This past week my partner and I went to Sarasota, Florida to celebrate our 40th anniversary. We were to meet up with two women friends who were on vacation from our former cold haunts in Pennsylvania, and staying on Lido Key. We did meet with them this past Tuesday evening and had a wonderful celebration dinner, but the best part of the trip – after being with our friends, and that wonderful anniversary celebration - was Sarasota’s Fourth Season of Sculpture, a garden setting of public sculptures located on the city’s bay front walk. We spent all of Wednesday morning walking around the sculptures and viewing them against the urban setting on the one side, and the spectacular Sarasota bay on the other. I know I’m being really corny. Never the less, I will always remember the set of photographs I took that morning as images of our 40th anniversary celebration sculpture walk. I have included several of the images and brief personal commentary here. The first, Seward Johnson’s “Comprehension” (above) is art that makes comment about art, a sort of critique of Art, and the relationship between art and viewer, or the lack thereof.* The second, Malcolm Robertson’s “Wave 2 Me” makes light of itself, and I certainly did not expect to read that particular title after viewing the elegant metallic vortex from all sides.
I don't like to sound smug, however, something like “Elegant Metallic Vortex” would have been a more appropriate title. A third artwork, “Happy Birthday Andy” by Jack Dowd was the most colorful, and the most immediate because, let’s face it, it was so Iconic, it was so Andy Warhol, and there on it’s cubic base was Andy’s “Marilyn.” It was, however, regrettably made to last but one season - some of the thin stripes around the colorful graphic of Andy’s name already coming unglued – it was more of a sculptor’s manqué next to the other works displayed. On my second perambulation I decided that it was like a beautifully frosted cake self-destructing in the hot sub-tropical sun.
There were twenty sculptures in all, and I’m glad I had the reason, the time and the means as a retiree to find myself in the presence of such impressive works of contemporary public sculpture, I highly recommend a trip to Sarasota to view the exhibit. Hey, it’s still winter. Come on down and make a vacation of it. Enjoy the warm weather, the beach, and all the culture that Sarasota has to offer. Above and beyond that the Fourth Season of Sculpture ends May 26th, and the sculptures will probably never be together in the future, and quite likely none of them will ever be in such a marvelous public setting again.
* Incredibly there is no Website for Seward Johnson though once I typed his name in Google there was a huge list of museum and public showings of his sculpture.
2 comments:
so there never was a 'real' person isaac stolfuts who had a blog as an 87 year old gay X-Amish artist recently moved to South Florida from the Pine Needle Retirement Home in Lancaster, PA...that is you and your blog just making up stories?
Dear anonymous,
You should follow the link to The Celestial Railroad, a Life in order to find the answer to your question. I hope this somewhat oblique answer to your question helps, and thank you so much for your interest.
John
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