The Spoon and Cherry

Although I spend most of my time in St. Paul, last Wednesday I took my granddaughter to Walker Art Center's Sculpture Garden which is a delightful little park with some outstanding pieces of sculpture. Learn more by clicking here.

Whether it is viewed when covered by a soft blanket of snow or through the mist of the water fountain, it is a pleasure to see. It definitely is a Twin Cities icon that you must see if you visit the area.

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Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Spoonbridge and Cherry (1985-1988)

Claes: "Very often I am sitting at dinner and I take out my notebook. I get very inspired when I eat, for some reason."

Coosje: "One of the things that sculptors who work in an urban surrounding think of is scale, the object in comparison to the other things in the surroundings--buildings, the highway, the Cathedral, lantern posts, anything."--Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

A highlight of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is the monumental fountain-sculpture Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. While Oldenburg and van Bruggen, his wife and collaborator, have produced a number of large-scale sculptures of everyday objects, such as a flashlight in Las Vegas and a firehouse in Freiburg, Switzerland, Spoonbridge and Cherry is their first fountain sculpture. The giant spoon stretches 52 feet across a small pond shaped like a linden tree seed. A fine stream of water, just enough to make the aluminum cherry gleam, flows over the cherry from the base of the stem. A second stream of water sprays from the top of the stem over the cherry, down into the spoon and the pool below. In winter, snow and ice accumulate on the cherry and the bowl of the spoon, changing the sculpture's character with the seasons. The colossal spoon and cherry required unusual facilities for their construction, and two New England ship-building firms were contracted to build the huge aluminum and steel forms.