I like this photo because a) I didn't have to stand on the corner and take it b) it really captures the feeling, my feelings, towards the bat.
This is right down the street from me now, and so the way I find home is to "take a right at the bat."
as far as public art and sculpture goes, I don't think this counts. It's supposedly a symbol of sports championship in a city that doesn't even have a professional baseball team, erected on an avenue that has seen its glory days long gone, and in a district known more for violence towards women and homelessness than anything else. A baseball bat to symbolize all that? We can make it fit, I guess, but really? what is this bat engaging the city with? seems to me more of an excess of materials that luckily found a home and tax payer's money to pay itself off.
Fun fact: the 15m bat rotates at a push of a button. why you need to rotate a giant bat on the corner of a busy intersection, I don't know. but at least it works, unlike that phoney windpipe on the last corner I lived by. what is it about giant steel and aluminum corner sculptures that draws me to move near them?
2 comments:
it really rotates?
( ps - i'm enjoying your writing on the art scene here in edmonton )
my friends mark and leslea and i have marveled at the bat, for exactly the reasons you suggest: a giant bat in the neighbourhood where women are routinely beaten and disappeared? a giant bat in one of the city's most violent neighbourhoods? whose ideas was that?
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