosa Lowinger: 7:14

That it's true, right, that the way the molecular forces work within certain materials. But it's also a texture question and a sound materials. But it's also a texture question and a sound. You know, when we go into a room, materials affect us in so many ways, the most straightforward, the way they absorb sound, the way they feel against our skin, and these kind of can elicit memories, like you know Proust's Madeleines and you know those novels. But I feel that very much in historic spaces. There's a whole pathway of work that talks about the smells of historic buildings, what they're supposed to smell like, Because the minute you change synthetics for original natural materials, it creates a different aura to what the buildings are, and that doesn't mean we have to retain everything, but all of that it works upon us and our senses and our feelings about ourselves, for good and bad, by the way right.

Stephanie Rouse: 8:14

Yeah, smell has such an impact on tying us back to memories and jogging different experiences that we had. You walk into a brand new building and it has that drywall smell and it just smells so clean and sterile, versus going into a historic building and the old wood smells and all the layers over time of how things have changed in that building are really interesting. Exactly.

Jennifer Hiatt: 8:30

In the bone chapter you share that bone is your least favorite material to work with, which, personally having very little to do with any kind of archaeology or anything like that I would agree. But that's the project in Israel that set a trajectory for your life, and I found over and over reading the book that some of life's least favorite events are very impactful. So would you say that some of your least favorite events are some of the most important events we need to experience as people?

Rosa Lowinger: 9:00

That is, entirely a fact of life and it's hard to open yourself to that, and I don't mean to be glib about that. I would assume you would never say that to some to a parent who has lost their child, that their terrible tragedy is the most important thing that ever happened to them. However, it is the most important thing that ever happened to them and it will change them in many ways and it can go in all kinds of different directions. You know abuse can change you and it will change them in many ways, and it can go in all kinds of different directions. You know abuse can change you and it can change you for the better or for the worse. It can make you more humane and compassionate.

Rosa Lowinger: 9:32

Loss does the same thing, so I think that's always true, but I never would say that in a way that suggests that if someone's response to a terrible situation is different, that they're somehow not meeting or rising to the occasion for themselves. We all take these things as they come, but I try to live my life and I say I try because anything can change things. I try to live my life in such a way, and this book brought it to the surface for me that whatever happens to me is the meat of my life. You know you don't get it. It's not a rehearsal, this is it. So whatever's coming is what you get.

Jennifer Hiatt: 10:10

Yeah, I actually found myself reliving some of the harder parts of my life as I was thinking about the stories that you were telling and looking back and I felt the same way of like at the time I never would have wanted to hear oh, that's going to be a pivot point in your life. It's such an awful event. But now I look back and I'm like actually those are the things that have brought me here and I like here, here's pretty great.

Rosa Lowinger: 10:33

Exactly. That's a wonderful thing to hear. There's nothing a writer likes more than to hear that their work has opened somebody else's heart to their own true self and their life.

Stephanie Rouse: 10:44

So Jennifer brought up Bone as a material project that you've worked on, and you have tons of interesting examples of works of art that you've worked on. What's the most interesting object that you've worked on or the most rewarding project from your career?

Rosa Lowinger: 10:58

Well, that would be tough to identify in a career that has been 40 years long as mine has, because there are so many and they happen in different decades and of course you know, they go from large to small as well.

Rosa Lowinger: 11:13

But one recent one that I've vastly enjoyed working on with my team in Miami has been the rescue of a mosaic.

Rosa Lowinger: 11:21

First of all things, mosaic tend to be always close to the top of my list because I'm a huge fan of mosaic, whether it's glass or ceramic tile. These are materials that really speak to me very much. But there's a mosaic in Miami that was on the facade of a building, on a building called the Versailles Hotel that was ripped down rather ungraciously, by a contractor who was renovating the building on behalf of a developer who I won't mention but has a lot of cool art related buildings in that neighborhood of Miami Beach, and they threw it into this weed filled lot and there was great outcry about it in the city. The newspaper wrote an article, lots of people wrote about it and then the city of Miami Beach decided to rescue the mural using the 1% for art program that would go to public art that a new entity who was developing the hotel was putting forth. So that's been wonderful to rescue this glass, ceramic and aluminum mosaic that's 90 feet long, by the way.

Stephanie Rouse: 12:26

We actually have one here in Lincoln. That was a very big deal in the last couple of years because it was on one of our convention centers that got torn down and everyone was very worried about this. I don't even know how long it was. It's pretty massive what would happen to it, and there was a lot of people fighting for it and eventually got enough money raised to take it all down. So it's all sitting in crates right now and there's a plan for putting it in a park. That way it's not attached to a building anymore, because we know buildings can come down.

Rosa Lowinger: 12:53

Right, that's great. That's wonderful to hear.

Jennifer Hiatt: 12:55

We've talked a lot about the importance of storytelling on this podcast and I feel that it comes up in your book as well, over and over. So how can the materials one chooses to design with be a part of the story you are trying to tell, like in your building or as your art piece? I like art, but I'm not very educated or artistic in any way, so I always look at a piece of art and be like what are they trying to say to me?

Rosa Lowinger: 13:19

Well, you know, let me just say something about that first, because I think people don't trust their own instincts well enough. Yes, you can do a lot of reading and you can know a lot about the art world, but it all begins with what moves you. Art is intended to move people, to make you feel something. Sometimes we get away from that and it all becomes very much about design. Or it becomes about some conceptual thing and it all becomes very much about design. Or it becomes about some building great, and it would stem directly from the architect's vision, working with artists or not, you know. Maybe just the design itself, because you can tell when you're in a space where that kind of thought has gone into the building and just its very presence is meaningful in that way.

Rosa Lowinger: 14:27

It's like, you know, you have all these sort of mundane small warehouse buildings all over the place now that are covered in graffiti murals. Right, and they were never intended to be that way, but they've been repurposed so expertly and there's a generation of young people that feel something about that. Now it can be the other way. It can come from scratch from when the building is built. You know, you take something like the Cincinnati train station, that Art Deco building. That's, I think, the largest Art Deco building in the United States. It's glorious, you know. It's a glorious melange of materials, each that speaks to a different thing. But art, unlike actual stories, tell their stories through a visual medium.

Stephanie Rouse: 15:09

Yeah, that Cincinnati building is amazing. We had the opportunity two years ago at the NAPC conference to go into that and had our reception there.

Rosa Lowinger: 15:17

Oh, no kidding. I did an assessment of it with my firm. I'm hoping to incorporate it into my remarks next week. If I can, I just have to figure out how to stick it in there.

Stephanie Rouse: 15:26

Yeah. So towards the end of the book, your father voiced a question that I had been thinking about throughout reading your book, which is how disasters are good for conservationists work, which is kind of a terrible thing to say, but you talk about how it's only getting worse with more and more extreme events happening. How have you seen this impact the field?

Rosa Lowinger: 15:45

Oh gosh. Well you know how it has impacted the field of conservation is that now there is an entire group of professionals who are trained in disaster response. There is an entire group of professionals who are trained in disaster response. At the beginning of this kind of thing, it only used to be those of us who lived in hurricane zones or earthquake zones that were trained, but now the field as a whole is taking this into account, because there are so many disasters of various kinds that, like you, could have a situation where there's an earthquake and I'm going to say San Francisco because I'm sitting in LA, there's an earthquake in San Francisco, a flood along the Mississippi River and a hurricane about to hit North Carolina all in the same week. And there has to be a lot of professionals available to manage these crises, because the people on the ground while they are very trained, because no one can tell me that you can train someone to deal with hurricane response who will be better at it than someone who actually lives in a hurricane zone. However, if a hurricane hits Miami and I'm living in Miami I'm going to have to deal with my own house and my family first, right. So that's why we need that and that's a big impact. And the truth is, they are coming hotter, they are coming faster.

Rosa Lowinger: 16:53

The hurricanes, the wildfires, are now an ongoing thing. There used to be like a season. Now they can happen all year round, anytime. In California, we're lucky this year that we had a lot of rain and it doesn't look too bad, but all that rain produces a ton of new vegetation that then is combustible. So we're seeing a lot of changes. Well, look what happened in Maui. No one expected that to happen. That was 100% a product of climate change. That drought.

Jennifer Hiatt: 17:21

You mentioned in the book a few times of like fire is at this point just destroying almost everything. You can't walk through a house and find something.

Rosa Lowinger: 17:28

Well, it depends If a fire goes directly over a house, a building, an artwork, when the flames touch, the flames destroy. For the most part you can have something charred if you can put it out quickly, but if a flame that is allowed to dwell on something will destroy it. But fires are also very easy to clean up from. If the fire doesn't directly go over the object, then what you're basically getting is soot, and soot is very fairly reasonable to clean, as opposed to the debris of a hurricane or you know that kind of thing.

Jennifer Hiatt: 18:04

So Stephanie and I are planners, although Stephanie has a historic preservation background. I do not. But as I was reading your book, I felt like conservation and planning, they really feel like sister professions almost. So we're both trying to make sense of the past, action and restore what's been lost, and then also, as we think about all the conditions, what the future could throw at us, preserve what we can. So what is one piece of advice from a preservation perspective that you might offer to a planner?

Rosa Lowinger: 18:32

Here's the most important one I can give you. If you're doing planning in terms of an urban space, a park, public art elements and buildings, involve a conservator, because we are trained to see something different. You're trained to see big picture. You're like, you've got that 30,000 foot view and we are deep in the weeds. So, for example, to give you an chewable right example, which is like public art, okay, you have planners planning these beautiful parks with pathways and waterfalls and fountains and sculptures and it's brilliant that there's sculptures and artistic benches in these spaces.

Rosa Lowinger: 19:09

But when we're involved, we will know the difference between making the same work of art, what kind of care it's going to need. In Miami versus Lincoln, nebraska, they do need different kinds of care. If you put something under a tree, we can tell you this you can put under a tree that you can't put under a tree. We're in the nitty gritty minutia of what could happen, so that your beautiful plans aren't disrupted by something that you couldn't have predicted, because that's not where your training is. So that would be my one piece of advice.

Jennifer Hiatt: 19:40

I really appreciate it. You made a comment that conservation people aren't control freaks, but you're control.

Rosa Lowinger: 19:47

How did you put it Enthusiasts, enthusiasts, yeah, control freaks too, that's funny.

Jennifer Hiatt: 19:57

Our profession is totally control freak, but we never would have even thought we needed to control that situation. So it's great advice.

Rosa Lowinger: 20:01

Exactly Because you're planning on a big picture scale. And, for example, when I look at the placement, and sculpture is a good thing to talk about, because buildings are like all together on another scale. But when people talk to me about sculpture, placement, I am never thinking about how they relate to each other, how they relate to people moving past them, except in so far as someone can get hurt or the works can get damaged, and so these things go hand in hand with each other, because what I'll find? For example, you know, you'll have somebody designing some beautiful space right and you're making it out of a material that has wonderful predictability, unless this one condition is happening, and we'll know what that condition is right.

Stephanie Rouse: 20:44

So you have a ton of lessons and symbolism, from materials to everyday life and your life circumstances in particular. Did you reflect on this during the time writing your book, or were these reflections coming to you kind of throughout your career, in your life, you know?

Rosa Lowinger: 20:58

they come throughout your career, in your life, these reflections. However, you don't realize you're having these reflections some of the time. Some of the time you do Like there were things that I knew I needed to communicate the whole concept of maintenance and this idea that you know there's no such thing as a maintenance-free material. It doesn't exist under any circumstances. I've been thinking about that for years. But there are other things that come forth because they've been bubbling up in you but they don't coagulate until you are writing a text, because that's the beauty of writing when you're really in your work and in the process it rewards you with observations and insights that you would not have had otherwise. But these are all based on raw material, of stuff you've been thinking about but didn't realize.

Jennifer Hiatt: 21:49

So always our final question since this is booked on planning, what book besides yours? Because we will, at the top of this episode, recommend everyone pick up a copy. It was Always our final question since this is booked on planning, what book besides yours? Because we will, at the top of this episode, recommend everyone pick up a copy. It was fantastic. What other books would you recommend our readers check out?

Rosa Lowinger: 22:02

I would like to recommend a work of fiction. There are many works of nonfiction that I could recommend, obviously, because in my work I read nonfiction all the time, but I'd like to recommend the novel the Dutch House by Ann Patchett. It is a book that is entirely about a family, but it is all revolving around this building this house and how it impacted the relationships between the family members and the materials of it are part of it, but it's really about the rooms and the relationships that developed in there. And, plus, if you listen to the audiobook, Tom Hanks does the audio and it's really about the rooms and the relationships that developed in there and plus if you listen to the audio book.

Rosa Lowinger: 22:36

Tom Hanks does the audio and he's great.

Jennifer Hiatt: 22:39

That's amazing I have. I did not listen to it, I read it. I have read that book. It is fantastic. It's a fabulous book, right yeah?

Stephanie Rouse: 22:46

All right, I'll have to add it to my list.

Rosa Lowinger: 22:48

Great.

Jennifer Hiatt: 22:48

Yeah, I also just love Ann Patchett, like she's, she's so good.

Rosa Lowinger: 22:53

Right on. She's on it A hundred percent. But in terms of preservation, that's a great book to read and you know this is something that I'm doing moving forward and with my career moving forward.

Rosa Lowinger: 23:05

Now I'm trying to write books, like Book to All Time, that are intended for general audiences to absorb lessons about preservation so that it comes into their consciousness, not by reading a textbook, but by reading a story that moves them. You know, it's like remember for a while there there were these cookbooks that were coming out that these moms were writing about how to get kids to eat vegetables by baking them into brownies, that kind of thing. I sort of think of it that way. You know, we need to convince people of the importance of preservation through a metaphor that they will absorb beautifully. Like you know, I say to people all the time why do you fight preservation in your community? Don't you like going to Europe? Don't you like going to Rome and Florence and Paris?

Stephanie Rouse: 23:52

Why do you?

Rosa Lowinger: 23:52

think you feel so good in those cities it's because they have a cohesive beauty to them that's based on good planning and preservation. When you're there, you feel history, but not in a kind of dead way. You feel it as alive and fresh and lovely. So that's kind of where I'm coming from, and I do it with story I love that so much.

Jennifer Hiatt: 24:13

I write short stories just for myself because it's a way to process things and think them through. You know, set them out Good.

Stephanie Rouse: 24:25

Well, rosa, this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about dwell time and memoir of art, exile and repair.

Rosa Lowinger: 24:33

Thank you so much. It's been my pleasure.

Jennifer Hiatt: 24:38

We hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Rosa Loewinger about her book Dwell Time a memoir of art, exile and repair. You can get your own copy through the publisher or click the link in the show notes to take you directly to our affiliate page. Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and please rate, review and share the show. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on Booktown Planning. Thank you.