Works of Art

I’ve been enjoying a recent spate of sunshine and warmth to stroll downtown Johnson City to photograph the “wildabout walkabout” statues. There are 15 statues and I guess it took me four afternoons to finally find them all. I think my Dan’l Boone Frontier Training days are over. The statues were made by a group of art students at ETSU. They seem like a pretty talented bunch. Bronze is poured in a mold and it would seem to me to be a lot of work. But the finished product is quite nice! I would always worry that my mold would crumble and I’d have a lump of pop-art that was supposed to resemble a fish. My few attempts at working in clay ended pretty much junk. I’d hate to think how much patience it would take for me to work in bronze. At least with writing and photography you can easily delete something incredibly beyond help and start over. But there was a lesson, once upon a time, in pottery class. Some of us had finished a simple vase. The instructor then asked us if we felt we were good or lucky. If we felt lucky, then destroy the piece and make another. Sadly, the second attempt never did see the heat of the oven. I’m glad someone has stuck with it and produced some nice pieces of art. Johnson City has, I think, tended towards the right idea of making attempts to inject life into the downtown. Now that we might see the end of the shutdown, of course, things will liven up. A bit. But don’t get in a hurry. There have been great attempts at treasure hunts for kids (and parents) but I have no idea of their success. But I think this is a step in the right direction. There are some interesting little corners to the downtown and if you are one to take pictures with your cell phone I think the wildabout is “just-about” right. ###