I’ve been away in the Big Apple for the past few days. I’ve been very busy, but not too busy to wander the streets. And while I was wandering, I found – weird street sculpture. Strange things have gone up since I was last in the City.
1.) The Sewer Aliigator and the Rag Baby.-- There seem to be two of these – one in Manhattan at 8th Avenue and 14th street (on the L train platform), and one in Brooklyn near the Metrotech CEnter/J Street.
Both are by artist Tom Otterness. The Alligator is coming up from a manhole cover that reads “NYC Sewer”. For some reason the Alligator has human gloves. The “baby” has a cloth bag as a head with a symbol on it. They went up around 1996, but I haven’t been in these parts of the city since then.
2.) The Seeing Eye Dog at Metrotech in Brooklyn – a stone’s throw from the Brooklyn Sewer Alligator is this resin sculpture by Tony Matelli called “Stray Dog”. It’s life-sized and life-colored. I had to stare at it for several seconds to convince myself it wasn’t moving.
3.) The Ballerina Hippo – This one’s been moving around, apparently. The 2.5 ton, over 15 foot tall statue started out at Lincoln Center, then in 2017 it was moved, and showed up in front of the Flatiron Building until last month Now it’s in front of the Girl Scouts building off Fifth Avenue.
It’s the work of Danish artist Bjørn Okholm Skaarup. Although it looks like it escaped from Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia, there are no references to the film. And the alligators are far away at 14th street and Brooklyn.
4.) The Giant Needle and Button – Looking like one of the unacknowledged works of Claes Oldenburg, this sits in the Manhattan Fashion District at 39th street and &th avenue.
The button has five holes of unequal size instead of the usual four. They claim that , viewed from underneath, they holes outline an “F”, for “Fashion”. But I can’t help noticing that the company that put it up is Pentagram Architectural Services, and five holes would go with “pentagram”. They don’t name the artist.