7 Things You Need To Know About The Best of Our Public Art
Chris Gonsalves
How do you improve on paradise? Even in this place of surpassing natural beauty, area artists have never shied away from adding their grand and creative expressions to the view here. And we’re all a little better for them. Take a moment to see the area through artists’ eyes. You’ll often find man’s take on nature’s wonders as awesome as their inspiration. Our favorites include:

1. Homage to the Sun At first glance, artist Wayne Hook’s brushed aluminum figure out in front of Naples City Hall seems to be shielding its eyes. But the longer one looks, the more one sees an embrace of the sun—like yoga’s sun salutation caught in mid rise. A local high school fine arts teacher, Hook engaged his students in the entire process, from sketches to models to finished work, after the piece was commissioned in 1978.

2. Mural at the downtown Fort Myers Federal Building For such a massive work, you really need to get close to appreciate Dr. Barbara Jo Revelle’s mural. The chair of the art department at the University of Florida used thousands of tiny ceramic tiles to create this stunning, untitled piece portraying the history of Fort Myers from the Second Seminole War (1835–1842) to the arrival of the railroad in 1904.

3. Virtue This striking stone piece adorning the second floor vestibule at Naples City Hall was a gift to the city from the Naples Area Chamber of Commerce. The discordant lines that seem to fit—but not quite—are the work of artist Adir Ascalon, son of the famous industrial designer Maurice Ascalon, considered the father of the modern Israeli decorative arts movement.

4. The Uncommon Friends statue The profound influence of some of the greatest minds in American industrial history is captured in this serene work at Centennial Park in downtown Fort Myers by sculptor D.J. Wilkins. When Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone went camping together, as they frequently did, this is almost surely how it looked. A story in The New York Times on July 23, 1921, said the trio was joined at their Blue Ridge Mountains campsite by President Warren G. Harding. It’s easy to imagine the three talking about how Harding never invented anything.

5. Rachel at the Well or The Spirit of Fort Myers Thomas Edison’s wife, Mina, dedicated this statue, at the entrance to the Edison & Ford Winter Estates on McGregor Boulevard, to Fort Myers as a tribute to her husband’s achievements. The Grecian maiden was first unveiled on April 8, 1926, and then later restored in 1983.

6. Nureyev Not much is known about the graceful figure of the Russian dance legend other than that it was cast in bronze by artist Priscilla Buxton in 1980 and delivered to Naples City Hall shortly thereafter. Buxton, a professional dancer herself, specializes in capturing the beauty of dance and was once artist in residence at the Washington Ballet Academy.

7. Untitled water fountain Few works of art can be said to stop traffic. The monolithic fountain in the middle of Gulf Shore Boulevard at Horizon Way Beach is surely one of them. The identity of the artist for this piece of signature Naples public art has been lost to time, according to Janet McCracken, the city’s community service analyst. But that hardly detracts from the stone fountain’s ability to bring tourists to a halt with its incongruous presence. Enjoy it, and please keep right.