Cavalier
By Bill Barrett, Sahara West Library
This sculpture suggests something equine to me. Positioned a few yards from the library’s entrance, it’s always just out of the corner of your eye, never in a direct line of sight. So, I was gratified to learn that its name is Cavalier — from the Latin caballus (horse), related to cavalry and chivalry. To call someone cavalier today is an accusation of swaggering, disdainful airs, but several hundred years ago, when the word was fresh, it meant they were gallant and knightly — a shift in language that mirrored centuries of disillusionment as knighthood lost its gleam. But this Cavalier is hardly swaggering. It’s eager, hopeful, perched on three legs like a pointer, watching us write and rewrite our heroes and villains, and maybe get it right some of the time. –Sonja Cho Swanson
Octosteam
By Adolfo Gonzalez, Pecos-McLeod Interconnect
Octosteam lurks like a good monster should. Gonzalez’ handsomely rusted sculpture trails its undulating tentacles from a concrete median on the east side, where Pecos-McLeod swoops northeast into Desert Inn, banking off the Las Vegas Wash. The mammoth train-mollusk mashup explicitly recalls multiple eras of the valley — from ocean primeval to bustling railroad node — but it evokes a personal epoch for me: countless ’tween weekends happily misspent sploshing in the cattail-clustered wash not far from this spot, studiously harassing crawdads, water striders, frogs, and other fauna that held a monstrous fascination. Sure, great art invites deep contemplation, but I read this steampunk construct of drive-by whimsy as a private nod that says, East side is the beast side! –Andrew Kiraly
The Love Locket
By Nova May, East Fremont Street
Before Downtown Container Park, beside a fire-breathing praying-mantis art installation, stands The Love Locket. Created for the inaugural Life is Beautiful festival, this heart-shaped metallic artwork invites the passerby to attach love tokens, such as personalized locks or other metal keepsakes. The sculpture is adorned with locks that bear the names of people from all around the world. In 2016, a piece of the sculpture was stolen, but the community united to mend it, with proceeds benefiting the American Heart Association. For me, the downtown fixture embodied another layer of meaning after its repair — compassion, healing, and resilience. –Melissa Gill
Living Black Pillars
By Chase R. McCurdy, Legacy Park
Part obelisk, part celestial artifact, McCurdy’s Living Black Pillars embodies the very temporality of the lives and legacies inscribed on bronze placards throughout the park, while pointing to the boundless spirit of the many more unnamed activists, educators, poets, and laborers sown into the soil of the Historic Westside. McCurdy’s design sets stalks of black steel into the earth, forming bases for sunlit orbs that seem to hover over and reflect the expanse of the once-vacant lot at 1600 Mount Mariah Drive. It offers us a glimpse of ourselves positioned within the past even as we become part of a quantum radio signal casting us skyward into the future as broadcast, SOS, quiet but urgent invitation. –Erica Vital-Lazare
