As I mentioned in my last post, I tend to look for visual items of interest as I’m walking the streets of New York City. The building above left, with the round windows, is called the “Dream Downtown Hotel,” which was designed by Handel Architects. I always admire this building when I’m walking around Chelsea, and this building in particular is on West 17th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues. But – while walking this neighborhood, I noticed this red sidewalk pad, and it reminded me of the round windows of the hotel.
I’m sure you’ve seen these raised bump pads on sidewalks near street corners, but did you know what the name of them is? They’re called “truncated domes,” and they’re raised, cut-cone tactile surfaces required by ADA laws to alert pedestrians, particularly those with visual impairments, to hazardous changes in grade or transitions from sidewalks to streets.
Every now and then I notice some unusual fashion while walking around New York City. In this case, I was walking through the halls of the NYC Subway, on my way to Penn Station from the 34th Street Station, when I noticed this guy wearing a jacket with a smoking skull on the back. This certainly caught my attention as an artist, as I recognized the art as being Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “Head of a Skeleton with a burning cigarette,” from 1886. I should mention, while this image by Van Gogh is considered to be in the public domain in the United States, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam owns the painting, and requests that I note that the image credit is: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation). You can get to their site here; I hope to get to the actual museum some day!
I’ll share one more visual observation from my last time visiting NYC … this little street art piece at the base of a street light, also seen in Chelsea. It features one blast of orange spray paint, a drip of red paint, and a splatter of blue paint, with the caption on the side reading “Bloom Baby Bloom.” I don’t see any sort of identification noting the actual artist, but I like how this combination of painting techniques (spray, drip, splatter) comes together in the form of a flower.
