Public Art With Sprinkles And Kreme

Philadelphia public art tends to come in three flavors: Excellent, absolutely hideously awful and Rocky. It runs about 50-50 if you ignore Penn’s campus (in which case it shifts heavily in favor of hideously awful).

Regardless of whether you like the clothespin, you’d have to admit that most of the public art in the city is situated so as to attempt to make already nice places look nicer. Actually, I don’t know if that’s true, but let’s assume it is, or else I have to go back and rewrite.

There are a few places in this city uglier than the stretch of I-76 under 30th Street Station. It’s ugly, it’s dark and it reeks of exhaust. Well, not quite, because at certain times of the day it also reeks of donuts. Sweet, glorious donuts. (It’s from the Dunkin Donuts in 30th Street, but I prefer to think of it as some sort of city smell beautification program.)

Still, although it smells nice most of the day, the donut spot still could use a little touching up visually. Phillyblog user wysong comes through in the clutch:

So, my friend and I were talking about this Amy Guttman talk tonite about linking Center City and Univ City. I mentioned how the city should install some linear public art along the schuylkill exp. where it runs under 30 st. sta. and the post office in order to make it look nicer from the river trail and tie the banks together. So she said, “how bout an interpretation of the donut smell on the exp - wafting little donuts on breeze-like swirls”. so i photoshopped a crude drawing in 15 minutes and voila.

The finished product, an edited photo from phillyskyline (click to enlarge):

Love it. I’m not much for activism over here, but I urge you write to your lawmakers and demand this be built immediately.

Interpretive Donut Art [Phillyblog]