INSIGHT + POLYHEDRA

 

That's the name of this installation at the Patterns In Nature show at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Insight perhaps because you can go into the form on the right. (One at a time, please.) Waiting for a turn adds something to the image.                   

FLOATING IN AIR

 

This work, which I think is called Point of View, appears to be suspended over a gentle, sphere-like fountain.  However, it is inside a gazebo and suspended by a cable from the roof. The photo preserves the illusion.                     

I SOLD A PHOTO FOR THE FIRST TIME!

 

I'm a photographer for pleasure and and personal fulfillment, not for money. In the nearly twenty years I've been posting pictures online and entering the occasional show, I've never made a penny for my work. Out of the blue, I was contacted by the multi-talented Carrie Mae Weems, who had a commission to do an installation for the new Obama Center in Chicago. She wanted to use my photo of one of the sculptures of her close late friend, Terry Adkins. I am so honored to be part of an institution I hold in the highest regard. A check is kinda nice, too.         

A MOUSE AND A NEW TOY

 

New stuff, in two ways. Time for some fresh material, and there is a lot of good outdoor sculpture around. (Although someday I'll do a series about the public artwork at St. Louis University, which has the worst collection of sculpture I've ever seen.)  Also, while we were in Europe, the shutter crapped out on my main camera, a Fujifilm X-T5. (After only 47,000 actuations! Harrumph!)  So I wanted a quality, very small camera to take anywhere, and settled on a Sony RX100 VII. I took it out for a test drive yesterday.

This is a Tom Otterness piece simply called Mouse, on Manchester Avenue at the entrance to the district known as The Grove. Its head seems to be quizzically tilted, as if wondering who is coming through.                 

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - CUMIL, THE FRIENDLY SEWER GUY OF BRATISLAVA

 

A new country for us, Slovakia. Only six million people, with the capital, Bratislava, at about a half million. The country punches above its weight, with a huge auto industry exporting cars all over Europe. 

The old town of Bratislava is charming. A favorite spot is the contemporary sculpture of Cumil, the friendly sewer worker (https://www.nomads-travel-guide.com/places/cumil-statue/) who pops up to say hello to the world. Lots better than the monuments to monarchs and wars.            

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 - 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.                  

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.                      

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.                   

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: 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.                     

ARS GRATIA ARTIS

A wider view of the installation near the Mississippi by the late local artist and general strange person, Bob Cassilly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Cassilly. All concrete and steel, much painted through the years. Cassilly is best known as the founder, along with his former wife, of our amazing City Museum, https://citymuseum.org/ . Factoid about Cassilly: he and his first wife were honeymooning in Rome when a mentally ill man attacked Michelangelo’s Pieta. Cassilly was the first to act and subdue the assailant.                  

SNAKE IN THE GRASS

Out-there sculpture in an old industrial area of the riverfront. There is a lot more of this construction than fits in the frame and a lot more to the back story than I can tell here. Probably more images to come.