Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Lichtenstein in Philadelphia
United Plaza South 20th Street Philadelphia, PA Philadelphia has a wonderful program called Museum Without Walls, and this is part of that program. Roy Lichtenstein’s Brushstroke Group, was brought to Philadelphia in August 2005 courtesy of Duane Morris L.L.P, one of the city’s largest law firms, which occupies the adjacent building. In an unusual arrangement,…
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Controversial Comfort Women Statue
St. Mary’s Square Chinatown From the moment of installation of this statue by Carmel artist Steven Whyte it has been controversial. The plaque that accompanies the statue reads: This monument bears witness to the suffering of hundreds of thousands of women and girls, euphemistically called “Comfort Women”, who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial…
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Wanamaker, An Organ, and An Eagle
1300 Market Street Philadelphia, PA Designed by renowned organ architect and Scotsman, George Ashdown Audsley, and built by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, the Wanamaker Organ originally incorporated more than 10,000 pipes. The cost of construction ($105,000) actually bankrupted the builder. Fortunately, the Organ found a new…
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Swann Memorial Fountain
Logan Square Philadelphia, PA The Swann Memorial Fountain (also known as the Fountain of the Three Rivers) is by Alexander Stirling Calder (who has shown up on these pages before) and designed with architect Wilson Eyre. The fountain memorializes Dr. Wilson Cary Swann, founder of the Philadelphia Fountain Society. Calder created large Native American figures to…
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Dendroids by Roxy Paine
Philadelphia – February 2018 Benjamin Franklin Parkway 24th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue This piece, titled Symbiosis by Roxy Paine, was installed in 2014. It is stainless steel and part of Paine’s “Dendroid” series of stainless steel treelike structures. “Dendroids”is a greek word that combines Dendron meaning tree and oid a suffix meaning form. The piece…
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Gloria Victis
Civic Center 505 Van Ness Edmund G. Brown State Office Building Closed Weekends The statue was a project between the Hungarian Freedom Fighters Federation of San Francisco and the Honorable Ernie Konnyu, a former Representative of the California State Assembly. The statue portrays Hungaria, the Spirit of Hungary, and symbolizes the idea of everlasting hope…
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The Seed in Jane Warner Plaza
Castro District “The Seed” is part of a complete redo of the intersection of Castro and Market. It was created by Los Angeles-based Aphidoidea, a multi-disciplinary design, architecture and art collective. “The Seed” was inspired by the Castro District’s culture and human rights movement in a form of a seed. This art piece is an…
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Solar Totems
Glen Park Canyon Rec Center This unique installation is by Charles Sowers. Three reclaimed redwoods receive the “writing” of the sun as its rays are focused by a spherical lens to lightly burn into the wood. As the sun moves across the sky, the burn becomes a line; preserving a record of sunshine periodically broken…
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88 Slag Buddhas
The 88 Buddha statuettes are a reference to the 88 temples of the Shikoku Pilgrimage. They are made of slag that was illegally dumped on neighborhing Teshima Island, which is also part of their story. From 1978 to 1990, Teshima Island was used as a dump site for paper making residue, sadly they were actually…
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Pumpkins on Naoshima
This pumpkin sits on a pier on the island of Naoshima. The first art project for the Benesse art site was Open Air ’94 Out of Bounds, organized as an outdoor exhibition space in 1994. Out of Bounds referred to the crossing of borders in hope that Naoshima be linked to the rest of the…
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Treasure Island Artwork Spread Far and Wide
Sometimes you are given an opportunity to peek behind the scenes and today I had just one of those magical moments. Anne Schnoebelen, the passionate author of the website TreasureIsland1939.com asked me to come see the Pacific Fountain and bring along my friend Deborah Blake of Sullivan Masonry, to see about the restoration of the fountain.…
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Frank Stella at 222 2nd
222 Second Street Frank Stella was born in 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts. He studied painting at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and at Princeton University. After graduating, he moved to New York and began his career with his renowned series, Black Paintings. These two pieces by Stella are titled “Riallaro”; a 1997, pixel painting. “The Pequod Meets the…
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Glass Goddesses
Trinity Plaza Market at 8th April 2017 Trinity Plaza falls under the 1% for Art program. Although the project began construction several years ago, the public space areas are not yet complete. The concept for the public space (titled “C’era Una Volta” – Once Upon a Time) was developed by artist Lawrence Argent. The overall…
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Nature of Medicine
San Francisco General Hospital 1001 Potrero Avenue Potrero Hill Main Lobby of the New Wing When you enter the lobby of the new wing you are overwhelmed by color. The two glass mosaics and the terrazzo floor are all done by Oakland artist, Rupert Garcia, done in 2015 they are titled Nature of Medicine. The floor art…
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Archipelago
San Francisco General Hospital 1001 Potrero Avenue Potrero Hill Titled Archipelago this piece is based on the concept of a river as a metaphor for life. It was created by Anna Valentina Murch and sits in the plaza connecting the old and new buildings of the hospital complex. An important feature of the installation is a…
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Breath Between Sky and Ocean
San Francisco General Hospital 1001 Potrero Avenue Potrero Hill Roof Garden of the Acute Care Building 7th Floor Breath Between Sky and Ocean by Masayuki Nagase was created in 2015 and consists of two hand-carved granite boulders (4 ft. by 4 ft. by 4 ft.), five polished and carved granite benches (5 ft. by 6…
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River of Time
San Francisco General Hospital 1001 Potrero Avenue Potrero Hill Acute Care Building 7th Floor This piece, titled River of Time, is in three pieces. The above piece is at the end of a short hallway on the 7th floor. The other two, however, are behind locked doors. I was able to snap a photo of…
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Pylon
Philip A. Hart Civic Center Plaza Jefferson and Woodward Avenues Detroit, Michigan 120 feet tall by 7 feet square The Pylon is the terminus for Detroit’s main street, Woodward Avenue. Created by Isamu Noguchi, the monumental work is of joined steel sections. The rectangular pylon makes a quarter turn as it heads upwards to…
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Belle Isle
Belle Isle Detroit, Michigan Belle Isle is a 982-acre island park in the Detroit River, between the United States mainland and Canada. Belle Isle is the largest city-owned island park in the United States and is the third largest island in the Detroit River. It is connected to mainland Detroit by the MacArthur Bridge. One…
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FLW in Detroit
The Melvyn Maxwell Smith and Sara Stein Smith House Bloomfield, Michigan The Melvyn Maxwell Smith and Sara Stein Smith House also known as My Haven is a Frank Lloyd Wright designed Usonian home that was built by the owner/occupants in 1949 and 1950. The Smiths were two public school teachers living on a tight budget,…
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Detroit’s Guardian Building
500 Griswold Street Detroit, Michigan There has been so very, very much written about the Guardian Building of Detroit, that my writing here is simply for me to remember this stunning building and that I had the pleasure of walking into it and staring. Built for the Union Trust Company the building is 486 feet…
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Detroit’s Renaissance
The Book Building at 1249 Washington Blvd, Downtown Detroit So much has been written about Detroit’s decline, and yet so little has been written about its renaissance. Yes, the outlying areas have a long way to go, but the new construction and renovations happening in the downtown area are staggering. This post by no means…
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Heidelberg Project
3600 Heidelberg St McDougall Hunt Neighborhood Detroit, Michigan Just 15 minutes away from the African Bead Museum is the Heidelberg Project. I went anticipating a fabulous folk art installation due to all the hype, disappointing is the kindest word I can use. That being said, the motivation behind the project and the heart poured into…
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African Bead Museum
Dabls’ MBAD African Bead Museum 6559 Grand River Avenue Detroit, Michigan * I had the absolute privilege to speak with Olayami Dabls, the creator of Dabls’ African Bead Museum (pictured above), and he told me some of his story. He began this project during the Clean Up Detroit program, a project to help clear all of…
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Pewabic Pottery
1025 Jefferson Avenue Detroit, Michigan Pewabic Pottery is a ceramic studio and school founded in 1903 by artist Mary Chase Perry Stratton and Horace James Caulkins. Caulkins was considered a high-heat and kiln specialist, and developed the “Revelation kiln”. Caulkins invented the kiln to help with his dental supply business, he then sold his…
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The Saarinen House
Academy Way Cranbrook Bloomfield Hills, Michigan A tour of the Saarinen house is an amazing look into the perfectionism of Eliel Saarinen and his design beliefs and senses. The house combines Arts and Craft movement ideas with Art Deco elements for a stunning and harmonious work of art. * The home was built concurrently with…
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The Spirit of Detroit
2 Woodward Avenue Detroit, Michigan This stunning sculpture is the best-known piece of public art in Detroit. It’s location and presentation was well thought out. The backdrop was designed by the architectural firm of Harley, Ellington and Day, also responsible for the Veterans Memorial Building in Detroit. The sculpture itself is by Detroit area sculptor…
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Ringold Alley’s Leather Memoir
Ringold Alley Between 8th and 9th Streets Harrison and Folsom SOMA Prior to the AIDS crisis, Ringold alley served as one of the go-to places for gay men to rendezvous after the numerous gay bars along Folsom Street (the “Miracle Mile”) closed for the night. Until the 1990s, Ringold Street continued to play a major…
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Ethereal Bodies
San Francisco General Hospital 1001 Potrero Avenue Potrero Hill Parking entry on 22nd Street Titled Ethereal Bodies, this piece, done in 2015, is by Cliff Garten. It consists of nine undulating stainless steel sculptures lit by multicolored LED lights. The installation’s stainless steel rods range in height from 14 to 22 feet tall. The surface…
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Healing Hearts
San Francisco General Hospital 1001 Potrero Avenue Potrero Hill The pieces were all created by sculptor Tom Otterness who was born 1952 in Wichita, Kansas. He is a prolific public art sculptor who has been creating whimsical satirical pieces since the 1970s. * Otterness employs the “lost wax” process to cast his bronze figures, which range from…
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