Maybe the East Downtown Management District should just Give Up on those other names.
- Houston, We Have Art [Current]
- Give Up
- East Downtown District Wants a New Name [Swamplot]
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Tag: Public Art
A reader sends photos of some recent construction on the garage podium beneath the Cosmopolitan tower and asks:
What are those three giant urinals affixed to the east exterior wall of Randall Davis’ latest glass-clad erection, the one on Post Oak where James Coney Island used to be? . . .
Where is the Colossal Statue of Constantine when you need him? (Well, he’s in Rome, but that’s no help to Post Oak Boulevard!)
Sure, there’s the vaguely Roman theming going on with the marketing for Davis’s next tower across the street, the Titan. But these new constructions might be something much more contemporary . . . think Marcel Duchamp by way of Claes Oldenburg: The big fountains!
Below: the Colossal Head of Constantine . . . and the Colossal Heads of the Cosmopolitan, on display!
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx3e8JBfFLw 400 330]
The location: the Kroger on West Gray, next to the River Oaks Shopping Center. The time: yesterday afternoon. The song: Eric Prydz’s “Call on Me.” The performers: SexyATTACK, along with a cast of butter- and egg-loving walk-ons.
You’d think this sort of grocery celebration would have gone over better at the Disco Kroger on Montrose, but that effort got shut down. No problems outside the Menil, though.
- sexyATTACK at Kroger on Westgray [YouTube]
- sexyKROGER part two [SexyATTACK (portions NSFW)]
- Sexy attacks Houston [Houstonist]
- Call on Me (Eric Prydz song) [Wikipedia]
If you’ve been waiting for your chance to take the perfect dramatic nighttime photo of the Mecom Fountain, act now! The fountain at the middle of the five-way intersection of Main, Montrose, and Hermann Dr. is currently bubble-bath-free and lights up properly at night, thanks to a more-than-$100,000 renovation effort approved by City Council back in November and completed last week.
Back in the fall of 2006, someone had stolen the 264 bronze canisters and light bulbs that lit up the fountains. After staying in the dark for months, it got some help more recently . . . with floodlights from high atop Hotel ZaZa. Maybe now those floods can be turned into motion detectors!
Security measures to protect the Mecom Fountain lights will include additional surveillance by the Houston Police Department, the Hotel ZaZa and the Houston Parks and Recreation Department.
After the jump, photos of the fountain lit up the way it was and how it’s supposed to be, plus a view of the Hermann Park beauty taking a bath.
A reader sent in a larger version of the above photo to the Brazosport News. It shows the first giant presidential heads in place at Pearland’s new Presidential Park. Eventually, the remaining 37-member contingent of very-white sculpted U.S. presidents will join them, and the surrounding swampland will be transformed into a lovely green space, separated from a new shopping, retail, office, and hotel development by . . . a watergate! For now, though, the scene sure does look like only a few presidential giants have managed to keep their heads out of the mud.
The winners of an online vote to select which five of sculptor David Adickes‘s giant busts should be the first to move to the park were Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Kennedy — even though more recent Oval Office residents had far better ballot position. But democracy has its limits: Richard Browne, developer of the adjacent Waterlights District, decided to include the statue of former president George H.W. Bush in the first group anyway. All six made their head-turning trip down 288 from Adickes’s First Ward studio on Presidents’ Day.
Missed your chance to participate in the online presidential headcount? A separate ballot asks you to select which chain restaurants you want to appear in the Waterlights District, though its unclear if polling has already been closed.
Read on for a sketch of the Waterlights District, and another view of ex-presidents keeping their noses clean. Plus: a dated image of President John F. Kennedy, cut out of our version of the photo above . . . because he was too far to the right.
Former Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion director David Gottlieb, speaking at the Town Green Park dedication of the latest bronze likeness honoring The Woodlands founder George Mitchell, presents a better suggestion for what the statue could have looked like:
. . . [We were] observing a crowd at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion during a performance of that incredible classical music group, Poison. Mr. Mitchell was standing next to me, and he studied the many [characters] and said, “For this we cut down trees and added more capacity?
Now here is my vision of that statue: He’s standing, he’s got his fingers in his ears and he’s looking up to the heavens.
Maybe for the next one? Anyway, sure looks like the one they put up is popular enough!
- Statue lauds The Woodlands’ founder Mitchell [The Villager]
- A Bronze Tribute [Houston Chronicle]