First, a correction. I said that the sculpture in yesterday's post was called Balance. The paper map the Missouri Botanical Garden gave us was not clear. That piece is called Pyrite Field. Pyrite is commonly known as fool's gold. This one, if I got it right from the garden's website, is part of an assembly called Jewel Garden. It had the best light projection onto the pathway.
The name of the sculpture seems appropriate, but it may have to have more to do with structural engineering and metallurgy than a delicate balance of forces. As I edited this picture I thought of the exquisite and often unexpected equilibrium of forces in Alexander Calder's sculpture. This work, it seems to me, stresses the technical over the natural.
That's the association I got when I first started editing this picture, if maybe a science-fictiony version. The geodesic dome, the Climatron, pulsed with solid and patterned colors.
I've got a few more of these to go. Not getting out on the street much, and when I go to an event like this I use a rollator. A new lumbar MRI was, well, a mess. Steroid shots next week as a stop-gap before travel, and then we'll see what the doc recommends. Gotta get more mobile.
I had a picture of this a while ago in the daytime, It's much more interesting at night, with the lights within the cut-out metal tower, the patterns on the pavement and the red light inside the mausoleum of Henry Shaw. He was the rich 19th Century businessman and amateur botanist who founded the Missouri Botanical Garden and adjacent Tower Grove Park.
