the Raven Rocks

9/12/2012, East Speedway Blvd sculptures, Tucson, Arizona

These cool new sculptures are associated with the recent road widening project of East Speedway Blvd between Camino Seco and Houghton on my side of town.  The rock cairns on the left, made of large boulders, were created by artist Simon Donovan and stone carver Will Chamberlain.  The large raven with 19 ft wingspan was created by artist Caryl Clement of Wheat Scharf Associates.

9/12/2012, "Messenger" by Caryl Clement

While I was taking pictures this morning a woman walked up and introduced herself as the artist of the large raven, Caryl Clement.  She just happened to be walking down the sidewalk on her way to work.

Caryl said that the raven sculpture is made out of concrete footings excavated during the road construction project and then shaped by Mark Yaglowski.  Caryl also mentioned that the land right behind the sculptures is city property and in a flood plain so it is likely to maintain a great view of the Santa Catalina mountains behind the sculptures.

9/12/2012, Cairns by Simon Donovan with Will Chamberlain

My picture of the cairns doesn't do justice to their height -- it almost looks like they are the small rocks you see marking trails.   They're not, these are all boulders.  Very cool.

as seen from the road

I really like both sculptures and think they complement each other nicely.  I think its great that our road construction projects put a little of the budget into various diverse forms of public art.  The road project also turned out nicely, two lanes each direction with bike lanes, rubberized asphalt for low noise, sidewalks, and several other nice features for traffic flow and safety.

[Links: The City of Tucson has put together a presentation with some great road art pictures (some Tucson, some not): An Introduction to Public Art in Transportation.]