Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Sugabus and Me

Carmi over at "Written, Inc."  who host the week long photo challenge "Thematic Photographic" has chosen the color gray for this weeks theme.  I expected this challenge to be a hard one to fill.   I am never on the lookout for gray items like I am for some of the more popular meme colors like red and pink.   I started going through my archives and pulling out the gray photos and was surprised by how many I found that I have never used before.  I choose two to share with you today.    

The following photos were taken last fall when we escourted out of town guest on a tour of the Laumeier Sculpture Park.  

Me sitting on Sugabus

One of my favorite sculptures is this giant piece entitled "Sugabus."  It reminds me of a giant French Poodle crafted out of balloons.  Sugabus was created by Robert Chambers in 2004 out of six tons of bronze.  The following comes from the parks website: 
    
 "The globes represent the interlocking elements carbon, hydrogen and oxygen found in sucrose. Chambers’ cuddly title, a mingling of “Sugar” and “Cerberus,” transforms the terror evoked by the mythological three-headed guard dog of Hades into a fluffy domesticated pet. Has Chambers made this scary creature into a loveable puffball through the association with a syrupy rush? The metamorphosis stirs together love for pets, elemental craving for sweets and legend into a whimsical alchemy of sculptural forms."




this photo from the
parks website
The above sculpture is entitled "The Palm at the End of the Parking Lot" created by Robert Lobe in 1995.

Constructed from the trunk and branches of a dead walnut tree encased in annealed hammered aluminum with stainless steel hardware.

The following comes from the parks website:  "Robert Lobe has described his sculptures as involving an interrupted, sacrificed-Nature that is not just borrowed, but violated. His works are created in nature and often reinstalled elsewhere as a sculptural echo of natural form. Inspired by this wildness and disorganized aspect of nature, Lobe’s The Palm at the End of the Parking Lot,  is a battered, aluminum-wrapped walnut trunk that exemplifies his continued interest in the violence of nature and obliterates the formal distinction between nature and technology with a battered layer of armor plate. Yet Lobe also preserves and protects the tree, as if technology is strong enough to reverse the ravages it has visited upon the landscape."
Laumeier Sculpture Park sits on 72 acres bequeathed by Matilda Laumeier to St. Louis County in 1968 in honor of her husband.  The Laumeier family home, a large story-and-a-half house of cut stone, on the property is still in use today.  In 1975, the park was proposed as a possible site for the exhibition of sculpture and the concept of Laumeier Sculpture Park emerged.  Catapulted by a collaborative of citizen leaders in the arts, education and business communities, Laumeier Sculpture Park,  was incorporated in September 1977; over the years it has grown to 105-acres. Laumeier Sculpture Park today has over 300,000 visitors annually.
Linking to Thematic Photographic 
This weeks theme is "Gray"








9 comments:

  1. That would be a fascinating park to visit...those things are so cool. We are currently in the midst of a Chihuly exhibit at the Dallas Aboretum...haven't been yet but wife and I are going this fall (cooler).

    http://www.dallasarboretum.org/chihuly/FAQ.html

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    1. Chuck, thanks for this information. Our grandkids live in the Dallas area and we hope to visit them this fall. Perhaps we can cram this into the schedule.

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  2. Ever since I moved to MO. I've wanted to go there and haven't made it yet. Soon ...very soon .

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    1. Carol, it was very chilly the day we went so we did stay to see all the exhibits. My advice is choose your weather carefully since it is mostly outdoors.

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  3. Cool sculptures. I thought of a horse when I first looked at the first picture, but I like the poodle idea too. Sounds like an interesting park.

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  4. Interesting sculpture in that first one! It is a good photo of you on it too!

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  5. All very interesting grey subjects, and one of my favorite places to wander are sculpture parks!

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  6. Hey, those are ORBS!

    (In the form of a great big poodle, yes!)
    ~

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  7. Sugabus gets my vote as the Coolest Sculpture Ever. I love when the powers-that-be have the courage to go a little over the edge with public art. It shows they care about more than the straight and narrow, they they recognize the social benefits of things like this. Absolutely delightful.

    The artwork may be grey, but the response to it is anything but :)

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