Saturday, July 18, 2009

DaVinci Days: Fishy

20 some years ago (1986, I think), Corvallis initiated what has become an annual event on the third weekend of July: DaVinci Days, a festival of art, science, and technology. The keynote address tonight will be by Chris Goldfinger from the Oregon Geology (I don't think it's called DOGAMI anymore) crew on Cascadia earthquakes. For various reasons, I won't be going- mainly, I doubt I'd get much out of it. But while I rarely pay to enter the non-free events, I do walk by the public displays most years. Today, I'll start with the main gate on the lower OSU campus, just a couple of blocks from my favorite coffee shop. Looking west, you can see the lovely corridor of elms, and one of the oldest buildings on campus, Education Hall. Ironically, the reason it looks a little hazy is that it's wrapped in cross-linked fencing to reduce risks associated with, yup, the next Cascadia earthquake. (the pictures will get a little bigger if you click on them)One of the major public displays each year is the community art project; a theme is announced, and members of the public and other groups can submit pieces on that theme to be displayed along Madison Street between the OSU campus and Central Park. This year's theme was "fish."
This scorpion fish was my favorite. It's made of re-used plastic grocery bags, and all the patterning and detail arises from the careful placement of the printed text on the bags. Beautifully done!
A colorful fish done with glass beads.
A salmon made with quarters of CD's- you should have seen the light play off this!
A salmon made of seeds, beans and grains.
A shark and a puffer fish made of a foam mat. I enjoyed the kids playing with their dad in the background.
A parrotfish? Not certain, but I loved the colors.
A catfish and a quote I don't think I've seen before, but I like.
A coke can carp- again, I love the way the artist used the graphics on the cut aluminum to give detail and pattern to the fish.
The irridescent glass in the upper piece was beautiful.
An imaginative, and eerily realistic jellyfish; the gusty breezes had this thing waving about, with the various tissues and tentacles fluttering just like the real thing.
A very well camouflaged fish, made of moss, lichen and twigs.
And the pearly mosaic above also had a play of light and beauty that the camera just couldn't capture.

2 comments:

mybia said...

WOW! I enjoyed this festival yesterday, too! It's impressive to see so many fish made by different materials. Can I scrap the 2 pictures : "One made by much of moss, one with Coke cans"? If possible, I'll write down your website address as a reference.

Lockwood said...

mybia, sure. Actually, if you drop me an e-mail (address is at the top of the side bar, written to confuse bots), I can send you the full-sized versions. As displayed, the pics are 400X266; clicked and enlarged they're 600X400. I reduced them to save archive space, but on the hard drive, they're a magnificent 3000X2000!