BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Newport News -- Public Art

VA -- Newport News -- Public Art:

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[1] NNEWSA_120923_005.JPG	[2] NNEWSA_120923_008.JPG	[3] NNEWSA_120923_011.JPG
[4] NNEWSA_120923_015.JPG	[5] NNEWSA_120923_018.JPG	[6] NNEWSA_120923_024.JPG
[7] NNEWSA_120923_028.JPG	[8] NNEWSA_120923_030.JPG	[9] NNEWSA_120923_037.JPG
[10] NNEWSA_120923_040.JPG	[11] NNEWSA_120923_043.JPG	[12] NNEWSA_120923_056.JPG
[13] NNEWSA_120923_062.JPG	[14] NNEWSA_120923_071.JPG	[15] NNEWSA_120923_079.JPG
[16] NNEWSA_120923_080.JPG	[17] NNEWSA_120923_085.JPG	[18] NNEWSA_120923_088.JPG
[19] NNEWSA_120923_091.JPG	[20] NNEWSA_120923_100.JPG	[21] NNEWSA_120923_104.JPG
[22] NNEWSA_120923_113.JPG	[23] NNEWSA_120923_122.JPG	[24] NNEWSA_120923_125.JPG
[25] NNEWSA_120923_129.JPG	[26] NNEWSA_120923_132.JPG	[27] NNEWSA_120923_136.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. NNEWSA_120923_005.JPG: There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before. -- Willa Cather
2. NNEWSA_120923_008.JPG: I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you fell [sic] bad after. -- Ernest Hemingway
3. NNEWSA_120923_011.JPG: Natural by Masaru Bando Masaru Bando explains that, "As an artist, I convey my view of the world to an audience." In this case, he says, "When I was creating this monument, I was thinking about how the power of nature intertwines with the essence of humanity. … What interested me about the centaur was that it is part human and part animal, horse. The horse aspect of the centaur is strong and powerful, while the human aspect of the centaur is emotional and sensible." Why "Natural"? Bando explains: "I wanted to create a piece that better showed my understanding of human interaction with nature. The centaur allowed for a peaceful combination to occur."
4. NNEWSA_120923_018.JPG: Each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other -- male in female, female in male, white in black, black in white. We are part of each other. -- James Baldwin
5. NNEWSA_120923_024.JPG: The body dies, the body's beauty lives. -- Wallace Stevens
6. NNEWSA_120923_028.JPG: Melpomene by Romolo Del Deo "Fragmented, twisted, broken, yet always heroic and beautiful despite their travail. The figures of Romolo Del Deo are rooted in classical mythology and romantic ideal. But in their compromised poses, they also indicate a contemporary, post-modern vantage point." This is how an art expert, writing in Arts and Antiques, described the work of this American sculptor with Italian roots. The mythology in this piece refers to Melpomene, the muse of tragedy. This piece illustrates the connections that artists make between their work and its context. Del Deo was inspired to choose Melpomene because the piece is set in a mixed-use development named Port Warwick, for the fictional city in Lie Down in Darkness, the tragic novel by Newport News native William Styron. Styron was involved in selecting the American authors and the characters in his books for whom Port Warwick's streets are named. The "compromised pose" described by the art critic is evident in Melpomene: The draping and figure are classical, but the head is missing, as is a wing. Del Deo explains that his sculptures "all start out as whole figures," but "You've got to get rid of the extraneous elements, anything that gets in the way of the thing itself."
7. NNEWSA_120923_040.JPG: Il Segreto by Emanuele De Reggi "Il segreto" means the truth, and the truth is what the fish stands for. The figure holds it behind his back because, De Reggi, explains, the truth is so powerful that it has to be safeguarded. Some people cannot face the truth, and some cannot be trusted with it. Fish appear frequently in De Reggi's work: in the outstretched hand of a figure in a boat, offered up in thanks for the grace of bountiful fishing; tucked under the arm of a woman in a tophat; giving a ride to a tiny human figure; "swimming" through the pedestal of a bust. The sculptor explains why fish are such a powerful visual metaphor: They are always in motion, even when they are sleeping. In that, they remind him of the human mind.
8. NNEWSA_120923_056.JPG: Lenape Gate Harry Gordon This massive work is typical of Harry Gordon's work in several ways, beginning with the choice and handling of the material, in this case red granite. Gordon explains: "My work and the ideas behind it are tied very closely with the material it is constructed of -- I have chosen traditional, ancient mediums with which to express myself. I try not to manipulate my materials beyond their natural state, but imbue them with a sense of dignity and grandeur to release their spirit." Lenape Gate also evokes other Gordon works in its composition, with two posts topped by a third element, a kind of lintel. The sculptor suggests a way of looking at it: "When I incorporate several elements together to construct a sculpture, I am looking at the way they relate to each other, and ultimately how they work together as a whole. A tilt here and a cut there can change the attitude of the piece and gives each one its own personality." The Lenape are Native American peoples of the American Northeast.
9. NNEWSA_120923_071.JPG: Spring Breeze Rodney Carroll Like many sculptures, Spring Breeze can be appreciated on more than one level. There is the piece itself, its shape and energy, the interplay of lines and metals, the way it works in its surroundings. And there is the sculpture as an expression of the artist's ideas, the way he uses metal to tell us something he wants to share. In the case of Carroll and Spring Breeze, that something is about relationships, both the relationships people have with one another and the relationships individuals have with themselves and with their environment. The planes that Carroll manipulates, and the choices he make about their placement, take on new meaning when we realize that he's using them to "talk" about the ways we come together and the ways we are separate. The thin vertical bands stand out when we consider that they say something about the energy that drives and sustains us. Carroll explains other layers of meaning in his piece. With its precise and polished metals, it evokes the city's maritime history by incorporating materials used in the shipbuilding that has dominated the local economy for generations. In addition to paying homage to the past, it also suggests looking forward and blossoming, the spring referred to in the piece's title.
10. NNEWSA_120923_088.JPG: Conquering the Wild Anna Hyatt Huntington Sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington carved this depiction of a man engaged in a struggle to subdue a rearing horse. The four life-sized figures at the corners represent science, art, learning and industry. The sculpture marks one entrance to the 550 acre park surrounding The Mariners' Museum, which was founded by her husband, Archer Huntington.
11. NNEWSA_120923_100.JPG: Lion's Bridge Anna Hyatt Huntington The Lion's Bridge is a place where families feed the ducks, couples get engaged, and generations have enjoyed the peaceful spot where magnificent Mariners' Museum Park meets the beautiful James River. Anna Hyatt Huntington, sculptor and wife of Mariners' Museum founder Archer Huntington, created the four lions that guard the bridge atop the dam built in the 1930s to create Lake Maury, the centerpiece of park. Come Christmastime, the lions sport wreaths, courtesy of the museum's Bronze Door Society.
12. NNEWSA_120923_122.JPG: Carambola Emanuele De Reggi Carambola is an Italian billiards-like game in which balls have to "jump" each other. De Reggi uses it to say something, but about something much more serious than play. What Carambola is about, De Reggi, explains, is balance. The figure is poised on the sphere, which can represent the globe, the Earth and, by extension, life. Is the figure vaulting? Leaping? In some way he seems to be, like De Reggi himself and many of his works, in motion. And that's the point, because what does a sphere do but roll, this way or that, its direction unpredictable but its movement inevitable? The figure has to be ready for that motion, ready to adjust his balance and stance so he doesn't fall. That, De Reggi, says, is the point of Carambola: Like this figure, we have to be ready for what life will bring, because if there is one constant in life, it is change. The truth of Carambola goes beyond individual lives, to encompass all of humanity and how it does and must survive by negotiating over the many "balls" in play, just as balls in the game of carambola do. And what are those moving balls that challenge humanity? Surely, among them are innovation and destruction, nature and human nature, war and culture, loss and accumulation. De Reggi explains: "Carambola, in one word, is how mankind survives through the many events of its own history."
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
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Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].