More Art in Public Places

I am very attracted to seeing art in every day life, rather than restricting it to museums or homes. You can tell a lot about the values of a place by how much public art they display and what kind. So I think I'll continue with that theme here.

We are on Vancouver Island for the rest of the summer. These first photos were taken in the small town of Duncan, which is decorated with dozens of totem poles all over the town. These are large sculptures of symbols and/or animals carved on wooden poles carved by indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest.

A double header! Both a mural and a totem pole

The main street

The old train station 

We like to hike and try to do this every day. We're in Nanaimo right now and these sculptures are in parks near the house we are renting. None of these are authorize sculptures, just things people have done or tacked onto trees.  

The guy that tacks up these owl sculptures is very prolific. I saw owls in two different parks here. 

This appears to be a professional sculpture. Sorry, I didn't read the plaque at the base. 

We are spending a week or so around the city of Nanaimo, which is a nice little city with a busy harbor. Not an industrial harbor but one used for seaplanes and ferries to outlying islands. Here are some art pieces from downtown.

There used to be a foundry located here. 

It's a city with a lot of harbor traffic to offshore islands. Of course there would be a mural of ocean critters. 

That's me at the Nanaimo harbor sitting on a giant dungeness crab

Tribal art. First Nation (Native Americans to us) fishing in a canoe. 

Love- always a nice notion. We have a Love sculpture in downtown Scottsdale. 

There is a festival going on this weekend. The World Championship Bathtub races where people race in motorized bathtubs. Tonight was the start of the festival with a rock concert (6 hours), food kiosks, and lots of people watching. These gals, a huge picture frame with the festival in the background- my contribution to the art of Nanaimo.

The Tacoma Bridge of Glass

We just visited Mt Rainier National Park but I am not going to write about it other than to call it- in my opinion- the most boring national park in America. It takes at least six hour to drive through the park with an occasional glimpse of some tall mountains with some snow and glaciers but mostly all you see are big trees. Big deal. Even the visitors centers were boring. 

However, I am a fan of art in public places so on our way back to Seattle we stopped in Tacoma, Washington to see the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, a pedestrian overpass in downtown Tacoma, Chihuly's hometown. Dale Chihuly is a famous glass artist. You may have seen some of his pieces in the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas or lots of other places including several special exhibitions at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix over the past few years. 

The city built a 500 foot long pedestrian bridge which is sort of a free museum. It connecting their art museum to downtown Tacoma. This post consists of photos of his work on the bridge and in the courthouse. 

There are three art installations on the pedestrian bridge, including a ceiling made of 2,364 glass objects suspended in midair a few feet above our heads. It is like a coral reef of beautiful and colorful glass:

An evening view

Close up of some of the panels: 

S

Another section of the bridge features an 80 foot wall displaying 109 glass sculptures:

Here are some close up photos:

At the end of the bridge is the old train station which is now a courthouse.  The elegant lobby has more Chihuly glass piece.  

I hope you enjoyed looking at them. I certainly did. 

Independence Day, 2016

We have been in Seattle for a few days and for Independence Day we decided to take an side excursion to see Mt. Rainier, the tallest mountain in the continental United States. En route we spent the night in the small town of Enumclaw, the last town before entering the park.

The residents here are really, really into Independence Day. Or maybe they are really, really into fireworks. On the way into town we passed at least 5 tents along the road selling them. And where we were staying it seemed like there was a house on every block setting off fireworks- beautiful ones. There were both ground displays, and aerial displays. These were private parties at houses- for family and friends- maybe a dozen people watching at most.  I have no idea what fireworks cost but an hours worth of fireworks sounds expensive to me. And I didn't realize it was so easy to do; I thought it required special equipment to launch them into the air. But judging by the number of people doing it in Enumclaw, it must be relatively easy to do. 

One house near our hotel set off fireworks from six until 10- nice ones. They were the first to start so we walked over to watch. Since it wasn’t dark yet they started small, with ones that made noise then switched to ones I had never seen before- large balloons with candles inside. 

I was not expecting this so I didn’t have a camera with me, just a cell phone. These don’t take very good fireworks photos. Sorry for the blurry images.

We saw about 10 fireworks shows simultaneously within less than a mile. We were literally surrounded by aerial firework. Five fireworks displays were very close-- one was even in our hotel parking lot. 

Our hotel parking lot

As you can see there are only half a dozen people around. No crowds.

  Our hotel was right next door to the county fairgrounds. We sat on some large rocks on the edge of the fairgrounds and by turning around we could watch five different fireworks displays at the same time.

 There were two different groups setting off fireworks next door at the fairground. The most interesting thing about the evening was there didn't seem to be any crowds or audience for these shows except us, the people shooting them off, and their friends. There was literally no one at the fairgrounds next door to watch them. They just did it to please themselves. This photo was at the fairgrounds and as you can see there is no one around to watch the show except the us. Our own private fireworks show. 

Notice the parking lot at the fairgrounds is empty except for one truck and one family. No one watching except the guys setting them off and us.

Now- just a few more things about Enumclaw. We were staying in a rural part of town, as I said, next to the fairgrounds, on the road to Mt Rainier. There were two restaurants nearby, however both were closed. It turned out every restaurant in town was closed for the holiday. Rather than starve after our drive from Seattle I was planning to go to the next town, to Safeway and buy a frozen dinner to heat up in the microwave. Then the woman at the hotel desk called me- some guest had bought an extra pizza- would we like a free pizza? You know we would, so we had a large free pizza (still warm), outside on a picnic table, then watched all these great fireworks shows. A pretty good Independence Day celebration. 

Are you under 18? Please do not read further. 

 You see, there just one more thing. As I was writing this blog I was thinking Enumclaw is a rather unusual name and googled it to find out how the town got this name. The meaning of the name is a little uncertain, although it seems to be of Salish Indian origin. However, while looking it up I came across this small town’s only claim to fame. Apparently about a decade ago there was a horse farm (this is horse country) where a man died after having sex with a horse.