Paul St George, Telectroscope, in DUMBO
To top off our Father’s Day visit to Alex, Alex took us on a walk up the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights to see the Telectroscope–the Brooklyn half of a two-part art installation by British artist Paul St George. The other half was in London.
Paul St George, Telectroscope. The entrance is to the left of the photo, into the mouth of the tube.
The DUMBO installation, all brass fittings and Captain Nemo, allowed the London crowd to wave hello to the Brooklynites and vice versa! The two gizmos stood at the portals to a mythical, trans-Atlantic tunnel. The But when we got there, workers were crawling all over it, taking it apart. Here’s the N.Y. Times piece on it.
We also had rather poor timing for another public art wonder–which will open next week–Olafur Eliasson‘s The New York City Waterfalls. As in the Telectroscope, we got to see the shell of the project–a couple of scaffolding towers in the East River, that when turned on, will be man-made waterfalls–obelisks of cascading water. This piece also has two other locations–one in Lower Manhattan at Pier 35, and one north of Governors Island. It’s a project of the Public Art Fund.
Sight unseen, it looks like it will be nature that imitates a building–a sly insertion into the New York skyline. I’m not sure that was the thought. A column of apparently disembodied water rushing down through the air sounds pretty amazing to me.
Sun setting behind the financial district; view from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.
We may have missed the art in action, but we did get to see a fabulous sunset. But I refuse to despair about the art. Maybe we’ll get to see the waterfalls next week.
