Thinking Of Swimming

When it gets to be over ninety degrees, dog walks involve nightfall, routes with built-in cooling stations, or both.

Even Detroit's most famous intellectual is considering a dip in the fountain to cool off. He's moved three times before...why not into the water?

The fountain in front of the Detroit Institute of Arts has a perfect ledge for foot-dangling and it splashes just enough to cool the dogs off.

I love walking around the Cultural Center in the evening or on weekend mornings. It's that crazy Detroit-is-half-empty-have-the-town-to-yourself thing. When I'm walking at night, I notice completely different details.

Wandering around just past sunset, it seems I have my own private sculpture garden. Below, in the Hudson's Art Park next to the Scarab Club, Lois Teicher's Curved Form with Rectangle and Space.

I always wanted my own dragon, too. Actually, this is an Alexander Calder beauty, Jeune Fille et Sa Suite (Young Woman and Her Suitors). I think I caught her awakening for the night to roam the empty streets.

There's the outdoor art of the DIA, the Detroit Public Library, the College for Creative Studies, the Children's Museum, the Science Center, and the Charles Wright Museum of African American History, to mention just a few highlights in the vicinity. Everybody's got something going on in this neighborhood. The Midtown Loop Public Arts Master Plan has great maps of existing public art and a preview of future improvements to the area. It is a page-turner if you are even mildly interested in the development of the Cultural Center and greenways in Detroit.

The Nymph, the dogs, and I survey Woodward Avenue from the DIA. She and her friend Eros, not shown, are by an unknown artist.

A door to the Rackham Building at night:

If you have a thing for public art and you want to do your own tour of the area (virtual or actual), the guidebook you want is Art in Detroit Public Places, by Dennis Nawrocki. You can usually pick it up at any of the Pure Detroit locations.