Mesa Is The Most Conservative City in America: No Nude Public Art

Ever walk around the streets and sidewalks here in The New Urban Downtown Mesa with the one mission-in-mind to look at all the dark heavyweight collection of bronze sculptures dotting some intersections and standing in front of landmark legacy buildings from the City's past history? What kind of art are they - mediocre or high-quality? ...why are they here?
Do they tell some kind-of-a-story of their own?
Your MesaZona blogger will leave the answers to that question to your imagination . . .
There is one Giacometti-style larger-than-life NUDE PUBLIC ART piece in front of the downtown studio of downtown resident artist Bill Barnhart, shown in the featured image to this piece.It's from this website https://www.artsyshark.com/ back on April 17, 2013 that includes some really good words from Bill where he says, "My large oil paintings, monotypes, and bronze sculptures delve into matters of the universal human heart, such as love, joy, passion, beauty, kindness and hope"
To paraphrase Bill Barnhart, whom your MesaZona blogger has been acquainted with for a few years, his contemporary figurative artworks are an exploration of the drama, the emotional complexities, the mental and spiritual realities of this human experience we are suspended in.
Link to the artist's website > https://www.fineartist.com/

What motivated writing this post today: an article about Real Estate and Design                

Hanging Nude Paintings in Your Home: So Out, They’re In

The decades-long trend for minimalist décor made nude art seem dated. But things have changed. Welcome to the bare market

By Julie Lansky July 27, 2017 1:00 p.m. ET

It's behind a pay-wall of course since WSJ is owned by Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdock. This is as much a reader gets for free:

"My late father was a doctor who dabbled in life drawing. He loved the human body. During my childhood, plenty of nude art decorated our suburban Chicago home, including a large lithograph by Swiss artist Hans Erni that hung in my parents’ bedroom.

The print depicted a naked man crouching over a woman who wore only a dreamy expression. 'Believe it or not, it was hanging over your father’s fireplace when I met him,' my mother recalled . . ."

 

Example of public art bronzes on the sidewalks of DTMesa
A girl playing with the deadliest killing attack helicopter in the world, part of a group called "New Frontier' given to the City of Mesa by the Boeing Corporation installed on City Hall Plaza just steps away from the Center/Main platform for Valley Metro Light Rail

A more powerful larger-than-life bronze to commemorate a brick-layer that was recently moved to the front of 18 W Main Street




 

Life-size bronze at the SWC of Center Street and Pepper Place set in a 1970's era city-scape of what became a bond and insurance business right across from City Hall that shows the founding-father holding an orange from a crate of citrus yield in once were agricultural lands that turned into fortunes for real estate developers and other associated businesses that evolved to service the local economy and are still owned and operated by family members.