Riverfront Park

The other day I had some free time, so I took a quick trip with the infrared camera to Riverfront Park in downtown Little Rock. There are a few neat spots as the park stretches across the banks of the Arkansas River. There is the Junction Bridge, which was an old railroad crossing that has been converted into a pedestrian bridge.



Nearby is a tunnel made of vines (I posted a picture of it in the last post). It was a popular spot, since it was a nice shady spot to sit on a warm June day. I got this picture from the inside:



Further down the park is the Vogel Schwartz Sculpture Garden, which now contains over 100 sculptures from artists across the country. One of the sculptures was this blue pony, in a piece called "Dancing Pony" by Kevin Box. According to the city of Little Rock's website: "Origami, paper planes, and crumpled ideas inspire the artist’s constant exploration with a love of paper. The sculpture piece is a result of collaborating with the origami master Te Tui Fu."



It proved to be a cool place to walk through, since the mix of sculptures with the decorative grasses and plants in the gardens looked really neat with the infrared camera. Here you can see a sculpture called "Mirage" by Ted Schaal on the right, and one called "Wiseguy" by Tim Cherry on the left. In the back is a sculpture called "Bunny Bump" by Laurel Peterson Gregory.



Nearby was this sculpture called "Boris," which was modeled after a French Bulldog owned by Dr. Dean Kumpuris who is an At-Large City Director and who was the person who came up with the idea of having a sculpture garden here in Riverfront Park. One could argue that it's not shocking that a sculpture of the dog owned by the person who runs the park was selected to be there. But then again, I would totally put a sculpture of my dogs in the park if I had the chance.



This is one more view of the sculpture "Bunny Bump," by Laurel Peterson Gregory. The city's website says: "The artist depicts playfulness and lightness of heart with bunnies having a blast doing the bump. Lines generate of sense of motion, and the use of no facial features allow the viewer to imagine expressions."



Nearby was this sculpture, called "Renewal Ritual" by Denny Haskew. It features a row of people sitting cross-legged, which the city website describes as "Wanting to show the ritual used by a couple to renew their commitment to one another, then using many colors or people and different conversations between different genders it shows society ability to sit down and converse with one another." Which reminds me of a story, of back when sitting cross-legged like this was called sitting "Indian-style" (kids now call it "criss-cross applesauce"). But when I was a little kid, I thought that it was called sitting "Indian-style" because that's how we were taught to sit at the elementary school I attended at the time - Indian Hills Elementary in North Little Rock.



And a wide shot of the sculpture garden, with the Little Rock Marriott hotel in the background.





On the left is a sculpture titled "Brazil" by artist Carol Gold. The city website describes this piece as "After her visit to Brazil, the artist expressed a reaction to the disparity between the wealthy and the very poor. ‘Brazil’ is one of a series of mostly male, silent and solitary figures."



And this view looking towards the river, with the Broadway Bridge in the distance.



After that I walked back the car and started driving home. But along the way I stopped for one last picture, from the backside of the State Capitol: