No, the Sonoma County village of Sebastopol has not been invaded by godzilla. 🙂 I finally managed on this last visit to spend time wandering a street or two that I’d previously only biked or driven through in a hurry but never managed to explore more fully. Among which, this street where nearly every yard (far more yards than I could photograph) had sculptures, all or most of which I believe were made by an artist who lives and works on the street.
Above: Stadsloket is one of the city’s administrative services offices, which are scattered around A’dam’s many neighborhoods. Below, two last photos taken along the marathon’s route in October, just west of the Rijksmuseum which you can see in the pics.
Same walk as the last entry (in fact directly across the street from the last shot), above a grocery store that I used to shop in frequently for the two years I lived in that old place…and it took me being on an evening walk in search of “city lights”-worthy images to finally notice this interesting artistic flourish 🙂
I’ve decided that when there aren’t so many flowers in bloom, small wonders can include lovely designer flourishes such as this statue – which I’m guessing must depict some fairy tale? – which adorns a bridge over a canal along one of my favorite walking and biking streets here.
These are all from a lovely morning walk in the Wiener Stadtpark (Vienna City Park) before setting out on our longer exploration of the whole Schönbrunn complex. Our hotel was just next to this park, which is smack in the heart of the city. Seeing how many monuments with sculptures of Vienna’s great composers (including Schubert, below), or other artistic flourishes such as the other sculpture below — entitled “freeing the spring” (more or less) and apparently depicting two men working to remove a stone that’s blocking a well or spring — reminded me that quite aside from being for centuries an important center of power in Europe, Vienna was also / has also long been a leading center of culture for centuries. In that “spa” building shown above are frequent waltz events, the waltz being probably the form of music and dancing most closely associated with Vienna.
Museum Fundatie, in Zwolle, as promised in the last post from this lovely capital of Overijssel province. Lonely Planet tells us this was once a neoclassical courthouse which now houses exhibitions of contemporary art and has a small permanent collection which “traces the trajectory of contemporary art through representative pieces.” I was there after closing time so haven’t yet seen what’s inside, but the contemporary additions on the roof are, as promised by Lonely Planet, “impossible to miss.” Yes, that’s a large gold bird, and we’re told that the larger roof addition is a “snail-shaped slug of a cocoon that sparkles silver in the sunlight.” To me it might as well be UFO that’s perching on the roof, but either way it sparkles and attracts the eye, indubitably. 🙂 This merging of older and newer architecture is a common and often visually stimulating architectural thing here, as shown in various past posts – and certainly a thing to watch for if you visit any city in the Netherlands, more or less.
(so much world, so little time....) 