WALK ON BY

It's a good idea to wear a mask even if you are just walking down the street with no one nearby. You don't know when others will come down the sidewalk to meet you. It applies even if you are 10 feet / 3 m tall.

Donald Baechler's Walking Figure has marched down Olive Street for years. S/he (it's ambiguous) has a vigorous stride but never gets anywhere. Is there a metaphor in this?               

DINKS PARRISH LAUNDRY

A bit of fancy, a stone wedding cake on Olive Street in midtown. It was a major commercial laundry for many years, the two names referring to the families who owned it. The laundry went out of business some years ago. There may or may not still be some loft apartments upstairs. The ground floor left houses a new microbrewery. The rest of the ground floor is vacant.

This may be the most elaborate surviving terra cotta work in town. One online reference describes it as "either a heavenly flight of fancy or the product of a bricklayer on LSD: Moorish architecture on steroids, replete with spires wrapped in carved grape vines and snowflakes, flower blossoms and clamshells." 

Some detail of the facade tomorrow.   
 

            

Explorers

Urban, infant or otherwise. Shot with the Digital Holga on Olive Street in Midtown. No idea how it made the distortion on the wheels but I like it.                             

Walking Figure

This whimsical pedestrian strolls down Olive Street in downtown St. Louis, right outside the doors of my office building. Walking Figure by Donald Baechler was installed with funding from the Gateway Foundation, which places public art throughout the area. For another example, see my post last May about Nijinsky Hare, an enormous balletic bunny outside the hockey arena.

Walking Figure is about three meters tall. It makes me smile every time I pass by. It is so lighthearted, so silly in a sophisticated way. Nothing heroic about it. It could be a friend of yours or mine after knocking back a couple of shots of Alice's Drink Me.

TOMORROW: How about some more good downtown sculpture?