Reflecting Seattle Sculpture

Seattle skyline through sculpture

I like odd framing in photos, and a conveniently located sculpture offered that up: Seattle through sculpture.

What particularly interested me were the reflections of sky, clouds and skyline seen on the swirling sides of the sculpture.

Lips

One down side arising from a decision to decline a job offer is less reason to visit this sculpture near the office space. Luscious lips, spirals, and fountains are elements of "Promenade Classique," an installation that features faux ruins and appealing, watery symmetry. 

Artists: Sculptors: Anne and Patrick Poirier; Landscape Architect: Paul Friedberg
Location: Canal Center Plaza and Waterfront, Alexandria

Irene Pushes Rhino Around

Storm damage, Takoma Park style: Rhino rests on side.

Hurricane Irene, aside from knocking over quite a few trees in the Takoma Park area, also tipped over my favorite rhino sculpture.  My hope is that his wounds are mild and his pink rhino self will be up and about in short order.

In good news, other yard art appeared unaffected.

Yard art still secured amid mulch.

 

Moose Mania in Maine

Moose sculpture in front of the
University of New England, Portland campus

Alien Egg Hatching in Takoma Park

Another great reason to live in Takoma Park: the alien egg hatching.

Right near the Takoma Park Silver Spring Coop, you can find Alison Baker's phenakistascope (early animation device) "The Amazing Alien Egg."  The sculpture is one of seven, all made from old bicycles, now on display in Takoma Park.

Phenakistascope "The Amazing Alien Egg" created by Alison Baker

When you put your eye up against the Big Eye on the bike's back wheel and turn the pedal, you get to see this:

Yes, there is some gratuitous use of film effects in there.  Who knew what fun the freebie software contained? 

For more information on reCYCLE The Art of Bike Project and locations of other sculptures, check out this link: http://www.mainstreettakoma.org/files/ReCycleMap.pdf.

Cathedral Choral

On impulse, I stopped by National Cathedral to visit the Rose Window.  My timing was perfect as the Choral Evensong was beginning, so voices echoed off the stone.

Outside, the flying buttresses and gargoyles watched over the fountain into which I threw three pennies, making wishes for me, a family member, and a friend.

Artomatic Takes Flight

Alas, I missed the opening reception of Artomatic Takes Flight, but I journeyed out to Ronald Reagan National Airport last weekend to check out the exhibit, on display until June 25th in the hallway connecting Terminal A.

Artomatic, a 12-year old DC art nonprofit, is known for the non-juried exhibits they've put on in empty buildings that transform blank spaces into creative wonderlands. More than 1,000 visual artists and 600 performing artists participated in the 2009 ten year anniversary festival. 

Artomatic Takes Flight is a smaller event, with 83 artists displaying their work. Selection was made on a first come, first serve basis. The art will perhaps offer solace to travellers waiting for delayed connections.

A selection of favorites: 

Jeff Chyatte
Helix
High Carbon Steel
https://chyattestudios.com/

David Hagen
Carrot Ride
Acrylic on Canvas
http://hagenillustration.blogspot.com/

Liya Sheer
Irony
Acrylic on Cavas
http://liyasheer.com/

Yelena Rodina
Bottle City
Oil
http://www.art-3000.com/artist/Yelena_Rodina/

Spleen

Brief and tardy comments on my visit to "Spleen," created by Oreen Cohen, ART CARGO (Jacqueline Levine), and Sarah Allison, formerly on display in the basement of the Moderno, a condo on U St.  The building was not yet in use, so the realtor connected the artists with the space, allowing for the creation of the large installation sculpture in the basement.  I missed the opening evening, which apparently also included incense and wine, but when I arrived, I was all alone in the basement thrumming with loud clanking music and this unweildly beast:  

The piece is constucted from metal, ceramics, balloons, automotive safety glass, and probably a lot of other odds and ends. I was particularly pleased with how gruesome sweet little balloons could become in the context of intestines.

While I didn't have opportunity to speak with the artists, the real estate connection (whose name I can't recall, alas, but was extremely pleasant) who was manning the door upstairs reported that the artists did indeed suffer for their work, and that even safety glass isn't entirely safe; some blood drops on the floor added to the mood.

Inside the glass portion, you can see there is a TV, pulsing with heartbeat-esque music (the shattered insides of a glass house, perhaps, our translucent souls crumbling - add in your own metaphor). This didn't quite work for me - at heart, I don't want to be a media maven, and TVs are too loaded to be otherwise in my mind.  

But I loved the dripping cave of stalactites, a nice dragon-in-the-lair touch.

The piece conveyed a mood and mixed the gruesome with fanciful (balloons! I love balloons!), not a bad way to start an evening. I proceeded down the street to have a rather tasty margarita, feeling oh-so-arty. 


Posted on the the stairway to the basement, the following poem seemed apt. 

Spleen II

by Charles Baudelaire

When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid
Upon the spirit aching for the light
And all the wide horizon's line is hid
By a black day sadder than any night;

When the changed earth is but a dungeon dank
Where batlike Hope goes blindly fluttering
And, striking wall and roof and mouldered plank,
Bruises his tender head and timid wing;

When like grim prison bars stretch down the thin,
Straight, rigid pillars of the endless rain,
And the dumb throngs of infamous spiders spin
Their meshes in the caverns of the brain,

Suddenly, bells leap forth into the air,
Hurling a hideous uproar to the sky
As 'twere a band of homeless spirits who fare
Through the strange heavens, wailing stubbornly.

And hearses, without drum or instrument,
File slowly through my soul; crushed, sorrowful,
Weeps Hope, and Grief, fierce and omnipotent,
Plants his black banner on my drooping skull.

For more info on the work & artists, see the Project Website at http://projectspleen.wordpress.com/. Check out the original sketches of the work - fascinating to see the evolution of The Spleen. 

City Paper's blog review: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/visual-arts/2010/10/01/good-for-the-spleen/

Sunday at the NGA Sculpture Garden & Hirshorn Museum & Sculpture Garden

Sometimes, when you're having a frustrating day dealing with your own art, the solution is to get in your car and go look at other people's art.  So that's what I did today. 

I'd gone to the Hirshorn Museum's Sculpture Garden on Friday evening with a friend (the museum was closed, but the garden stays open until dusk). We had originally been thinking about checking out the Nat'l Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, as in the summer, the NGA Sculpture Garden has jazz on Friday evenings.  Alas, fall is upon us and jazz is over for the season.  I was happy to see some of my Hirshorn favorites, including the sculpture that I think of as the Gossiping Weebles (but is actually called "Last Conversation Piece" by Juan Muñoz).

But we'd only been able to look through the bars at the mice frolicking on the grounds of the NGA Sculpture Garden.  Having had that close-but-no-cigar moment, I decided NGA Sculpture Garden would be my first stop today.

A beautiful day, the NGA Sculpture Garden was in full swing, the fountain dancing. And, for once, there were people in something other than suits. It's been too long since I've seen a pink mohawk.

I cruised by one of my favorite pieces first, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's aptly named "Eraser." I find there's something comforting about folks making that large a sculpture honoring, well, essentially the need for fixing artistic mistakes (this blog is called Artful Mistakes - how could I not like that?).

My friend's favorite there (that we couldn't see through the bars) is "House," created by Roy Lichtenstein.  I actually remembered it as flat - but it is, in fact, 3-dimensional.  See the pics below for proof. 



3D



3D pretending to be 2D pretending to be 3D

The big news for me is that there was a new piece there that I hadn't seen before, new in 2009, and the first new piece in the NGA Garden since it opened 11 years ago.  It took me a minute to see it, both because it blends with the environment, a big ole tree, and because I am a space shot - the big ole tree is made of metal.  With my penchant for shiny things, I was enamoured with "Graft" by Roxy Paine right away. 

It's hard not to feel the re-inspired staring up through the branches of art at a blue sky on a warm afternoon. 

And so I continued on into the Hirshorn Museum -- that's the groovy round building with the fountain in the middle.  I recommend walking around the fountain, and listening carefully, as the acoustics change at some point, so that the water is just more somehow in some places. 

Of course, if you're in the Hirshorn, and you're me, with my taste for mobiles, your first stop may very well be the Calders, because, hey, it means that mobiles can actually end up in museums. That makes me happy right there.



After my visit to the Calders, I wandered the paintings.  The first one that caught my eye was Stuart Davis's "Tropes de Teens." 


After a minute of staring, I realized the reason it caught my eye was because of, well, the eyes...Note the woman's eyes on the lower left part of the painting, the red and the shape.

The painting I was working on this afternoon, the one I got fed up with and sent me out into the world, is called, variously, "Snake Eyes" (a play on the gambling term) or (when I'm feeling Biblical) "Adam's Eyes" when I'm going for an Adam-and-Eve type of thing (if a man eats an apple in the forest, and a snake isn't there to witness it, is it really a sin?).  So here's my eyes:

Not all that surprising that I tapped into that painting first.  It seems the Eyes have it today.  True, the only eyes of mine that may ever make it into a museum are likely the ones in my head.  But on a lazy Sunday afternoon suffused with art and light and nature and connection, well, that's just fine with me.