I took Rob down to the Delridge Playfield yesterday to show him one of my favorite pieces of public art. These three stones arranged at the intersection of paths hold a lot of interest for me. See the darker stone in the distance?

It’s cast bronze.

Rob wasn’t so impressed.

But here’s the thing: this isn’t about amazing execution, this isn’t about grand statements. Hell, this probably passes under the radar for 95% of the people who walk past this park. Probably more than 95%. It’s stealth art. There’s not even a plaque that I can find to identify the artist who did it. Maybe it wasn’t even an artist. Maybe the Parks Department just hired a bronze foundry to cast a stone to fulfill some 1% for art requirement when they built the Community Center. I don’t know.

So why do I love it?

Because the surprise you get when you discover that it’s not a rock, especially if you’ve seen it a hundred times before, causes that momentary flash of insight and awareness. Because it is like a Zen koan. Because it forces, ever so briefly, a different point of view. Because it allows a moment of presence and awareness of the human experience that is currently yours. It causes you to look back at the other two stones and question their authenticity. It makes you awake.

That’s hard to do when people expect to be looking at art. If somebody walks into a gallery, they are expecting to have an art experience, and they have a frame of mind that is open and ready to have their perception adjusted. A person encountering this piece has no such expectation, so the surprise — the adjustment in perception — is that much greater.

MAN has a nice little series covering Doug Wheeler, one of the so-called “light +space” artists who kept making work, but didn’t follow the path to fame like Turrell and Irwin did:

Talking with Wheeler part one, two, three, and four.