Though the photos in this section deal with a number of the public art displays in the greater Columbus area, the bedroom community in the suburbs named Dublin seems to glory in it's odd art and modern antiquities. Once the home of a fair number of pig farms, Dublin has changed dramatically over the last few decades.
Now Dublin is home to the well known fast food restaurant chain Wendy's (a possibly dubious yet distinct honor I'm sure). The city also hosts a pretty stable and nationally visible golf tournament every Memorial Day which draws a large number of participants and spectators.
Since I moved to the greater Columbus area, Dublin ripped down an old 50's style gas station on Bridge Street (it was in amazingly good condition for a design of its nature, an almost historic piece of architecture if you could stand that era) to replace it with faux antique style buildings to give a tourist-ish section of shops and pubs. It probably helps with the tourism when the golfers are whacking balls with their clubs. While there are some nice 'pubs' in that specific area, the new-'fake old' designs struck me as humorous though the new buildings do fit the aesthetics of the area. This of course brings us to public art, some of which bears a clearly comical nature.
Perhaps because of the way Dublin has grown and developed the city has a rather nice Arts Council. As a result, the city has it's own special brand of public art. As you will see, the art in question is not as simple as a set of statues, or even a few wall murals. No, the area around Columbus contains several odd bits of public art, but Dublin seems to have garnered a greater proportion of it.
The more entertaining aspect for me started out when I encountered in Dublin something pretty pedestrian and supportive to the purpose of the park it's located in. Since Dublin is one of the most active cities in the Columbus Ohio area for Soccer, it was no surprise to find a number of oversized soccer ball structures located at one of the athletic fields set aside for this purpose.
"Out of Bounds"
There's seven of these structures scattered about the athletic fields, which otherwise is mostly occupied by recreational or select league soccer fields. This makes sense, is attractive, and quite frankly is pretty innocuous, almost unnoticed by the general public. So this kind of art is obviously not the point of these pages.
But Dublin itself is also home to many other bits of public 'Art'. Those other bits may only be described as ... well, you judge for yourself. While the majority of these items are from Dublin, there certainly are a few other bits I've included as well.
Be warned before you follow any of the links below, because of the heavy use of photographs, these pages are all graphics intensive and may be slow to load to your browser.
Last update 4/11/04
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