Landscape Artscape

Downtown San Jose Landmark

    Do you know exactly where you are when you  look at this sculpture? If I were dropped from the sky blindfolded and landed about here stumbling into Beniamino Bufano's California Bear and were allowed to use my sense of touch, I could announce my precise location after tracing my palms along the concrete bear's smooth contours. I think this is part of why I delayed writing this walk (Blogpost the 6th if you're counting, which I am). Besides a run-in with writer's block, a pinch of paralyzing self-doubt, and the usual concerns and pressing matters-- confounding me also these days. . . this challenge of writing about my own hand. That's what the day's route through El Paseo de San Antonio and to the bridge over the Guadalupe River at Woz Way on Park Ave (Coyotes next post) is like for me, writing about my own hand. My hands are a part of my anatomy as these sculptures are a part of downtown's San Jose's anatomy; they always will be. Won't they?

    I have no formal instruction in expounding on the visual arts but I am able to talk to you about these works dedicated in the 1980s as old familiars, as resting spots of my small, walked over and over urban pathways through a lifetime. California Bear first stuck his muzzle up to the sky when I was in elementary school and we 6th graders came out to see "Hello Dolly" at the Center for Performing Arts; Very same bear stood tall for my high school years outside "The Nutcracker," then college during Center for Performing Arts' run of  "Annie Get Your Gun," or "Cabaret" was it? She stood out here on the theatre grounds for "Westside Story" several years ago while an old friend and neighbor enjoyed the show with me. So I wander, wonder about, and write it up: WriteWalk my beat.    

    Next we visit this round, bumpy old guy. What's his name? I see him so often that I forget it. "Lookin' good. Lookin' solid."

Kenneth Matsumoto

  "Untitled" reflects today's last light along the banks of the Guadalupe River. It's a wheel like time. It appears both man-made in its symmetry and natural with its roughness and pocks like the river's bottom. If California Bear is a hand, then SJSU Fine Arts alumnus Matsumoto's stony circle is the bellybutton of the figure of this walk.

Center Detail "Untitled"

From where El Paseo begins on Fourth St. near campus until you arrive at Cesar Chavez Park near the Fairmont, there's lot of art to accompany you. Many painted panels feature work done by local students. Some of them are giant doors which have been turned into canvases. There's a landscape mural of California oak woodlands in summertime which beautifies a cinderblock wall outside Camera 12 Cinemas. There's plenty of artwork to see even as you rush to work, class, or to shop or mail bills and letters at the Third Street Post Office.
    The City has put in anchored benches for the common areas where anyone may read, scribble, sit with the dog, visit and drink coffee, strum a guitar, wait for someone, etc. There's lots of student bustle in this section of El Paseo since it lies between public transit stops and San Jose State University.
    Backtracking through Cesar Chavez Park Plaza, across the street from the park and located between the Fairmont Hotel and the restaurants and coffee shops on the opposite side of the Paseo is an homage to Dr. Ernesto Galarza. He was a Mexican-American civic leader and wrote Barrio Boy, the story of his life as a bracero working in the fields, labor leader, and scholar. Kim Yasuda sculpted the work, and her memorial was dedicated in 1998. She named her tribute to Galarza "Man of Fire."

Man of Fire Kim Yasuda

                                         

Above right is a damn good hat. Even though I (as viewer or "reader") am not so keen on the table with its bare areas, it is incontestably a damn good hat lying atop it. I notice this hat each time I wander the Paseo.
    Take yourself out for a walk. Here's a handy artscape map for you to refer to as you go and see for yourself:  

                                          http://www.sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/26100