My Peace Pole

For Memorial Day I planted my home Peace Pole. I first created this Peace Pole in 1999 and dedicated it on New Year's Eve of 2000 with friends and a big party. It was planted in a large flower pot on the patio of my condo. Since then I have moved from the west coast to the south. I brought the pole with me on top of my car and also, brought another redwood post with the intention to make a new pole for my new home. I stood my peace pole in the garden on the side of my new house but never really planted it. It stayed on my "to do list" for the next 6 years along with making a second Peace Pole. After this new year of 2009 I looked at my redwood post and decided it was time to make my second Peace Pole and give it to Georgia Mountain Unitarian Universalist Church. So, I set to work on it. This sunday we are having a deication event for it. You can read about that in my next blog.

After finishing the new pole I realized that I wanted to give a new life to my old pole. It had weathered due to the fact I never put a seal coat on it. The redwood grays over time without a sealant. I wanted to keep one side to honor the history of the pole but recreated most of the other three sides. I did keep a few pieces of artwork here and there sanding around them. The pole took many hours of sanding, painting and I gave it three coast of sealant. So, between rain showers this past Memorial Day my dad and I planted the pole in our front yard for all to see. A reminder to think about Peace. I leave you with these thoughts from some great minds.

"One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace." -William E. Gladstone

"Peace is not achieved by controlling nations, but mastering our thoughts." -John Harricharan

Vero Beach, Florida - Turtle Trax

Greeting from Vero Beach where I have found yet another community public art project that raise lots of money for mental health services. Way Cool art and an amazing fund raising project. It started in 2005 and continued through 2008 with each year creating painted turtle sculptures that a few of them are now on permanent display around town. According to the website www.turtletrax.org , in the first season of the event they auctioned 52 fiberglass sculptures and raised about $550,000! That is truly an impressive feat. Congratulations Artists and Organizers for an inspiring community fund raising project. I really enjoyed the wonderfully painted 3 foot high turtles. What I find fasinating is how different and creative each artist has painted them. There is a really WOW factor with each one.

Could this be a project for your community? I think it is something really worth considering. I am starting to look at the posible parners in my community to create a project like this one and the others that I have found in my travels. See earlier blogs.

WOW2 St. Lucie County, Florida

Well, I've been having an exciting time in t. Lucie County, Florida where I have discovered some really fine contemporary sculpture by local Florida artists. There has been a year long Art in Public Places Exhibition called WOW2 (With Out Walls) featuring 30 different, large-scale sculptures throughout St. Lucie County. At Ft. Piece Marina I found 2 of them, one by Susan Gott called Fire Sentinel and the other In the Swim by Jorge Blanco. This exhibit adds so much to the community I hope that other communities will create simulate exhibits.

Ft. Pierce

Who pays attention to ordinary or discarded items? Artists do. They notice the sights, sounds and experiences of everyday life and use them as source materials. They find value in what others overlook. This week I have found a most interesting sculpture of recycled materials at the Marina in Ft. Pierce, Florida. This sculpture is of all found objects and it spells our Ft. Pierce. I have not found any info on it so I can't tell you who made it or when it was made. I think it is one of the best examples of the recycled, repurposed art!

Pinellas Trail

Greetings from the sunshine state. I have come across a few interest sculptures here while visiting my friends. Taking a morning walk I came across this really fun artwork on Pinellas Trail. They are large metal sculptures that pay tribute to the trail's link to the railroading history and its importance as a vital link to the communities it continues to serve.

Ghost Ballet, Nashville

This past weekend I was in Nashville, TN and I found this awesome public art installation by the river. In 2007, Alice Aycock installed Nashville’s first Percent for Public Art commission on the bank of the Cumberland River, opposite the downtown. Titled Ghost Ballet for the East Bank Machineworks, the 100’ x 100’ x 60’ sculpture perches on a crane base once used to launch barges. The artwork references the site’s industrial past and visually echoes current surroundings, including nearby bridges and the NFL Titans stadium. Its dynamic form conveys a sense of the area’s evolution from industrial working river to recreation and entertainment, a theme that resonated with Aycock after her first site visit.

The main structure of the sculpture is comprised of arced, red-painted steel trusses that twist upward from the crane base to form a disconnected spherical shape. On the ground, a red-painted aluminum “turbine whirlwind” serves as a visual generator for the swirling trusses above. At night, a glowing neon fixture illuminates the sculpture’s center.
The sculpture changes as you move around it which is why Aycock named it Ghost Ballet.