public art

Mural mile south

/ Greg / Leave a comment

With so much time spent in Philadelphia over the years, the time around the edges of my baseball trip gave me a chance to dig a bit deeper into the city. Having previously explored museums, public art, music, sports, and food (oh, the food!), I was scratching my head during the planning for the trip on how to dig that little bit deeper.

What I came up with for a morning of exploring was a series of urban murals that are part of a public art initiative. A density of murals south of Market Street made that an easy choice and it also helped that by walking south of Market and east of Broad, I would be heading in the general direction of my favourite cheesesteak place, Jim’s Steaks, on 4th.

On a humid morning not out of place on the east coast in late July, and sweating through my shirt before I was only a few blocks out of the air conditioned comfort of my Center City hotel, I started my exploration. If you know me, you’ll know that “Gimme Shelter” by David Gunn, painted on the side of the Morris Animal Refuge, would tug at my heart strings. The shelter commissioned this beautiful mural to help tell their story of providing adoption services for abused and abandoned animals.

Murals in Philadelphia

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Fifteen foot tall Lanny McDonald

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I’m still getting used to having Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver as my extended long weekend city destinations rather than Montreal and Toronto when I lived in the east. Even though it was a quick visit for my first ever time in Calgary back in June, the city left a great impression on me and I think I’ll be bumping Calgary up in the rotation when I’m craving some big city fun.

One of the reasons I left Calgary with an eye to returning was how visually appealing the downtown area was on a couple of aimless wandering hikes. And a huge reason for that was some very interesting art, including what was probably my favouite and most visually arresting piece I’ve seen this year – Wonderland by Jaume Plensa. It’s a piece I could instantly relate to as one representing imagination and dreams. I connected with this immediately because on my hiking around a new city, I’m always lost in my own mind and thoughts.

Wonderland by Jaume Plensa

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A day away from winter

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In February I traded in the bitterly cold temperatures of a Saskatoon winter for a colder than normal four days in Vancouver. Colder than normal still meant it was the first time in months that I could walk around outside without gloves on. It’s really all about small victories in surviving winter on the prairies. And while for most of the trip I had to carry around an umbrella to stay dry, I did get one nice day to leave the raincoat at the hotel and breathe in the fresh west coast air along the seawall.

I took a bus from downtown to Kitsilano Beach to start a hike along the seawall. My one nice day in Vancouver was actually a perfect February day in Vancouver. Seeing blue skies and water made my coastal, now landlocked heart, very happy.

Vancouver Seawall

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Outsider art in Baltimore

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I ended up choosing Baltimore as my baseball trip destination last year mostly by default. For the week I could get away, it was the only place in North America I could get to on my airline points. Not knowing much about the city, once I started planning for the trip there was something that immediately caught my eye. The American Visionary Art Museum, located just around the other side of the harbour from downtown, is a one of a kind art museum in the USA. It is a museum that specializes in “outsider art.” That alone got me interested in visiting this place.

What exactly is outsider art? It’s quirky. It’s outlandish at times. It’s thematically based and curated in a way that I haven’t seen in other more traditional art museums. It’s exactly the kind of art I’m attracted to when traveling. Many times, I’ll use a city’s avant-garde public art as a way of exploring a new place… In Baltimore, they put it all under and around one roof.

Sometimes you just need an example to get a feel for what an art museum is all about. In a gallery featuring an exhibition about art relating to food, this is “Swpeepish Chef” by Christian Twamley – it’s the Muppet’s Swedish Chef made 100% out of Peeps marshmallow candies.

Swpeepish Chef by Christian Twamley

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Atlanta’s downtown art

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With a downtown hotel, limited time and a number of the sights I wanted to see all nearby, I didn’t get the chance to see a great deal of Atlanta. With what free time I had, I dedicated that to getting to a Braves game and to checking out three museums and tours that peaked my interest. Traveling to and from those things and a couple of restaurants and craft beer bars, I stumbled across some interesting public art over my four days in the city. One of my favourites ended up being a design by fellow Canadian, Jeff Santos of Coquitlam BC. This children’s playground was built in the shape of “ATL”, the airport code and general shorthand reference for the city. I found it visually striking and a nice touch to a public park in the centre of the city.

ATL Playground, Jeff Santos

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Modern meets historic

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For the better part of six days, my wife and I called Lyon home during a two week vacation in France. Lyon is beautiful. Gorgeous, really. And if you were dropped into the city blindfolded, you’d know you were in France from the architecture alone. I really wasn’t expecting to see much modern public art while visiting here, but was more than pleasantly surprised by a few sculptures and installations as I wandered around Lyon. These pieces all caught my eye as physical representations of a noticeable modern vibe running through this historic city.

On a stunning afternoon in the sprawling Parc de la Tête d’Or, this installation, “Ensemble Pour la Paix et la Justice” caught my eye. It was commissioned for the G7 meetings in Lyon in 1996.

Ensemble pour la paix et la justice

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PDX public art

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Of Portland, I expected nothing less than some funky and interesting public art. Audacious, touching, poignant, curious – I got the full menu of art experiences from just walking around the city. I love how public art enlivens urban spaces, but perhaps nowhere was this more evident than outside the Oregon Health and Science University Hospital. In a small garden for patients and their families is Sophie Ryder’s sculpture “Standing Lady Hare with Dog.” On one level as simply an animal lover, this is touching. On another level, I love how the tenderness shown in this piece reflects what occurs mere feet away inside the hospital.

Sophie Ryder's Standing Lady Hare with Dog

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Chance encounters with art

/ Greg / 1 Comment

Wandering through the streets of downtown Seattle back in November, I came across a number of interesting pieces of public art. On a previous trip to Seattle, I ventured out to the Olympic Sculpture Park to take in an amazing collection of public art situated right on the water just north of downtown. This trip was much different. My public art exploring ended up being mostly accidental encounters on my way to or from something else. These small, pleasant interruptions on my journeys, added colour and context to this lovely Pacific coast city.

As I was heading to a tour of Safeco Field, the baseball stadium of the Seattle Mariners, and on my way for a coffee in Pioneer Square, I came across the Fallen Firefighters Memorial by Hai Wing Yu which pays tribute to four firefighters who lost their life fighting a blaze in this neighbourhood.

Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Seattle

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A downtown different with art

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Having traveled a significant amount south of the border, I’m fairly confident in saying there’s a definite similarity to the look of larger American cities. It’s even more striking as you move away from the east coast. Yes, all cities have their distinguishing features, but subtract obvious landmarks (like the Space Needle in Seattle) or geographical markers (a mountain off in the distance in Denver), and there’s a lot of sameness. Of course, I’m not speaking of New Orleans… that doesn’t look like anything else. But you get the point.

Minneapolis, especially in its downtown area, is a bit of an American cookie cutter environment of high rises in the usual architectural styles. Although that remained my impression through five days in the city, the longer I was there, public art kept catching my eye and added a lot of character to what I was seeing in my walks. Like these statues outside of Target Field paying homage to two Minnesota Twins legends: Harmon Killebrew on the left and Kirby Puckett on the right:

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