Sidewalk Art

Once or twice a year, some city commission here in Santa Barbara arranges for an exhibition of art that is installed along the sidewalks of State Street, our main street downtown. Sometimes it consists of a number of works by a single artist, other times they are by multiple artists. They vary in quality.

Last spring, the exhibition was sculptures were of multiple pairs of giant (6 ft long) trout, with outdoor scenes painted on the sides. These were pretty nice, and I guess I missed the boat not getting pictures of them. They were done in connection with the Steelhead Festival which honors those few ocean-run trout who still try to swim up Mission Creek to spawn.

Last year one of these exhibitions was a series of large bronze masses that were done by a single artist. Local citizens noticed that in shape and color, these bronzes resembled nothing so much as giant coprolites, and were quick to point this out to city government. The exhibition period for the bronzes was cut short. I'm not sure how much money gets spent on this.

The current exhibition has been up about a month. The bronze shown above is titled "Musical Chairs."

This one is called "Reflection Disc." The differential surface treatments of the limestone give a sort of pleasing contrast, and the nice yellow color really glowed in the afternoon sun. It reminded me of building stones in Magdalena.

This one is called "Igiyagi", which I understand is a made-up faux-Japanese word. It has a pleasing look. Connie thought it resembled a nautilus, but it reminded me of the popped-up aluminum bags of Jiffy-Pop Popcorn we used to cook back in the 1960s. Leave it to me to think of food.

This was actually my favorite of all of them and is named "Logout." Sort of rustic and sort of self-contained. Made me want to go camping.

This was quite a provocative piece - two discs (there's another on the opposite side) with upside-down MacDonald's Golden Arches painted on them, shot full of giant green arrows. A local MacDonald's franchise owner was outraged. The name of this piece is "W." Is this a political statement? A symbolic fast-food restaurant review? Lotta levels of meaning here.