HOWDY

 

I got a couple of decent street portraits at the Mardi Gras parade. This one shows how the drizzle dampened streets but not spirits. Speaking of which, she's not drinking alcohol. QT, Qwik Trip, is a chain of gas stations with big convenience stores. The contents of the cup are undoubtedly full of sugar.  

Today marks the completion of my 76th orbit around the sun. Doing pretty well for that, still upright, taking pictures and flying. In March and April I'll hit seven countries (albeit some briefly) plus a plane change in an eighth. Don't slow down.                

LOCAL SWILL

 

Anheuser-Busch used to be headquartered in St. Louis. Some years ago it was taken over or merged into the Belgian-Brazilian giant Inbev, which moved the North American headquarters to New York. Still, their biggest American brewery is here and it marked the end of the Mardi Gras parade route.

Another corporate headquarters lost to St. Louis. Still, it was announced yesterday that Boeing is moving its defense offices back here from a suburb of Washington. We were the HQ when it was McDonnell Douglas.                      

GATEWAY PRECISION LAWN CHAIR KREWE

 

Krewe is a word taken from Mardi Gras in New Orleans, used to identify a social group that has a float or performs together in the parade. A long-standing and delightfully wacky local one is the Gateway Precision Lawn Chair Krewe. They perform close order drill with light folding lawn chairs. I caught them rehearsing on an empty parking lot.              

FRED AND THE BOYS

 

Fredbird is the mascot of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. He shows up at all sorts of public events, besides his duties at games. Here he is hanging out at a gas station along the parade staging area that is losing its sales for a half day. The men in black are members of the Shriners, a Masonic organization, who buzz around the streets in mini go-karts.                    

CUPID

 

Do NOT send your arrows this way. You have  to remember, though, that the Mardi Gras parade was held on Valentine's Day.                 

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

 

It was drizzling yesterday morning when I decided to take a chance and go downtown to check out the Mardi Gras parade. As one of our colleagues reminded me, there is no bad weather, just bad clothing. The parade's policy is to go on, rain or shine. I go early and work the staging area, where the participants ane milling around and everyone is happy to pose.                   

VERY EASY, TODAY

 

Today, Saturday, is supposed to be our Mardi Gras parade. The organizers claim it is the second biggest in the U.S., after New Orleans. But they have several over a few days and we just have the one shot. The forecast is for rain all day but, from what I know, the parade isn't canceled. The organizers couldn't afford to lose all sales at their party tents. So the usual mass swilling on the street will be washed away.                  

EWOK

Another dog dressed as a movie character. It certainly has the right face. I don't think earthly pups or their interstellar cousins drink Busch beer, though. 

The big Mardi Gras parade is scheduled for tomorrow but it's supposed to rain most of the  day. Don't know how the organizers will handle that.       

WOOF AND STITCH

 

I get to the occasional kid movie with my granddaughter so I know some of the characters. This pup is wearing (quite uncomfortably, I think) a costume for the character Stitch, a horrible little alien monster who turns out to be lovable and cute in the end. (Was there an option?) And the owner is a little out there, too.                          

DOG'S BEST FRIEND

 

It has been noted in these pages that St. Louis likes an excuse to drink in public. That pastime was clearly on display on Sunday during the dog parade. It won't come close, though, to what you will see on the street next Saturday during the main Mardi Gras parade. Hoping the rain holds off.                     

SILLY DOGGIE

And owners. I dress in dark colors when I'm shooting on the street to blend in. People in the dog parade tend to go in the opposite direction. I guess I'm more of a observer than a participant (and besides, we just have a cat). Somebody has to make the record.                     

DOG PARADE!

 

Moving on from outdoor sculpture for a while. Lots of different material coming up because it's silly season in St. Louis (not that people take us very seriously). Mardi Gras is a big deal here. I think it started with community organizations but it's all commercialized now-still fairly crazy but orderly enough. Yesterday was the traditional dog parade, sponsored by Purina, the pet food company that is headquartered here. Lots of wacky puppies with owners to match.                  

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE - ICARUS, PARTIALLY

 

Another piece by Igor Mitoraj downtown, but in a place with less traffic than Eros Bendato, seen here a number of times (https://tinyurl.com/nhj8hufr). It's called Torso Di Ikaro, Torso of Icarus, and I find it puzzling. It looks to be neither flying or crashing to earth, although the six-pack abs are ready for great effort. The hollow and its shell could become a balloon, ready to challenge the sun in a way a whole body could not. There is a bit of discussion at https://racstl.org/public-art/torsi-di-ikaro/ .                    

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE - LAST CHANCE

This picture was taken yesterday, Friday. By the time you see this post the sculpture will probably be gone from the site. Synergism by William Conrad Severson and Saunders Schultz has sat at this corner downtown for 50 years (some background at https://racstl.org/public-art/synergism/). It is a mirrored stainless steel cube within a cube within a cube, playing wonderful visual tricks with its surroundings. There was an article in yesterday's newspaper, https://tinyurl.com/2zkx6um5, stating that it is being removed today for extensive restoration. At a later date it will be reinstalled in a park in the nether suburbs. Another loss for downtown.

                         

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE - MARIPOSAS

 

Mariposas, butterflies in Spanish. This unusual work is found on the side of the Central Branch of the St. Louis Public Library, a wonderful building worth exploring for its own sake. It seems like a perfect metaphor for the wonders of reading. Now, if I could only get my granddaughter's face out of the Roblox screen , , ,                   

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE - SURVEILLANCE

 

Big Brother may actually be watching you. We in the United States have reason to worry about such things these days. Tony Tasset's Eye at Laumeier Sculpture Park  could have cameras embedded in it for all we know. Keep your head down.                    

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE - MALCOLM MARTIN

 

One more by Harry Weber. Actually, this is just across the river in East St. Louis, Illinois. Malcolm Martin was a corporate lawyer in a big firm. My tiny firm was in the same building so I saw him around on occasion. He was successful, never married and wanted to do some good with his money. The land directly across the Mississippi from the Arch was vacant. Martin wanted to establish a viewing point for the river, Arch and downtown, preserved for the public. His bequest made it happen. It's a wonderful place.

This is an old picture. The object behind Martin is a one of many sculptured cakes marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis.               

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE - CHUCK BERRY

 

Chuck Berry is a native St. Louisan. In his later years he lived with family in a compound on the edge of the area. He frequently performed in a small space in the basement of locally famous Blueberry Hill, a bar and restaurant across the street from this statue. The performance venue was known as The Duck Room, after Berry's signature walk.

This is another work by Harry Weber. I knew him slightly since he asked to use my picture of another of his statues (see tomorrow) in a book about his stuff. He said he would send me a copy of the book. He didn't. Nobody ever does. (Talking about you, Museum  of Modern Art.) What Weber did do is get me into the private reception for Berry at Blueberry Hill, resulting in this picture - https://tinyurl.com/cdce9hhh .               

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE - LEWIS AND CLARK

 

A sculpture by Harry Weber, whose work is all around here, called The Captains' Return. It depicts Meriwether Lewis and William Clark returning here in 1806 after their two-year so-called voyage of discovery, all the way up the Missouri River and then into Oregon. A bit about the work (with a really terrible photo) at https://www.nps.gov/places/the-captains-return.htm.  The statue used to be a bit upriver and lower down on the levee, where it would sometimes be inundated (https://tinyurl.com/y6mww2js). The explorers probably would not want to come through today's icy Mississippi.                  

CITY DAILY PHOTO FEBRUARY THEME - DOUBLE

 

Masked double self-portrait, mirror maze, St. Louis Union Station. City Daily Photo members around the world do it in pairs at https://citydailyphoto.org/category/theme-days/ .               

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE - JOE

 

Another one by Richard Serra, Joe at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. Yes, Joe is Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., the late publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Serra's friend and patron. It is in a courtyard, not visible from the street, but its huge size (13.5 feet, 4 meters tall, spiraled inward) makes its physical presence all the more impressive. You can see a view from above at https://pulitzerarts.org/collection/ (scroll down a bit).                      

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE - TWAIN

 

Richard Serra's Twain is a controversial work. It's big, 12 foot / 3.7 meter slabs of semi-rusted Cor-ten steel taking up most of a city block. When it was installed in 1981 there was a huge negative reaction (something Serra is no stranger to). I love it, but it is a pretty intellectual concept. There is a helpful discussion at https://racstl.org/public-art/twain/ .                 

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE - ZENITH

 

Or Zenit in the original Italian. Mimmo Paladino's work is placed on a wooded rise in Citygarden, a very tall stylized horse with a solid shape on its back called a stellated dodecahedron, a star-shaped form with twelve faces, one point sharply in the animal's back. I think it's spooky.                      

STL PUBLIC SCULPTURE - MIGHT AS WELL INCLUDE THIS ONE

 

Often seen here, the statue of the Apotheosis of St. Louis in front of the art museum in Forest Park. The streets are clear now but the ground is still snow covered and it's staying cold for awhile.                  

SORT OF ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE: T REX OF THE TUNDRA

 

Well, I guess it's sculpture of a sort. T Tex here and a triceratops, just out of the frame to the right, stalk Forest Park beside the planetarium. A quick look online suggests that the monster's habitat was subtropical forests and plains in what is now the western U.S. and Canada. It probably wouldn't like our current weather (it was cold-blooded, after all). It is still frigid here but the sun was out Monday and the streets are clear.                    

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE: MORE FROZEN PINOCCHIO

 

We got a lot of snow over the weekend by our standards, maybe 9 inches / 23 cm. The temperature forecast for Sunday night is -5 F / -20.5 C, frigid to us. Under the circumstances, I thought I'd bring back a chilly picture of Citygarden's other Pinocchio statue (we have two!), Jim Dine's Big White Gloves, Four Big Wheels. I'm not so welcoming of the conditions.                

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE: PINOCCHIO AND GEPPETTO IN SNOW

All of America and some of the rest of the world knows that the U.S. is having one heck of a winter storm this weekend, affecting more than half the population. As I write this Saturday night, St. Louis has had steady, fairy dust soft snow since this morning that should continue until Sunday evening. Nothing awful, and no ice like many neighboring states. It got me looking in the archives, though, where I found this photo of Tom Otterness' work Kindly Geppetto. That's a big hammer in the puppeteer's left hand. Doesn't look too kindly to me.              

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE: CIVIL RIGHTS

 

Kim Lum's The Space Between Scott And Plessy in Laumeier Sculpture Park. The two busts face each other. Dred Scott was the slave in St. Louis who sued for his freedom, leading to one of the most reprehensible decisions in the history of our Supreme Court (there are recent competitors). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott . Homer Plessy was a mixed race man in New Orleans who boarded  an all-white train car, resulting in a case in which the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was lawful if facilities were equivalent, the notorious separate but equal doctrine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson . These are parts of our history the current administration would like to suppress.                   

BACK TO SCULPTURE

 

I'm finished with the Powell Symphony Hall tour and will return to the STL public sculpture series. It's going to be bitterly cold here for a while with snow over the weekend so I will weenie out and dip into the archives. The series started with a picture of Igor Mitoraj's Eros Bendato in Citygarden. Another one of his works, Icarus, is a few blocks away. This is just a detail. Apparently, his wax wings have just melted. Ooohhh Nooo!                    

THUMP

 

One of the last stops on our tour of Powell Symphony Hall was a place I never thought about, the percussion storage room. This view is only a small part of it. Everything you can imagine that goes bang, thump or bing is in there. We were sternly told not to touch anything but couldn't I just flick a fingernail on one of those surfaces?                           

KAFFEE KONZERT

 

Backstage at the Jack C. Taylor Music Center in the musicians' lounge. It's large, modern and comfortable. There are sets of cubbyholes where members can keep their favorite mug. My favorite is second row, third column where first violinist Emily Ho has a mug labeled Santa's Favorite Ho.                   

NEW LOBBY

 

Recent posts have shown the interior of the renovated Powell Symphony Hall  in all its old-fashioned opulence. A big part of the project was a large addition to the building on two sides; the whole thing is now called the Jack C. Taylor Music Center. (Mr. Taylor was the the founder of a large international car rental company based here.) It's a huge benefit to the organization, with space for modern offices, meeting and rehearsal rooms, musicians' dressing rooms and lounges, the music library and more. However, the new public areas strike us as sterile, in sharp contrast to the opulent old interior. Maybe  people will get used to it. They did to the glass pyramid at the Louvre.                  

WHAT THE MUSICIANS SEE

The view from the stage at Powell Hall, but hopefully with the seats full of patrons. Across the center in the first level up from the floor are the Mezzanine Boxes, where the self-styled elite can feel their privilege, albeit with the worst acoustics in the house. The view of the balcony is foreshortened but it goes way back. Unlike many symphony halls that are longer front to back, Powell is wider, reflecting its origin as a movie and Vaudeville venue.                   

THE BALCONY

 

Upstairs at Powell Symphony Hall. As part of the renovation, a few hundred seats were removed, with new, wider and more comfortable chairs installed. For many years, our subscription seats were front row center of the lower balcony, just behind where the group is standing. I'm old, tall and arthritic, and loved the luxurious legroom. Unfortunately, in the new configuration that row has less foot room than the last row on Spirit Airlines (or Ryanair, your pick) and was really uncomfortable. We've moved around since, looking for a new base. First world problems.                  

WHERE THE SOUND HAPPENS

 

Continuing on the tour of Powell Symphony Hall, this is a view of the stage from the balcony. There can be many more musicians on stage than the chairs here suggest. (Think Beethoven 9th or Verdi Requiem.) The many lights directed at the stage were changed to LEDs during the renovation. Our tour guide told us that the hall's electric bill dropped dramatically after the change.                        

SYMPHONY HALL TOUR

 

A break from the public sculpture series for a special event. Our beloved St. Louis Symphony Orchestra closed its home, Powell Hall, for a major renovation, restoration and addition lasting two years. It was a grand old movie theater that became the orchestra's home in 1968, but with far too little space for all its needs.

We think this is our 47th year as subscribers so this is a big deal to us. The orchestra arranged for front and back of the house tours this month and we went yesterday. This is the old main lobby, that has many architectural references to the chapel at the Palace of Versailles. More to come.                  

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

 

So said John Lennon. As we continue with St. Louis sculpture, who better to personify love than Eros, Greek god of the same? Igor Mitoraj's Eros Bendato (Eros Bound) is probably the most popular sculpture in Citygarden. The plinth is a gently sloping circle with water trickling down the surface. The head is hollow - you can climb inside through the neck and kids can peek out through the eyes. It looks like something natural - sort of.

But then you have to try to understand it.  Was Eros bandaged or were his eyes and mouth deliberately covered at another time? Is it about repression of vision and speech, injury or perhaps death of love? And what's with that notch in the neck? And why are the eyes empty? (Greek sculpture used plain spheres for eyes. The Romans introduced carved irises and pupils. This is neither.)

I'm just askin'.                 

WE COULD DO SOME MORE SCULPTURE

 

The series of four busts of St. Louis writers I just finished was unusual. It occurred to me that a survey of local public sculpture might be worthwhile. St. Louis has a lot of it, some very good, some simply dreadful. I'll start looking around. For starters, Erwin Wurm's Big Suit in Citygarden. However, there is an unusual event to shoot Thursday.                     

THE WRITERS OF THE CWE: WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

 

Ah, my favorite of the Central West End writers, William S. Burroughs. Born to a wealthy St. Louis family (anyone remember Burroughs adding machines?), he revolutionized fiction writing with his bizarre techniques such as cut-ups, taking  finished text and literally cutting it into strips and rearranging it. Much of his work was drawn from long but intermittent periods of addiction. His narrators were notoriously unreliable, shifting times and personas. Novels such as Naked Lunch, Cities of the Red Night and The Western Lands stirred outrage and admiration. Characters like Dr. Benway wielded humor with predator’s claws.  

Towards the end of his chaotic life he moved to Lawrence, Kansas, of all places. He died at 83 of a heart attack and is buried in St. Louis, in the Burroughs family plot in Parisian-elaborate Bellefontaine Cemetery. His marker is unassuming.                

THE WRITERS OF THE CWE: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

 

He’s not from Tennessee and doesn’t have any particular connection with the state. It was his pen name. Thomas Lanier Williams III was born in Mississippi but moved here in his childhood when his alcoholic, abusive father worked at the International Shoe Company, once one of our major corporations. His chaotic life took him to many parts of the U.S. and Europe. His family remained here and there is an annual performing arts and academic festival devoted to him. Late in life, he nominally converted to Catholicism at the behest of his brother, Dakin. Although he died in New York City, probably of a drug overdose. he is buried here in Calvary Cemetery, a vast, elaborate Catholic resting ground. 

We will finish with the fourth corner of the intersection tomorrow with my favorite St. Louis writer. Think adding machines.                  

THE WRITERS OF THE CWE: KATE CHOPIN

 

Kate Chopin is not as widely known as the other writers depicted at this Central West End intersection, yet she is a major figure in American literature. She is considered one of the first feminist authors of the Twentieth Century. She was born and grew up in St. Louis but moved to Louisiana with her husband. Much of her fiction is set in the South. After her husband’s death, she returned here for the rest of her life. To learn more about her, see https://americanliterature.com/author/kate-chopin/ .                    

THE WRITERS OF THE CWE: T. S. ELIOT

 

Euclid and McPherson Avenues is a major intersection in The Lou’s trendy Central West End neighborhood, or CWE. Each of the four corners has a bust of a famous native writer or, in one case, an author with major ties here. This is Thomas Stearns Eliot. His image is that of the consummate English intellectual, High Church Anglican and all that. Well, not quite. He was born and raised in St. Louis, living here until he went to school in Massachusetts at age 16. He’s the one who told us that the world ends not with a bang but a whimper. Got my doubts about that.                     

JUST UPSTREAM

 

Same bridge as in yesterday’s post with the lens backed up. It’s part of the complex system of waterways in Forest Park. Note, though, the stump at right center. It is what remains of one of the trees knocked over in last year’s tornado.                      

STEPPING STONES

     

Down the road a bit in Forest Park. A couple and their dog avoid the high road and take the low road across one of the waterways. The structure in the back is part of the amphitheater we call the Muni, for Municipal Opera, that presents Broadway shows and the like during the summer.                           

WINTER IN FOREST PARK 2

 

A membrane of ice here, some open water there. Temperatures fluctuating a lot in recent weeks. There used to be more big trees on the horizon before last June’s tornado.                     

WINTER IN FOREST PARK

As I am always happy to point out, Forest Park is the largest urban park in the U.S., just a bit bigger than Central or Golden Gate Parks. It has plenty of variety for images.                        

WHAT’S THIS?

 

I was driving around yesterday, again looking for something, anything, to photograph. When I pulled into Forest Park something caught my eye that made me stop and pick up the camera. A middle-aged man was cruising down the sidewalk on contraptions I’ve never seen. A little hard to see at this scale, but this variation on roller skates/blades has one wheel in the front and three in the back. He was pushing along with poles and a smile on his face.                     

AMTRAK

 

Passenger rail service in the US. This is the Amtrak train coming into downtown from Chicago, the only one that comes from this direction. None of the sleek lines of the Shinkansen or TGV, but it’s something. Outside of the Boston - Washington corridor, we just dont' have the population density. This is America. We drive or fly.                        

BUT WHERE DO THE VANQUISHED LIVE?

 

From the downtown gray-day cruise, another old commercial building newly converted to apartments. That is wonderful but I wonder about the occupancy rate. Downtown has one good-enough grocery with a pharmacy, a shrinking number of restaurants and some issues about safety. Maybe the residential population will reach a critical mass.