Often seen in passing through downtown will be this site and sculpture:
It’s usually passed and so not as often appreciated considering the number of people who go by it. When you look, though, it is really interesting to stare at and appreciate.
It’s on a little triangular wedge of grass across from the Hotel De Anza. I finally, and thankfully, took the time to walk around it.
And I found that for me, the genius of the work is how much it changes in feel and perceived motion from different perspectives. I never realized that I liked it so until I got close and gave it my attention. So much of life is like this.
Up close, here are a couple of the differences and representations I admire:
What I think and see and feel between these two views of the same work is nothing the same except for the awe that the same work can feel so different to me from different places.
I like the images but also the perceived motion. How did I describe the motion to myself when I asked my mind to put it into words? The upper image (second one of three on this post) moves like a flowing skirt on a dancer or sea creature along the ocean sand and the lower image (third of three above) moves for me like the opening hands in the kids’ rhyme with the wriggling fingers in the middle that we did when you “open up the church and here’s all the people.” Remember that?
Well, there is much more to see than I had ever done before in years of passing by and noticing its presence but always on the way to get somewhere. Meanwhile, the art and imagery waited patiently for me to discover how I felt about it.
Sculpture by Stephanie Scuris. (You can see a neat photo of the sculpture in its original home indoors in San Jose’s Eastridge Mall in another neat angle at: www.bigmallrat.blogspot.com/2009/07/vintage-postcards-eastridge-mall.html)