PUBLIC ARTISTS KEEP WINTER PARK PUBLIC SPACE

SSnowcat meets Snow child.  nan turpin photograph

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE, part 2, BIG CAT POUNCING

Local Knowledge, Episode 2 BIG CAT POUNCING

 

In the last episode of Snowman we left our little neighborhood park sadly bereft of one of the all time grandest winter snowmen, artist unknown.  The cause of snowman’s undoing remains a mystery.  Reasonable minds assume children or dogs, singly or in combination were responsible.  Then the temperature rose and melted the remains into a muddy soup.  But really, we are humble enough to know that his downfall, premature by at least a few hours, possibly a day or two, is not understood.   Some of us believed we would have no more snowmen, not of that stature at least…

 

            And then it snowed again, a gentle, continuous, delightful-to-walk-in snowfall that, as we drifted off to sleep that night, promised to drift through our dreams and our landscape. The next day I returned to the little park without my camera, a superstitious precaution that worked because there was a very large and confidant new snow creature waiting in the middle of the big snowy circle.  I went back directly to fetch my camera and made Big Pouncy Cat’s picture.  Its maker had to be the same who made snowman.  This was a perfect cat, in position for the game.  Even a not-a-cat-person could understand that.  The snow cat had so much life in it, paused in pre-pounce, that the half the world who doesn’t do cats suddenly “got” the other half that did love them.  So this was “cat.” 

 

            Pouncing Cat was still up the next day, a cold day with no melt.  But it was no longer alone and the star of the park.  Snowchild stood next to Cat, a shy gentle child, its features delicately traced in tiny twigs, wisps of pine needle hair applied where suitable.  Snowchild’s maker decided to “improve” cat by adding facial twigs to suggest a more literal cat face, a well-intended gesture that nevertheless made Pouncy Cat somewhat ordinary. 

 

This little park has always been a place where we watch it all and smile across the grass.  We know each other, we give each other first dibs on their favorite spot on a favorite bench at a favorite time of day.  With this late snow, something different has begun to happen in the park.  The round lawn has become a public space again, where public art by anonymous artists (are they  neighbors?) appears and waits for someone to answer.  This could be our best winter ever.