ByGD
From what I understand of Azores history, the islands served as transAtlantic fueling stations and historically housed whalers and fisherman. But it’s easy to imagine them as a pirate’s paradise. Do the locals identify much with pirates the way folks in the American Southwest do with bandits? Or are pirates always the bad guys in Azorean stories? Whether this is sanctioned public art reflecting the local culture or punk protest of it, I think these are words to live by.
ByGD
This giant block of ice was placed in Occidental Park as part of a public art project several years ago. You might question whether a block of ice counts as art. But it was midsummer, so every time you walked by it looked a little different. It was so unusual to see a giant block of ice that everyone stopped to look and wondered if they could touch it. Complete strangers struck up conversations about it trying to decide if they liked it or hated it. Even the dogs were intrigued, and had kind of the same response. Is it something to lick or something to pee on?
ByGD
At first glance, this looks like a photo of a freeway. But what I really wanted to capture was the flowerpots of coleus hanging from the onramp. Taken in May, this photo captures the tiny cuttings before they’ve even filled out the pots. It’s a lot of work to plant so many, and while they will probably fill in and look pretty by the end of summer, it’s still just one onramp for one season – coleus could not survive a Qingdao winter. Part of me wants to be impressed by whoever put out so much effort to beautify one little onramp in a big city. But I can’t help being reminded of the Phoenix freeway pot debacle from the last year that I lived there.
The image at the link to the Phoenix freeway pots makes it hard to understand what the fuss was about. What isn’t clear is that most of the pots were about the same size as planters you might have around your house. I remember wondering if someone had actually snuck out onto the road at night to place them there. These freeway pots filled with coleus in Qingdao left me wondering the same thing.