Sunday, June 04, 2006

More on the oft-ignored hydrants...

I was speaking to a friend just after i published the earlier post and she refused to believe that a hydrant that was shown there - an emergency-utility object - can be beautiful. For me - there it was, in the midst of 'real' beauty - flowers, greenery etc. but it stood so proudly amidst all that. It was almost saying "i am happy to be what i am and i know what i am" - yeah, we know - in a God-forbid situation....!

















But guess what? There's even a 'movement' called the 'Fire up downtown' movement which involves artists (from UMich and otherwise) here in Ann Arbor to make these objects look beautiful! The movement is sponsored by corporates (obvious eg. paint companies) as well as street associations. The snap below is from one of the sidewalks on South University avenue in 'Central'.

















You can read more about this movement here - a nice way to channelize energies. Wish we could do this back home:
http://www.arts.umich.edu/programs/special/firehydrant/index.html

There's a similar thing in Ohio (not sure if this is done widely across cities in the US) that i came across:
http://urban.csuohio.edu/~sanda/pic/travel/us/ohio/cleveland/cleve04/hydrants/

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