Monday, January 03, 2005

ALTHOUGH the International sand-sculpting finals aren’t going to be held this year until mid-May in Holland, there’s a particularly touching news story today about a piece that was made over a 20 hour period in India. A tribute to the victims of last week’s tsunami, it’s on the beach in Orissa. It was made by a well known artist in the circuit, Sudarsan Pattnaik. The haunting 10 foot high piece depicts several heads floating in seawater above memorial candles. Visitors to the site light candles as well to respect the dead. Because he usually works on coastal sands, Pattnaik was particularly affected by the tsunami that killed over 100K people. He hopes that those who see it will be stimulated to give money to the relief efforts. Just a week earlier, he made a 15 foot high Jesus Christ on the same beach to celebrate Christmas. Pattnaik lives in Puri, where, it’s said, sand sculpting on a large scale originated, and he runs the “Open Air Golden Sand Art Institute” there. (photo from artdaily.com) 10:45:25 AM    comment []

	Saturday, December 11, 2004

Obviously, it's a seasonal thing. Every winter I get swept away by ice sculptures. In the summer, it's sand sculptures. In the fall it's food stuff, like butter and pumpkins. And this year when a friend sent me the pix of the Harbin, Manchuria winter festival's ice sculptures, it all began again! Harbin, it seems, is pretty far north on the icy tundra scale, 300 miles away from Valdivostok, and farther north, which by my lights, ought to send it slipping down the opposite side of the globe into south. But they have this ice and snow sculpture festival that produces works that oughta be bronzed. They set everything out on Sun Island, an unlikely name for such a spot, but from what I can see the ice just grabs and glints the sun that shows through. (photo from the bbc.co.uk website) Teams from all over the world (including South Africa, go figure) compete in this fest. In the snow arena, each team is given a 9 foot square cube to make its masterpiece and they go at it tooth and nail. They focus on figures, elaborate, exotic, and white. In the ice section, everyone's given huge blocks of ice cut from the river and if their piece is too big (most work here is architectural rather than sculptural) they can fuse them together. Those structures are eye-popping and best seen at night, when they're lit up with colored lights that stain the entire area. Looks like a fairyland (or something from Trump's inner child) then. From someone who has trouble making a round snowball, you guys have my sincerest tip of the halo hat! 11:18:03 AM    comment []

	Monday, December 06, 2004

Who would have thought that ebay, that most mercantile of institutions, would have such a player’s role in public art these days? From around the nation and around the world, stories of ebay and sculpture abound.  As I blogged about the rocket statue that had gone to outer space being auctioned on ebay the other day, I got to thinking that there must be other connections with commerce and art.  I wasn’t wrong.  Take the Texas Burger joint, Goff’s. For over 10 years, an original 8 foot Soviet Lenin statue has stood guard over the entrance of the restaurant, with a plaque that said, “America Won” beneath it. And apparently it was right. After all, the owner, who bought the behemoth from a Ukranian factory for $500 in 1992 is putting it up for ebay auction for a minimum bid of $3K. Of course, pieces of Saddam’s statues (there were so many of them that they’re like medieval relics of the true cross) are prime auction fodder these days. One of the offerings, supposedly chunks of the famous statue torn down for CNN, was on ebay’s website, but removed as a hoax. Currently, a very well-documented left leg is making the rounds of Europe’s ebay. And another giant is doing the ebay shuffle as well. Schomberg’s 10 ft. high, 2 ton “Rocky”, one of the three casts made for the “Rocky III”, was offered for $1 million on December 1, but has since slipped to 750K. The historic piece was also used in the filing of “Rocky V”, Mannequin, and Philadelphia and sparked a controversy in Philly about art vs. movie props. According to news stories, there are no takers. A particularly observant fan of the Statue of Liberty was cruising ebay recently and snagged someone offering a 4” ear of corn from the flame’s balcony. It was boosted during renovations in the 1980’s and this fan blew the whistle on the seller. Turned out the guy’s dad (now deceased) had taken it as a souvenir while he was working on the giant lady and didn’t apparently think it would matter. The Feds let the seller go, and the lady has her corn back. (I could make a horrible pun about having corns after over a century of standing in New York Harbor, but I won’t.) So public sculpture once again cuts across time and class… watch for it in an auction near you. And while we’re at it, if anyone runs across sculpture by Anna Coleman Ladd, Bashka Paeff, Theo Kitson, or Lily Swann Saarinen for sale, PLEASE let me know…. (Photo from www.azubo.de/auktionsdetails.cfm?auctionID=370801 - 48k - Dec 5, 2004)   1:43:18 PM    comment []

	Saturday, December 04, 2004

The question is this… Is sculpture more valuable because of the places it’s been? And if so, what should a piece cost that’s been to outer space and back? Well, this is your chance to find out folks, because the beautiful bronze “Retro Rocket” that flew in Space Ship One earlier this year is about to be auctioned on Ebay. The 5 inch tall sucker has another claim to fame, too. It was created by Charles Lindberg’s grandson and the money it earns will benefit the Lindberg Foundation.  He consciously patterned it on the old “Flash Gordon” rockets that were such a big part of his childhood. And hey, the lucky purchaser even gets a certificate of authenticity that was flown in the very same space ship! Opening bid is  $2500. The piece will be on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight until the end of January, 2005 when the lucky winner gets to take it home. I wonder how the statue itself fared? Was it changed in any way from being out of this world? What if an alien race had captured it? Would they think this was a religious image of some sort? A talisman? A baby spaceship in utero? (Photo from space.com/news  website)   11:12:59 AM    comment []

	Friday, December 03, 2004

It's a fascinating volley in the war of the monuments, but according to the news today, a monument was dedicated in Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran to commemorate the "martyrs" who bombed the US Marine Barracks in Beirut. It was sponsored by a group known as the "Committee for the Glorification of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement". The piece itself is a simple 5 foot high square black tower with low relief plaques of soldiers picking up their dead. The rest of the tower is covered with etched writing in both Arabic and western characters. Meanwhile, back in North Carolina, what started as a tree-planting memorial project between Camp Lejeune and Jacksonville, blossomed into a larger project. Since there were plenty of funds left over from the trees, a commission elected to raise a permanent monument to those who were killed and sponsored a competition at the NC  University School of Design. The final product, dedicated in 1986, features two broken walls, the inscription "They Came in Peace", the names of the dead,  stair steps and a bronze figure of an armed Marine. Five years later, a poem that was donated by families in Beirut was cast in bronze and installed in the memorial. So I'm thinking about how many other memorials tell two sides to the same story. In the US, of course, we have both Confederate and Union monuments to the events of the Civil war. But how many directly confront interpretations of the same events. More later... 12:02:33 PM    comment []

	Saturday, November 06, 2004

It’s a surprise to me, too. I’m driving on over to Windham, CT to go frog hunting. I ran across a mildly interesting story about the naming of the frogs on the Willimantic Bridge there, and like all good Stone Pilgrim stories, this one got a bit out of control. Seems that there’s a bridge across the river there and one each corner of it sits a half ton bronze frog. Long, with one sinewy leg hanging down its concrete spool perch. Bizarre, I thought. What gives? Last month, there was a contest to name these frogs and the public came up with “Willy” and “Manny” for the Willimantic River, Windy for the town of Windham, and Swifty for the translation of Willimantic, which means “the land of the swift running waters," they say. But why frogs in the first place? Seems that in the mid 18th century when it was all settlers vs. the French and Indians, the erstwhile Col. Dyer stopped by and led all the able bodied to war. That left the town essentially undefended, and when the remainders woke up in the middle of a hot June night, they heard terrifying screams coming from the “Frog Pond” at one end of town. Of course, the boys who were left grabbed their muskets and strafed the area.  Since there was no reply, the assumed they were safe. In the morning, they found hundreds of demised amphibians around the nearly dry pond. Apparently, the screams were those of the frogs fighting out quickly- disappearing wetland. Who knew frogs screamed in the first place? When the other towns found out about it, of course, they were merciless, calling it the Windham Frog Fight.  At one point an operetta was performed commemorating it. (Who played the frogs?) So I thought a trip to the famous bridge would be fun. But on the way, I’ll hunt down a 1918 memorial to the same thing- a Frog Rock which is now off road and may take some slogging. Wish me luck. (photo from the colormatters.com/frogs site) 8:30:34 AM    comment []

	Friday, November 05, 2004

There have been plenty of times I’ve been fooled in my hunt for public sculpture. Noticing a great shape or pleasing line, I’ve taken my camera only to find that it was a bicycle rack or a traffic barrier I was seeing. And that got me thinking about wallpaper. The stuff we see around us in cities day after day is really wall paper to most of us. The design elements are obscured by familiarity. But when you really look at a lot of the work, it’s as exciting as public sculpture. Take lampposts, for example. When I lived in Boston, the street was lined with tall stone aggregate lamp poles. Until I looked at them with the public art angle, I just saw industrial boredom. But- at closer glance- they were hexagonal. Good clean vertical lines that converged at the top. Gorgeous. And near them, a traffic barrier with its concave line rivaled anything the arts commission had approved for the past ten years! It’s all in the angle. The undulating bike racks that line streets near schools take on a new meaning artistically when you squat near one end and look up at them. Or when you go high angle and look straight down into their sensuous curves. Of course, you don’t want to be doing this during school hours since the vigilant school watch folks will probably get you for some perversion or another… (Photo from clavius.org website) 8:51:06 AM    comment []

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