Sculpture Key West 2009

Imagine my surprise when I read in the newspaper that Sculpture Key West was up and running again at Fort Zachary Taylor. It seems like yesterday I was photographing sculptures at the fort. Well actually it was the day before yesterday and I was there to check out the 2009 crop of oddities. And quite odd some of them were too. Art as headache:You can throw a pile of stuff on the ground and call it Ghost Siege and say it's Art, but to me it's more like the piles of junk I love to photograph in people's back yards. When it's an unfinished yard project it means something to me, it's an expression of the reality of daily life in a town that some people think of as an extension of Disneyland. There was a peculiar ramp that I didn't quite get either. Here it is in all it's three dimensional glory:Sculpture Key West used to be a bit of a free-for-all but then the people in charge decided to make it a juried exhibit and there was, of course some grumbling about that. This year there seemed to be a few less exhibits than previously, but that could be just my impression or a function of the economy going down the toilet. This next one was provocative, a camper parked among the sacred pine trees of Fort Zachary- it is only as one approaches that one sees the little plaque indicating this is in fact an exhibit:Which has quite a shocking effect when one peers through the door:I think this one was called Comfort Zone or some such. All those papier mache hounds leaping around would be a shock to meet on the road (I noticed the trailer had a valid tag). Pity the poor officer making a traffic stop. Part of the pleasure of the art in the park as it used to known is the location, right on the waterfront looking west across the harbor, which gives a magnificent turquoise back drop to the exhibits:In this next picture the pile is actually clean -up by the workers in the park:This pile is actually an exhibit, a star shaped filled with cut branches and leaves that smelled rather pleasantly of cut grass:Of course art can even take second place to fishing if you are that much of a philistine...I measure my own art appreciation by the fact that at first I thought this was an exhibit:The rake leaning up in debonair fashion was a hint that perhaps this wasn't an exhibit and I couldn't see a plaque anywhere so I'm pretty sure it was something other than an exhibit. I think. This next one certainly was an exhibit called The Stoop.I thought this should be called Katrina Stoop with the house gone. Noel thought this was Dorothy's stoop after the tornado. Whatever. And with the flag up the mail box indicates outgoing mail. I'm sorry to say I forgot to check. Fences were a big theme this year:Then there was the salt like house, made of dazzling white cow salt lick blocks in the form of a spiral:With the obligatory annual self portrait:This guy didn't seem overly impressed with the sign post exhibit:Up close it was quite provocative:And then there was the greenhouse made of suffocating plastic bags:Lots of fun all round and one of the nice things about Fort Zach, a Florida State Park is that dogs on leash are allowed (not on the beach though):And over it all the imperturbable brick walls of Fort Zachary Taylor secure behind their moat:Any further south or west and your art would be in the water.