Well, I’m not getting any sleep at all tonight, so might as well blog a bit. I’ve got to wake up in two and a half hours to catch a flight, so might as well give up gracefully, and usefully, by sharing with you:
Two spheres caught my eye around Dublin today, one familiar, one not. Both great.
(Click for larger.) The first is the “Tree of Gold (Crainn an Oir)”, by Eamonn O’Doherty. It resides in the plaza of the Central Bank of Ireland. The second is the “Sphere with Sphere”, by Arnaldo Pomodoro (great name!), which sits in front of the Berkeley library on the grounds of Trinity College. I’ve heard that it is supposed to represent the sphere of industry and technology emerging from the sphere of nature, but I have not checked that.
-cvj
On this day on Asymptotia...
- A Zoological Fractal - 2008
If you’re a Pomodoro fan, what better excuse to come up to Stanford? The excuse that you have an old friend at Stanford is not sufficient, it seems.
Hey, that looks familiar! We’ve got a very similar sphere here in Berkeley. I walk by it every day.
Rotante dal Foro Centrale
Pomodoro, Arnaldo
Italy
1971
bronze
SCULPTURE
Gift of the University Art Museum Council
Yes… you migvht also want to look up the connection betweenthe name of the Berkeley you’re at, and the Berkeley library here at Trinity while you’re at it. Interesting facts to be uncovered.
Cheers,
-cvj
On the University of Chicago campus, there’s another Pomodoro–”Grande Disco”–at 58th and Ellis, just down the street from the Enrico Fermi Institute. If you push the sculpture it rotates; can you do the same with the Dublin sculptures?
Oooooooh! I especially love the second one, although I wish the cogs of industry bursting out of the crumbling sphere of nature weren’t such an accurate description of real life…
Pomodoro has done other interesting things, but I could never appreciate his Spheres. They’re quite repetitive, and he seems to have found a niche for them in science campuses around the world.
I suppose that in the judgment of some university administrators the Spheres must look artsy, yet scientific and concrete enough not to feel out of place in a Place of Science… Far from me to bemoan any art in public places, but sometimes I wish it could be chosen more eclectically.
Spherical sculpture by an Italian artist with a last name of Pomodoro seems very appropriate.
Yes!
-cvj
The open air museum in Hakone, Japan also has Pomodoros sphere…worth the trip to Japan just to see this place!
http://www.hakone-oam.or.jp/eng/