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Posts Tagged ‘greenway’

4th-floor-roof-gardenIt may get colder, but there’s no turning back now. It’s spring for sure.

Here is a greening-up roof garden maintained by a brilliant landscaper at work. The tree in the foreground is my second favorite of his twisty trees. The first favorite is behind glass, and when I try to snap it, I just get a picture of Suzanne’s Mom taking a picture.

In other photos: The wind was causing a cow balloon to pull against its tether. A bumblebee was one of 20 in my neighbor’s weeping cherry. See it at the top of the picture.

Orange jackets from yesterday’s happy Boston Marathon were lined up for a city tour. And in the Rose Kennedy Greenway, several organizations, including the Coast Guard and Life is good were volunteering for clean-up duty as part of Earth Day.

And speaking of Earth Day, you can enjoy a genuine earthy-crunchy Earth Day celebration in Concord on Saturday. The parade is always a hoot. Check out details here.

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Remember the new Dewey Square mural I blogged about recently, here?

The Boston Globe has a brief update for you, but their picture is blocked by a cherry picker. As soon as the Greenway moved the heavy equipment, I shot my own picture.

Be watching for more on Dewey Square. I have blogged about the two months that Occupy Boston camped there. I have blogged about the Greenway’s teaching garden alongside the Big Dig exit and about the farmers market that sets up Tuesdays and Thursdays. Soon I will show pictures of the pianos that arrived today — with people playing them, I hope.

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You may recall a past post about the Greenway mural by Os Gemeos, Brazilian twins who had a show at the Institute of Contemporary Art and painted street art around Boston when they were here. I posted pictures of their work-in-progress for the Greenway, here.

Geoff Hargadon photographed the finished work for the Boston Globe, below.

That giant mural is gone now, and Matthew Ritchie is working on the next one. I took a picture of it today and plan to take more for the blog as Ritchie wraps up.

Geoff Edgers at the Globe gives some background on this new piece. “The Institute of Contemporary Art has commissioned British-born Matthew Ritchie, known for using scientific principles to inspire his work, to take over the enormous outdoor canvas.

“Ritchie’s 5,000-square-foot seascape will be installed the week of Sept. 16 and remain up for as long as 18 months.

“The collaboration … is part of a residency for Ritchie that will include a multimedia performance with members of the rock bands The Breeders and The National, concerts at the museum and elsewhere, and a video project to be produced with the ICA’s teen program. But the biggest splash for the public will come on the exterior of the Big Dig ventilation building in Dewey Square.”

Read more at the Globe, here, and at the Greenway site, here.

Photo: Suzanne’s Mom

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The Rose Kennedy Greenway just gets better and better. Not only is the new carousel a wonder, but little signs have begun to appear identifying the plantings, many of them quite exotic.

Now, if they would just decide to create bike paths or else enforce the rules about “no wheels,” we walkers would at least know where it was safe to walk while daydreaming.

What do you think of these sea creatures?

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Boston and environs.

It’s mainly weekends that I have time to upload photos, so I hope this isn’t too much.

First is a plaque commemorating the discovery of the telephone, then a mysterious Greenway flower, extra pics of the traveling save-the-earth exhibit, a tai chi session at the Frog Pond, pensive frogs, interesting architecture near Downtown Crossing, and an early morning rooftop in Concord.

I love rooftops. Makes me think of Dickens.

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Along the Greenway, there is a changing array of public art. This photographic display was borrowed from New York City. The themes are Home, Streets, Creatures, Play, and People. The artists are all topnotch, but the location — set way back from the sidewalk and alongside a superhighway — makes me think that not many people are going to take a good look at it.

Ilona Szwarc entered this one in People/Rodeo Girls.

The artist says, “Rodeo Girls is an ongoing portrait project about young girls from Texas who compete in rodeos. These individuals have a fundamentally different idea about their femininity and a contrasting attitude towards gender roles. … They grow up according to a male archetype and I am examining how their lives and identities are shaped by their surroundings. The photographs celebrate the beauty of the terrain and the idiosyncrasies of this old fashioned American tradition, which is recently vanishing.”

The Fence is “a summer-long, outdoor photographic exhibition that explores the essence of community across cultural boundaries and geographical lines. The Fence is a site-specific exhibition stretching over 1000ft in length, culled from a call for submissions; we asked our community of photographers across the globe to respond to the question – ‘what makes up a community?’ ” More at the project’s website, here.

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In Boston: a Greenway exercise class on a hot morning, a North End corner named for a beloved local,  a Street Seats bench by ideo, one with a grassy cushion near the Children’s Museum, and a wavelike one in a shaded arcade along Fort Point Channel.

In Concord: an arched vista, a Michio Ihara sculpture at the Concord Art Association, the entry of the Art Association, a shop’s wind decoration still outside at at 6 a.m.,  and the herb garden behind First Parish.

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Whenever I walk in the Greenway, I see where they are building the new  carousel park. Can’t wait until it launches! The carousel critters are so unusual.

Taryn Plumb writes in the Globe about the three years of painstaking work that have gone into creating them.

“A miniaturized right whale is caught in mid-spout, baleen exposed, barnacles clinging.

“A sea turtle swims, its wide shell blushed with yellow and iridescent red, flippers with waves of violet, pink, and cobalt.

“Enormous butterflies hover – monarchs in dramatic orange and black; buckeyes boasting amethyst spots; swallowtails showing off elaborate webbed patterns of scarlet, purple, and blue.

“Carousels usually evoke images of horses of various shapes and sizes, adorned with flamboyant regalia, circling endlessly in trots and leaps to a backdrop of colorful lights and carnival music.

“But this carousel – designed, sculpted, and painted by two local artists, and soon to adorn the Rose F. Kennedy Greenway in Boston – is a horse of a different color.

“In fact, it doesn’t have any horses at all.

“ ‘You’ll never see another one like this,’ said designer Jeff Briggs of Newburyport. ‘It’s much more elaborate, much more intense.’

“To be installed by Labor Day weekend, the carousel will include a resplendent assortment of local land, sea, and air creatures: lobsters, rabbits, owls, a skunk, squirrel, fox, right whale, sea turtle, cod, peregrine falcon, grasshopper, three species of butterflies, a sea serpent gondola, and a harbor seal chariot. According to the Rose Fitzgerald Greenway Conservancy, the animals were inspired by drawings from Boston schoolchildren, and the project, which also includes a new park, was funded by grants and several dozen donors.” More.

Who will join me when it opens?

Photo: Mark Wilson for The Boston Globe
Sculptor Jeff Briggs has spent the last three years creating the animals on the carousel for the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

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Photos from my wanderings in Boston and Cambridge are piling up.

Can you identify the flower from the Greenway’s demonstration garden? It seems to be blotting out the mural in Dewey Square.

How about the approach to the Longfellow Bridge on the Kendall Square side of the Charles? Early in the morning, it looks like an ancient tomb.

I took the photo of City Hall for my only friend who thinks modernism is beautiful.

The Oyster House is a landmark.

And the Manichean clock is at Northeastern University. (You do, of course, remember the Manichean Heresy, which posited good and evil as equal forces?) Comments welcome.

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I believe these marshmallows are used as  prizes in the giants’ midnight games of dodge ball. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Other photographs of summer are less cryptic.

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There is a huge structure in the middle of the Greenway that the inventive Sam and Leslie of Uni Project fame once envisioned as a projection screen for summer film festivals. It houses the Big Dig’s ventilation system.

About a week ago I was walking past and noticed what looked like window washers cleaning it. I thought, “Now, why would anyone want to wash that thing?”

A couple days later I saw why. Prepping the canvas.

This is in Dewey Square, where less than one year ago Occupy Boston pitched camp.

Now, writes Geoff Edgers in the Boston Globe, “That’s where Os Gemeos (‘the twins’), famous in the street art world for creating towering cartoonish figures with bright colors and grimacing expressions, began work on their first Boston piece. Depending on weather, they’ll need a little over a week to craft the mural on a wall of a Big Dig ventilation building and a second, smaller piece on the Revere Hotel near Boston Common.

“The pieces are part of the first solo museum exhibition in the United States for Os Gemeos. The Institute of Contemporary Art show, featuring paintings, mixed media works, and installations, opens Aug. 1.”

Read more and check out other art by these guys at the Globe.

You might also like to read the museum’s description of the brothers’ upcoming the exhibition:

“This August the ICA will present the first solo exhibition in the United States of works by the Brazilian brothers Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo. Best known as Os Gêmeos, the twins are a major force in graffiti and urban art. The twins have a deep bond; they are tireless collaborators and say that they often experience the same dreams. In an effort to share their dreams with the world, they depict their visions in surreal paintings, sculpture, and installations: human figures with removable faces, exploding bursts of color, and room-size heads installed with shanty interiors.”

More from the ICA here.

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These photos were placed on the Greenway sidewalk near Boston’s North End. They are the result of the Flash Forward Festival for emerging photographers, which took place earlier this month. The event is sponsored by the Magenta Foundation of Magenta magazine (“publishing for the arts”).

“Set within the Boston cityscape, the five-day festival is based out of the Fairmont Battery Wharf, offering an in-depth experience through organized networking events and educational programming that brings internationally respected industry professionals together to share their knowledge with the next generation of photographers. Programming includes curated indoor and outdoor exhibitions, a Harborwalk exhibition series featuring work from local galleries, along with lectures, panel discussions, and nightly events.” Read more about it here.

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So far this spring I have walked to the office by way of North Station only a few times. But when I did, I got curious seeing people in hard hats working like they had a deadline on a part of the Greenway blocked off by a fence. I peeked in and thought, “What is that? It looks like a labyrinth.”

As someone who tends to think of Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur on
Crete when labyrinths are mentioned, it has taken me a while to realize how many people today use them for meditation. And work being what it is, there will probably come a day soon when I want to test out the possibilities.

The new labyrinth was dedicated on a rainy day this week as part of a lovely Armenian Heritage Park.

Alejandra Matos writes for the Boston Globe, “US Representative Edward Markey and other officials welcomed the rain, calling it tears of joy from generations of Armenians.

“The park, located between the North End and Faneuil Hall, includes a sculpture surrounded by a reflecting pool, and is meant to honor Armenian immigrants to the state. Middlesex Sheriff Peter J. Koutoujian, who is Armenian, said he has been fighting for the park since 1999.

“ ‘This is a gift to the city, not just for the Armenian immigrants. This is a park dedicated to all immigrants who have experienced coming to this great city,’ Koutoujian said.”

The third-largest Armenian population in the United States is in nearby Watertown. Read more at the Globe.

4/8/13 Update: The sculpture gets reconfigured to reflect how immigrants adapt. Check it out here.

Photograph: Aram Boghosian for the Boston Globe

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In the Greenway area where Occupy Boston camped last fall, there is now a demonstration garden. It includes raised beds of edible plants, a rain garden to capture run-off, and examples of urban composting. It’s a teaching garden.

Also in Dewey Square are food trucks, such as this Bon Me truck, which offers great Vietnamese lunches.

Around the block, in Fort Point Channel, the first of two Boston Tea Party Ships has arrived and has docked next to the new Boston Tea Party Museum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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When I was a kid, April would see me heading out to the woods to check on what was new since fall and to climb on the rocks in the stream all afternoon. Inevitably, I would fall in. I remember one year coming home carrying my sopping shoes and socks, very pleased with myself for thinking to wear my mittens on my feet.

In Boston, the Greenway has lovely spring rituals. Here are two: pussy willows turning into cats and a carousel horse flaunting a spiffy new paint job.

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