Sculpture Tucson, part 2

The artist was dressed as you'd imagine he'd be dressed.

He had a big belt and a fancy neck adornment and a cowboy hat that was just this side of too much.   

He smiled as passersby discovered the contents of their junk drawers, on display, transformed, causing them to stop and stare and go deeper and deeper in to something that is either profound or profoundly absurd. 

Whatever it is, I stood there a long time, listening and staring and taking pictures with my new phone.

There were so many parts on which to focus, so many options on the phone itself, but the artist was generous, enjoying my conversation with the inanimate object in my hand. 

I walked on, admiring the art, smiling at most of it, until I came to this.

 

It's an aging hippie.  The look on his face spoke to me.  We communed for a while before the artist wandered over.  We laughed and sighed and then he turned and showed me his favorite piece.   

The dog and the leash are metal, the leash standing upright, as the pooch waits for its human, the distracted and detached individual modeled by the artist himself. 

Along the outer edge of the first tent, a retiree from Iowa was busy crocheting.

I stopped to admire his ergonomic crochet hook, to talk about how much we both like Ames, and to agree that cold weather and old bones are basically incompatible. He was teaching at the university, where they were skeptical of his crochet plus glass work. 

The beading just made it extra special. 

This artist and I admired the lounging long legs as she described the work that went into designing the fence posts. 

I saw no one hovering over Inverted Prayer, but I stopped and stood up a little bit straighter as I admired her form. 

And then, as I was leaving, there were these.  

I smiled. I tried to walk by and I couldn't.

The shapes, the juxtaposition, the colors.... the more I looked, the more I liked.

The artist averred that this was his favorite piece in the show.

He'd placed the final shapes in his driveway when a freak rainstorm came through.  The raindrops changed the colors as he watched them streak the shapes.  The rain stopped and he ran for the fixative.  We agreed - they were meant to be.