“…and there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he forever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than the other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.”
― Herman Melville
Poydras Street
New Orleans
“Consciousness is only possible through change; change is only possible through movement.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Art of Seeing
Octet
Lin Emery, Louisiana, 2014, Polished Aluminum
Poydras Street, New Orleans
In the City of New Orleans there is a fantastic arrangement of sculpture along Poydras Street. Walking down and back from my son’s apartment to the Running of the Bulls I took photos of a few of them that I’ll share with you.
“My sculpture is kinetic, meaning that it moves. The elements are derived from nature, and I borrow natural elements — wind, water, magnets — to set them in motion. The rhythms are influenced by infinite variables: the points of balance, the normal frequency of each form, the interruption of the counterpoise. I juggle, juxtapose, and adjust to achieve the dance or pantomime that I want. Then the sculpture takes over and invents a fillip of its own.”
—-Lin Emery
“Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.”
― Ray Bradbury
Unnamed Sculpture
Ed Carpenter, Richardson, Texas
Unnamed Sculpture
Ed Carpenter, Richardson, Texas
Workers installing glass bits,
Unnamed Sculpture
Ed Carpenter, Richardson, Texas
Richardson, where I live, has an ambitious trail that bifurcates the city from North to South roughly along Highway 75 and the DART Red line – the Central Trail. However, one key spot near the north end of the trail has been pretty much useless for over a year due to all the construction at Alma and Greenville. Now all of that is headed into the home stretch (until something new pops up) and now, something really new is growing up out of the ground.
At first, most folks assumed it was a cell phone tower or other piece of infrastructure – but it actually is a huge work of art.
From the city’s description:
An iconic art piece celebrating the history of the technology in Richardson will be installed late this summer just south of the Eastside development. The site at Greenville and Alma was specifically selected for a unique public art opportunity since it is a highly visible location, located at the center of the community and Telecom Corridor® area and is in close proximity to the Central Trail for pedestrians to enjoy. This public art installation corresponds to the goals set for the City’s Public Art Master Plan adopted in 2015.….
The art piece features a lattice of crossing diagonal stainless steel cables on a galvanized carbon steel main structure supporting laminated dichroic glass elements. The glass elements suggest abstract ones and zeros, the basic building blocks of all things digital, which the artist and committee felt was fitting for a city with a high-tech identity.
At first, I thought it looked like a giant frisbee golf goal. Now, I realize it looks more like the world’s largest set of tomato cages.
An now the vines are starting to climb up. Workers are out on a lift in the late summer stifling heat installing strings of colorful glass over the armature. I have no idea how much they will hang up – what it will look like when it is finished. At that point they will put in some landscaping (hopefully, a nice rest stop with some benches, shade, and water along the Central Trail). Eventually, all will be revealed, including the sculpture’s name.
We’ll see – if you are interested, stay tuned.
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Gridman 3
Stephen Daly
2007 Sandblasted Aluminum
Dallas, Texas
“Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.”
― H.P. Lovecraft
The Guardian
Horton Humble
2017 Louisiana, Welded Steel
Poydras Street
In the City of New Orleans there is a fantastic arrangement of sculpture along Poydras Street. Walking down and back from my son’s apartment to the Running of the Bulls I took photos of a few of them that I’ll share with you.
The Guardian is a giant figure, a hybrid of a man and a bird, standing for the inhabitants of a great city. It represents a creature activated by fear capable to rise up each time humanity doubts its own powers to overcome injustice and inhumanity.
—Horton Humble
Across Poydras and down a few doors from my son’s apartment is the Le Pavillon Hotel – originally named the Denechaud, then for generations was the De Soto Hotel. – which boasts an ornate entrance with huge classical statues flanked by massive Corinthian columns. I loved the contrast with the modern sculptures scattered along the median of Poydras.
From my son’s apartment pool, look up, I could see the bleached white back of a statue on a wall against the sheer drop down to the street. I found out this was a sculpture at the Le Pavillon’s pool. I was oddly fascinated by this – and one day want to visit.
The pool at Le Pavillon, from TripAdvisor. You can see the sculptures against the wall. The blue-gray building with vertical windows behind and to the left is my son’s apartment building.
The Guardian
Poydras Street
New Orleans
“Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Black Butterfly
John T. Scott, Aluminum, 1996
Poydras Street, New Orleans
In the City of New Orleans there is a fantastic arrangement of sculpture along Poydras Street. Walking down and back from my son’s apartment to the Running of the Bulls I took photos of a few of them that I’ll share with you.
“Black Butterfly” is an abstract aluminum sculpture completed four years after John T. Scott was awarded the MacArthur Genius Award. Scott’s work frequently displayed themes related to African-American life, particularly the rich Afro-Caribbean culture and musical heritage of New Orleans. See this sculpture on Poydras Street at O’Keefe.
“But we must come to realise that every word is perfect, including those we scratch out. As my pen moves across this page the whole world writes. All of human history combines at this mere moment now to produce in the flow of this hand a single dot: Who are you and I, dear friends, to contradict the whole past of the universe? Let us then in our wisdom say yes to the flow of the pen.”
― Luke Rhinehart, The Dice Man
Decatur, Texas
Legend has it that a local, Will Cooper, was credited with the phrase, “Eighter From Decatur.” Will played dice with his sweetheart Ada by his side. He would roll the dice and yell “Ada from Decatur, county seat of Wise,” for luck. The expression was spread by the travelling home guard and Army regulars. The phrase eventually turned into “Eighter From Decatur,” when a hard eight roll of the dice was needed.
Decatur, Texas
Hard Eight…. That reminds me of one of my favorite movies – I’ll bet you haven’t even seen it – I’ll make that bet – it’s better odds than a hard eight.
“Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.”
― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone
“It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir
Opening & Closing
Fritz Bultman
Bronze, 1975
Poydras Street, New Orleans
Looking at the photo I took, I had a hard time making sure I had the title and sculptor right. Photos online looked so different. I realized that the sculpture looks completely different from various angles.
Now I need to go back. I need to go back, walk around the sculpture, and look at it from all sides. Shame it’s in the middle of a street – I’ll have to risk it.
“Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes
Nasher Sculpture Center
Dallas, Texas
“I delve into the mysterious and counterintuitive world of helmets and high-visibility gear later in the book. But it’s worth immediately noting this: while they’re not inherently bad, they’re less a safety device for cycling than a symptom of a road network where no cyclist can truly feel safe.”
― Peter Walker, How Cycling Can Save the World
Sculpture by Paul Perret, 1984,
Helmet by me,
French Market, New Orleans
Sculpture by Paul Perret, 1984,
Helmet by me,
French Market, New Orleans
Bill Chance 