I'm home! I was considering catching a movie, but after this morning I thought it might be rather overstimulating. Besides, a cold drink and my bed sounded awfully nice.
The photos I've been posting are from Niki In The Garden, an installation of the work of the late sculptor Niki de Saint-Phalle. They're sprinkled in and around the greenhouses of the Garfield Park Conservatory. Whoever designed the exhibit did a tremendous job; they're all placed well for their particular theme. There's a pair of basketball players set against the skyline of west Chicago, a handful of dancing women spraying water in the greenhouse ponds, and a group of bathers by an outdoor lake, among others.
There's a wonderful sense of the sacred absurd in de Saint-Phalle's work; many of the sculptures project a very mystical image but also employ bright, eye-catching colours and whimsical rounded shapes. They're fun, even the freaky totem poles. I'm annoyed with myself that I didn't think to bring my sketching materials, but I did take a lot of photographs that will be posted Friday or Saturday.
The two images I've posted are two of the most striking sculptures in the installation, though by no means the only ones worth seeing. The Firebird is approached through a narrow passageway that leads from the greenhouses to the outdoor park; it's a giant arch with a bird perched atop it, done predominantly in mirrored glass which throws beautiful patterns on the pavement below. The skull, whose title escapes me at the moment, is about fifteen feet high and has doorways on either side, so that you can walk literally into the skull itself and peer out through its teeth. The interior is done mainly in mirrored mosaic and there's a bench built into the back of it; if you look straight up the top of the interior is done in blue, with a crescent moon at the peak. Across from the skull are two giant climbable lions sunning themselves in the grass.
Just down the side of the main building is a little garden that I almost missed, but I'm glad I didn't. The Conservatory has "built" a traditional gravel-and-grass meditational labyrinth as a permanent feature, and for the summer they've installed a sculpture of a hydra at the center. It was quite peaceful and I was happily walking the labyrinth and rocktumbling some ideas in my head when a gaggle of schoolchildren showed up and dashed right across the labyrinth to the sculpture. Well, little kids are allowed, and it's a rather good metaphor for how children deal with life's little issues.
Once I'd seen most of what there was to see, I ambled back to the outdoor pond, which has a neat curving bridge across it and some metal cafe tables to sit at. I'd stopped at a downtown grocery store and bought bread and some cheese and an apple, so I had a very pleasant lunch amongst the ducks.
It was a very satisfying trip, and it made me think of how enjoyable it used to be to bum around Boston during the summer I lived in Jamaica Plain. I need to get out and do stuff like this more often; it's good for me.
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