Sunday, April 08, 2007

Sculpture Park a Special Friday Adventure

Since I work for the religious, I got Good Friday off. Big R recently left his job at the evil empire and so he isn't working right now and we met up and went to the Sculpture Park. I had not originally wanted to go there, but it was interesting.


I don't know what the names of these are, but I found them interesting. They were giant kind of eye shaped rusty things.
And here I am in front of one. To give you an idea of their size, I'm 5'7". (Please notice the America's Next Top Modelesque pose.) :)

Here's Big R trying to be fierce. He was originally going for artful in two of my other shots but those mostly looked like, 'I'm bored and why did this bitch drag me here?'


This one is near the giant rusty things. It is highly polished steel. The reflection in the highly polished parts were designed to give positive space in the negative spaces and negative space in the positive spaces. (I'm paraphrasing but, yeah, I didn't get it either.)

I( really liked this one. Big R throught it was rather nautical. I just thought it was interesting and more fitting with the Myrtle Edwards Park which is where the sculpture garden is located. (Or near the park, I don't think it is IN the park, technically.)


This is a sculpture. I didn't believe it at first. I thought it was just a bench in the park. (And clearly so did these people) BUT...




Clearly this plaque indicates something else. (Actually I realize y'all probably can't read it but the title of the piece is something silly like "Bench" and there's a whole explanation about the piece.) (Completely unrelated to this entire post, I just watched a ridiculous Sally Field commercial about once monthly osteoporosis medicine. Her "Aunt has to set aside time to take her osteoporosis medicine once time a week." How hard is it to take a pill? It isn't like you have to take an hour out of your day to put a pill in your mouth and swallow it down with water.)


This was my favorite piece. You can't see the whole thing but it is entitled Love & Loss. The white paint indicates the letters. On the left side (where the people are walking) is a painted L in the bench. The o is the fountain. The V is the tree and the E is cut out on the right. Loss is spelled the opposite way. You can kind of see the L in the other bench and then reused the O. The two Ss are outside of the shot. I just thought it was really clever. The pole in the foreground on the left actually holds a red ampersand as part of the structure.


So I have mixed feelings about this piece. It is a gorgeous fountain and standing in the shade caused by the big water felt really nice and cool. The guy in the sculpture is naked and reaching out to someone. The someone is...


His son hidden by the water. Apparently the fountian shifts and sometimes the son is in the water and sometimes the father is in the water. My only real issue with the piece is how weird it is for the dad to be naked and reaching for his son. I'm sure there's some poignant message there, but I don't get it. My mind keeps going back to the "A naked man and a child." I couldn't find the plaque that related to this one actually. I read it in the map that the small child is the son.

4 comments:

Kate the Peon said...

Again, very cool pics. And I've thought the same thing about the SF commercial.

DD said...

I love modern sculpture, especially when the artist includes some information on the piece.

I would guess that one reason the father is not clothed is because it tends to "date" the piece.

Stephen said...

Didn't know about the father/son pics. Now we definitely have to make another trip there!

Oh yeah, and that first pic looks painted. Reminds me of Salvador Dali for some reason. Probably the rust colour.

I.envy.you.

Joanne said...

Stephen, why do you envy me?