Sunday, November 9, 2014

Crown Fountain


Crown Fountain is another large scale art work found in Millennium Park in Chicago.  It consists of two 50-foot glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool.  Each of the towers project video images of the faces of a variety of Chicago citizens on the inside wall of the towers.  (You can see one of the images in the photo above.)
 
The fountain was designed by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa and is a modern take on the traditional gargoyles found in fountains where faces of mythological beings were sculpted with open mouths to allow water, a symbol of life, to flow out.  Plensa designed this fountain to project the faces on LED screens and having water flow through an outlet in the screen to give the illusion of water spouting from their mouths.

I'm not sure the children who love to play in the water ever even notice the faces above them.  They are just having fun splashing and running through the water.

3 comments:

Judy said...

That is pretty cool!

Catalyst said...

Odd but . . .

Lois said...

Millennium Park is a favorite of mine! Thanks for the info on the fountain. I have only visited in winter, so I have never seen it with the water on. I took my grandson there last December and there was about a foot of snow on the ground. It was his first time seeing and playing in snow and he had so much fun.