When I first landed back in Orange County about a year and a half ago, I was riding the buses a lot, and going through the Newport Transportation Center, an OCTA bus hub near Fashion Island Mall. The strip of weed covered land between the bus stop and the Newport Beach City Hall and library, had been transformed into a park area while I was back east for a decade. There are big and small dog bark parks near the top end. And the rest is a big art park full of sculptures. One day, I decided to walk down the path through the park. One of the many sculptures is this circle of 13 white concrete rabbits. I later found out it's called Bunnyhenge. Then I looked it up, and found Bunnyhenge comes up on Google Maps. That just made me laugh.
With art parks, you usually get two main reactions, the crusty old people who say, "Why did the city waste a bunch a money on this crap!" I guess there was actually a small crusade against Bunnyhenge after it was built (there's a YouTube video about it). The other reaction is, "Hey, this park is pretty cool," which comes from a much larger group of people, generally.
One of the many reasons to create art is to evoke a response out of people. Sometimes you want to get people to think, sometimes, to be drawn to a cause, and sometimes it's just to make people smile, maybe laugh, and wonder, "Why the hell did somebody build this?" My reaction to Bunnyhenge was to just laugh, and it reminded me of going to the Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, Texas, while driving cross country with my sister many years ago. We were tired, kind of cranky from a couple long days of driving, and I saw the Cadillac Ranch, and said, "We have to stop, I've been wanting to see this thing for years." We got out, walked up to it, and started taking photos near the cars. You just couldn't help but to smile and laugh at the absurdity of it. We met a couple from Germany there, they had the same reaction. You just walk away smiling, and feeling a little bit better about the world, without really knowing why. For me, Bunnyhenge is a lot like that. But hey, I'm weird.
It's by the corner of Avocado and San Miguel in Newport Beach, just south of Fashion Island Mall. you can look it up on Google Maps, or GPS the Newport Civic Center, (100 Civic Center Drive, Newport Beach. CA) which is located at the bottom of the art park. More pics from the rest of the art park in a coming post.
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