Cementland
I’m always on the look out for cool artistic things going on in other cities not so different from Rochester. Yesterday, I found this article about a museum of sorts called Cementland in St. Louis:
In an industrial area here known for truckyards, not art, a sculptor and entrepreneur named Bob Cassilly stands on a 100-foot-tall hill, created from some of the 182,000 truckloads of dirt that have been unloaded and applied to the skeleton of a former cement factory.
(snip)
The project, which he calls Cementland, resists easy categorization. Imagine a park peppered with Mr. Cassilly’s lively animal sculptures, but also with obsolete cement-making machinery grinding away, industrial silos and other remnants of the 54-acre former factory. Then add navigable waterways, waterfalls and beaches atop dirt hills.
After seven years of work and with at least two more to go, it sounds like a quixotic vision, but Mr. Cassilly, 57, has been down this road before: he is the chief creative force behind the energetic St. Louis City Museum, which in its early years was nearly shuttered during internal strife, but which is thriving today.
“In St. Louis, no one has the confidence in their creativity and intelligence†to make projects like the museum or Cementland work, said Tim Tucker, a developer who worked with Mr. Cassilly in the 1990s. “Lots of people conceive things, but very few can implement them as well as Bob.â€
I don’t have a whole lot to add, but I find this kind of thing inspiring. Somewhat along these lines, I recommend an article in this week’s City paper on the idea of “Rochester’s signature photographic style.”
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