Today, as I do most Tuesdays in warmer weather, I went for a cycle ride with my friend, Dave. Sometimes we like to punctuate our ride with a theme: today, our theme was murals.
Or, to be more precise, murals connected with music, plus a sculpture depicting a large pencil.
We thought up the idea the other week when we read about the unveiling of a new Prince mural in Minneapolis. Today, we included three Prince murals, as well as a Bob Dylan mural and a Music Wall that I’m reliably informed is from Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit.”
A famous photo of Prince shows him standing in front of the Music Wall in the 1970’s, before he was famous.
Three variants of Prince stare out from the new 100-foot mural, appropriately standing kitty corner from First Avenue, the club where The Purple One first gained traction in his career.
Earlier in our musical scavenger hunt we took in this mural in the Minneapolis Warehouse District.
Judging by the hairstyle, this is Prince in the 1980’s before he changed his name to a glyph.
After a stop at Isles Bun & Coffee for coffee and puppy dog tails (mine, with plenty frosting), our final musical port-of-call was in Uptown.
So, there’s the “Three Princes” (actually it’s five, but who’s counting?), but what about the pencil?
Along the way we’d included a corner of Lake of the Isles in our journey. After all, as the homeowner at 2217 Lake of the Isles Parkway East quotes from one of Prince’s songs: “The drive around Lake of the Isles is cool (I know).”
The aforementioned homeowner just happens to have a large No. 2 pencil standing in his front yard.
The homeowner commissioned an artist to convert “a 20-foot-tall, 32-inch diameter wind-damaged bur oak tree trunk … into an enormous No. 2 Pencil.” Each year, a “professional pencil sharpener” comes to sharpen the pencil: “Over the years, the sculpture will change and evolve, just as the pencil in the hand of a student during the school year does.”
I like that.
Outstanding
Thanks