Thursday, July 2, 2009

City Garden, Part Two

They had more coverage on the news last night about City Garden and I was thrilled to see that it LIGHTS UP at night. How cool is that?! I'm usually not here after dark that often so I'll have to make a point to see it this summer.

But let's continue with the tour of things that you can see in the light of the day.

Like I said, there's a lot of water everywhere. Am I wrong or does this just look totally crazy in the middle of a metro area? (Crazy in the coolest sense of the word.)

Take this fountain in front of the giant head, a sculpture that reminds me of ancient Rome/Greece in ruins. Here's a close-up. I showed you this back in April -- but there surely weren't kids running through it then.

Like I said, lots of sculpture. Here's another example I really like.



This piece sits atop a small, grassy hill. A couple (you can see the woman of the duo) had paused with their bikes to get a close-up look.

As I was walking up the stairs that run parallel to it, two women deep in conversation passed me.

"How'd you like to ride that horse?" one asked the other. (That made me laugh because I didn't think of the creature as being a horse. It looked like an elongated ram to me. I adore the skinny legs! They look more like a giraffe's, don't they?)

"You'd have to take the star off first," came the reply. (That made me laugh harder because, well, yeah. It would be rather uncomfortable otherwise.)

I liked this piece because it was both artistic and whimsical. City Garden seems to be a good mix of the two. And, of course, more often than not, there's a good dose of "fountain" thrown in for good measure as we see in this piece. I'd probably suck as an art critic. I just don't get the prehistoric rib cage in the background. (Well, it looks like a dinosaur just fell there and was unearthed a million years later, doesn't it?)

As I was saying about the whimsy ... these really cracked me up. They looked incredibly out of place, but like they belonged at the same time, if that makes any sense.

Can you say Night of the Lepus? Maybe that's why when I saw this next shot, I had an almost overwhelming urge to yell, "Grandma, look out! The giant killer rabbits are watching you ... and they're hungry!"
All in all, City Garden is one of the best of green space the city has created, maybe ever. And as my dear friend Plumbelieve pointed out, it's all right here -- in St. Louis.

5 comments:

Mama Martha said...

this does look great! Thanks for sharing. I'll have to visit soon.

Karen Anne said...

That looks great. I love those bunnies.

Where I lived before, in Palo Alto, there was terrible city art. Picked by the city art board that wanted to show how superior they were, while regular people loathed it. I don't know what was worse, having to look at it or knowing my tax dollars paid for it.

The few pieces that were good were in the minority, murals by Greg Brown or a Foreign Friends statue from a Swedish sister city kids used to climb all over and the art board finally destroyed.

Well, you can tell this is one of my hot buttons :-)

Anonymous said...

What a truly cool place! I love the mix of modern and whimsical. I wish I could wander around it for hours. Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed it vicariously!

Vicki said...

Those bunnies look like the peeps you get at Easter time. I am now hungry for marshmallows...

NV said...

MM -- come down and we can go to lunch!

KarenAnne -- i love this whole thing. It's giong to be a regular haunt of mine for the rest of the good weather!

Star -- Glad you enjoyed it, even vicariously! It IS an awesome place.

Vicki -- Those bunnies made me laugh. Hard.