Sunday, January 12, 2014

Water, Please

The Water, Please sculpture sits along the Willamette River at Portland's Water Pollution Control Laboratory, just south of the St. Johns Bridge. Despite the name, it's actually kind of a swanky looking building, and I wouldn't mind having an office there, at least if I was in the water pollution business. The sculpture, naturally, has a water theme. RACC describes it thusly:

This piece frames the essential and eternal relationship between man and water. The sculpture establishes a parity between a drop of water and a human being, both of which emanate ripples of effect and consequences on each other.

This sounds incredibly groovy, but I admit I'm not really seeing it, myself. Maybe you're supposed to bring your preferred mind-altering substance along, in order to really dig the whole parity between people and drops of water thing. In any case, the sculptor also created Drivers Seat, which appeared here way back in 2007.

The half-raindrop part of the sculpture appears to double as a picnic table, with the inner ripples serving as seats. They're just curved pipes though, so it's not exactly the world's most comfy picnic spot. I guess it's an opportunity to suffer for art, if you're into that sort of thing.

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