Ourdoor art in Vancouver

Orhan and I (and Dev, of course) take off tomorrow to walk the Moray Coast Trail. Before we take off, here are some observations about outdoor art in Vancouver,

---

Vancouver has joined two art movements I have been enjoying in Davis: Putting painted pianos on the street, and having local artists paint utility boxes. (I'll write about the utility boxes separately, since I think they are interesting enough for a separate post where I can compare different places.)

The first piano we encountered was still covered, but two more -- one outside the science center and one outside the aquarium -- were available to passersby to play, or for Dev to practice his octave stretch.




Vancouver is also rich in street mosaics, like these three in downtown:




And these five near the science center:








Also near the science center were a pair of gorgeous carved stumps...




...and some anxious-looking fish. Dev tried to help it gain perspective.


Meanwhile, there are some large sculptures downtown near Stanley Park, including Home By the Sea:



And also this, which looks a lot more like a home (and is closer to the water) but turns out to be art. not housing:



And this gorgeous piece in front of the aquarium:



Stanley Park also featured another kind of outdoor art:



Also, this peculiar monument to aerodynamics, or something like that:


Back downtown later in the day we saw what at first looked like it could be some truly fantastic graffiti, but turned out to be an official mural:



Dev was in awe, there and all over town.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

UWP 018: Style in the what?

Image
I have taught  UWP 018: Style in the Essay  once, in Fall 2014, and am looking forward to having it again. As you can see from the official course  description , it's pretty poorly defined, both in general (so many goals!) and in specific parts (e.g. "Students should be familiar with the general principles of good writing upon entry into the course," whatever that means). Even the topics are hard to pin down, especially "the essay." It's vague enough that Phillip Lopate's anthology  The Art of the Personal Essay  covers 2000 years (starting with Seneca) and several countries and languages (with translations from Latin, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese). Round 1 (2014) Given this range, I thought for a long time about what  the essay  is before teaching UWP 018 for the first time. I thought back to what I read during my MFA in nonfiction writing, not only essays but also books and articles about the various forms of nonfiction prose. I also ...
Read more

Some architectural comments

Image
Some Vancouver locals call it The Rainy City, or Raincouver. I call it the City of Balconies. The city has extremely high population density, achieved in part by having lots of high-rise residential buildings -- and by lots, I mean all over the place, with more going up all the time if the number of cranes and construction sites are any indication. This is part of downtown Vancouver: And this is the view from our hotel window, out in Burnaby (part of the metro area): Some of the buildings are fairly bland. Some I like because they are reflective, and I enjoy taking pictures of things reflected at the scale of an entire building, especially other buildings. Some of the buildings were lovely and unique. We saw the Woodward's Building from several angles, starting with noticing its rooftop grove poking up from behind another building: When we got closer, we saw the lovely exoskeleton: It turns out the building was torn down and rebuilt just a fe...
Read more

Moray Coast, Day 2: Findhorn to Hopeman part 2

Image
I was pretty bushed by the time we stopped in Burghead; we'd talked about resting a mile or so before town, but there was no shade, so we pushed on. Dev, of course, has ridiculously long ostrich legs and therefore was not fatigued at all. (Also, he rode in my pocket, though he prefers I not point that out too often.) He found some interesting items in the cafe, such as these ship-building tools used by Daniel Young Hopeman: This is the boat Dev would like to have built if he had Dev-sized versions of Mr. Hopeman's tools (and the skill to use them). We didn't have time to look up Mr. Hopeman at the time, but later investigations revealed that he was a fireman on drifter (a kind of boat, I assume) that sank on June 10, 1931. The Glasgow Herald reported: Dev also was intrigued to learn that Rhubarb! (And, of course... Custard!) Our next stop was a local shop where I attempted to buy a sun hat. We were ready for rain, but we were not ready for so much...
Read more