Craig Wolfe reports on the impending merger of Tallix and Polich Art Works in today's Poughkeepsie Journal. The merger will result in the closing of the Beacon factory, and a loss of some jobs. The new venture will clunkily be called Polich Tallix LLC. I felt that Polix or Tallich, or anything else, would be more suitably catchy and progressive as a name. The history of the two foundries reads like the saga of an estranged family of divorce with periods of rancor between the parents, and the children (employees) shuttling from one to the other. The competition between the two foundries, each trying to undercut the other is sited as weakening the two businesses, and the hope is that the merger will create a stronger company. With the variety of material options and new technologies available today, one can imagine the market for bronze and steel sculpture has been affected - besides, how many more bronze monuments can city's and villages cram into their squares. I've heard that, in hopes of accessing a new market, Tallix had recently jumped on the Discovery Channel bandwagon, taken up the fabrication of motorcycles to bolster income.
The closing of the Beacon site is a disappointment as its presence added the sense of Beacon being a community uniquely invested in the creation of art in a way that many other communties that boast of their "art renaissance" can not claim.
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