Artist Tom Askman has done many sculptures around the country and has sat and watched people look at public art. What he’s discovered is that most people just walk right by.
Airports often have a lot of public art, commissioned at high prices, and maybe one person out of 500 might notice the artwork, he said.
“There is nothing engaging enough in the art to pull them off their conceptual trap,” said Askman, who in all likelihood will design and install Madison’s next major piece of public art, a high-profile water feature at Frances Plaza, which is part of the State Street Design Project.
….The sculpture is of two bronze cones leaning toward each other with six waterspouts crisscrossing from cone to cone. There will be multicolored LEDs in the middle that will shine up and illuminate the water overhead.