Daree Fields in Dublin, a set of athletic fields containing a good number of absolutely fabulous baseball fields and a good number of decent quality soccer fields, is also home to another bit of public art. This thing is officially titled Going, Going, Gone. The middle of a picnic field has been co-opted by the beginning of this sculpture, and leads to a fine public path through a section of woods between the soccer fields and the baseball fields.
The athletic fields in Dublin are fantastic, and in keeping with the effort to retain quality it is apparent the City has made an effort to include other activities than mere sports. There's a gazebo and picnic tables, and during storms some parts of the parking areas become public ponds. Okay, they're trying to fix the drainage problem.
We've come to refer to this particular public art as the Pearly Gates sculpture. There is some interesting and obvious Metaphor in the design here. Starting at home plate the batter (included a picture of a pair of hands on the bat to give some sense of perspective) is walloping a old style alarm clock. Are we supposed to be assuming that this his how time is made to fly? In any case, the clock is supposedly being batted over the field.
The set of yellow hoops describe the arc a ball, or in this case the flying clock, follows after being hit. This leads directly to a final hoop which instead of reading "Going" as all the others read, says "Gone". The final hoop, as you will notice in the picture below, is above a gateway into the woods. The Metaphor was particularly strong to begin with, that time is flying away as the batter's turn is taken... but it gets worse when it's all "Gone".
Getting a bit closer to this last hoop, you may notice the gate is not merely another fence gate, but has a carefully prepared Pearly surface. Hmmmm. The Metaphoric symbology of a set of 'Pearly Gates' to be passing through when entering the woods is a bit strong here. Is this merely the afterlife for the baseball, er, Clock, or are we looking vicariously at our own frailty? Yeah, the artist was about as subtle as a sledge hammer.
On the inside, the Gate is stuck open. Not that it matters, there's no other barrier to slipping in or out of the metaphoric woods we're now standing inside of. The artist's metaphor doesn't end here though...
Just so you can see, in addition to being a nice nature walk, the decaying parts of the woods embellish the original and somewhat heavy handed metaphor.
Inside the woods along the walk path the visitor will find pedestals (about a foot across) with the clock in various states of 'time' after having been batted into its "Gone" state. It's a bit messy of course, yet it's clear more of the same metaphor is intended to demonstrate the corruption of time.
And in the end, the clock devolves back into a baseball. Ah the way art can become odd and bizarre. Just so you won't feel too bad about this whole metaphor of death thing, I've included a lovely picture of some wild flowers growing in the woods:
