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.
Behind this Dade Pine house on Elizabeth Street, between Petronia and Angela is a tiny little walkway that connects Elizabeth to Galveston Lane. As far as i can figure it has no official name, but there it is, large as life:
I photographed this alley sometime probably a year ago at night, and back then it reminded me strangely enough of a visit I made to the Bay Islands of Honduras, stubs of land in the Western Caribbean. On the smallest of them, Utila a diving mecca, there are hardly any roads and the homes, set on a hill overlooking the harbor where my sailboat lay, were connected by cement walkways such as this. Of course, this actually being Key West, art abounds:
But like Utila and the other Bay Islands, practicality abounds in equal measure:
The house this washing line was attached to, looked barely strong enough to support the weight of a pair of wet bloomers:
The house was guarded by a dog slobbering loudly into a food bowl. I thought a picture of his/her hindquarters would look less interesting than a face, but my interference with dinner garnered me a fuzzy picture and a lot of noisy barking:
The splendid dilapidated mansion was across the alley from a modern trim neat and comparatively uninteresting cottage:
The ally debouches (ha!) like a stream into the river of Galveston Lane, which if you are the street sign maker for the city you spell Galvaston and which in any spelling leads to Bill Butler Park, about which I have already written:
Which, because it is winter is rather unsightly thanks to the pressing need to use it as a parking lot. The unnamed alley offers scenic vistas elsewhere and comfortable spots from which to view it:
The great porch life of key West. And there is the alley stretching back towards Elisabeth Street:
It's Utila, I tell you, it is.
...or the extraordinary evidence of life lived comfortably outdoors:
I also rather liked this al fresco garage which made modest little Whitmarsh look quite like the haunted wood:
Actually the street was haunted when Mr Kitty escaped from this man's home. He found himself in the undignified position of grovelling on the floor in front of a complete stranger hunting for his escaped pussy:
All's well that end's well and Mr Kitty was recovered intact by a man who managed somehow to navigate is way safely home with cat in tow despite there being strong evidence that drink had been taken. Cat and man slipped through the gate and I was left to ponder the value of phone booths as home decorative motifs:
I found a more conventional decoration upstairs:
By now I was about half way and looking back the view towards Solares Hill looked like this:
While the outdoor lifestyle was spilling comfortably out onto the side of the lane:
It's hard to be definitive about this but Whitmarsh Lane seemed a very comfortable little neighborhood, and the funny thing for me is that I had hardly given it a second thought recently but a police officer one night called out a routine check of the street, so naturally that prompted me to think of stopping by with the camera. Courtney's Place it turns out is quite flash:
They have their own extended golf cart yellow "cab"and enough off street parking for a gaggle of Harleys. And a short hop from there brings one to Petronia Street:
I quite liked Whitmarsh Lane...
And just to put the cherry on top it has no street signs at either end:
And even though this has nothing to do with anything it might be worth noting that Summer Time starts tomorrow morning in the US, a month ahead of much of the rest of the world including Cuba. So if like me, you listen to Radio Reloj (950am) bear in mind the time checks will be out by one hour.