I like it! It goes well with the clouds.
The north west does seem to be doing big public art these days.
This I think is world-class. As is Gormley's installation of metal men on the beach at Formby.
That's an interesting, androgenous face. I first took it to be female, but when you said it was commissioned by the former miners, I realised that it could be male too.
I love that last photo of just the face against the clouds. It looks like a painting, not a photo of something real and solid.
I believe the model was a little girl- but you're right, the face is androgenous- as children's faces are.
I think it's an astonishing achievement to make something so ethereal out of concrete.
From: (Anonymous)
2009-06-30 12:32 pm (UTC)
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It almost looks superimposed on the photographs. That could be helped by it being squished. Very cool
Tom F
It's the strangest thing. Who'd have thought a 60ft statue could seem so insubstantial.
Is "colliery" a Britishism, then? I didn't know that. :)
It *IS* arresting and ethereal at one time. It looks insubstantial, and like it totally belongs there. How VERY cool.
You turn the corner and see it there in its clearing, full face for the first time- and you can hardly believe your eyes.
I love this piece! Wow! I'm really inspired by public art that uses nature and time as metaphors to develop, where we may not even live long enough to see the final result. That we will start to see the trees grow up around her is just beautiful. This reminds me of Andy Goldsworthy's work, Garden of Stones at the Jewish Heritage Museum in Lower Manhattan. He envisioned what it might look like to persevere restraint in nature. He hollowed out giant boulders and planted saplings in them. Over time if they grow large enough, their roots will break the stones and grow around them. Here's a great NY Times piece about it, and here are two really good photos of it.
I'm perpetually fascinated by Andy Goldsworthy's work. If you haven't yet seen the documentary film Rivers and Tides you're in for a treat. Some fascinating stuff he does with entirely ephemeral effects, like filling a round hollow in a river boulder with yellow dandelion heads. Gorgeous.
That is amazing. I almost wish the trees wouldn't grow up around it as it forms such an integral part of the skyscape behind it. I wonder if Plesna has any major work in Spain...off to google.
I must do some googling too. I need to find out what else he's done.
Wow. With that weird, compressed aspect ratio, and the pallor of the stone against the sky, it doesn't seem quite real at all. More like a some sort of manipulated image that only exists on the screen. Interesting that you only took head-on shots -- I would be curious to see what the piece looks like in profile.
I think it looks best from the front- and that's how you first see it. But I did take some pictures from the side. I'll post one.
That's amazingly strange. It looks like something from a film by Cocteau, especially against the clouds—it looks like it's dreaming them.
Yes!
It also makes me think of Magritte. (Deleted comment)
![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/7931581/1421988) | From:  qos
2009-06-30 04:53 pm (UTC)
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Amazing! Thank you for sharing this.
Wow, that's an amazing piece, and excellent photographs. Thank you!
I find the elongated, strange perspective a little worrying... if the people at the base of it weren't there for comparison, I would have said the pic was squashed!
Alabaster and concrete is a curious mix... I like the idea of a very reflective surface. | 
