Recently a 35 acre park was completed in SE Tucson which includes little league fields, basketball courts along with picnic areas and playground. In addition to these facilities, there are also some special features such as a dog drinking fountain and an underground pipe where kids can use to whisper to one another.
There has been one problem with the new park, and that is VISIBILITY!!!! To answer this need a memorial marker has been created over the past two months through a $25,000 commission from the Tucson Pima Arts Council. Nine students, two artists and one project assistant have been building this new park marker at the corner of East Golf Links Road and South Pantano Parkway for the past several weeks, and are now about finished.
They're replacing a plain brown sign with a 7-foot-tall jackrabbit perched atop a 16-foot-long concrete baseball bat, a 52-inch-tall tortoise and an 8-foot-tall stack of metal blocks.
The animals were carved from large blocks of foam, which were then reinforced with a metal frame. A steel mesh was wrapped around the frame. The structures were sunk into the ground and covered in concrete.
Other parts of the marker drew inspiration from the park itself, which was named for a 12-year-old boy who was murdered in 1984. The group decided on a baseball bat because a Little League uses the park. The blocks were inspired by children's building blocks - each will be painted with a different letter, spelling out the word "park." The jackrabbit holds a basketball as a symbol of the park's basketball courts.
Included with my photos are ones of the whispering underground pipe and the the dog drinking station that are found within the park itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment