Still In Texas Walking Keller's Bear Creek Trail Finding A Castle, Palace & Sphinx

I needed to ship something to someone from a UPS Store today. Looking for UPS Store locations I saw one in Keller near the Bear Creek Park trailway.

So, it was to Keller a package or two and I went.

When I lived in Haslet, a short distance to the west, I frequented this park frequently, usually to roller blade. This was the location where I learned to roller blade. Walking a couple miles of this paved trail today it sort of surprised me to realize I used to roller blade this narrow, somewhat hilly, curvy, busy trail.

Bear Creek Park has been greatly upgraded since I last walked this part of the planet. A large part of the park is currently closed due to even more renovations.

One of the new additions is what you see above. Soon I came upon two more of this type thing.

All together three of the coolest things I have come upon in a long while. The person walking with me wondered how much these clever abstract sculptures cost, what with Fort Worth spending about a million bucks on a piece of kinetic art which has moved few. The person walking with me opined that if that piece of junk in Fort Worth is worth a million these Keller works of public art must have cost several million.

Next to each of these works of abstract art is an explanation of what you are looking at. The one you are looking at here is inspired by a medieval castle built for King Ludwig II of Bavaria in honor of opera composer Richard Wagner

King Ludwig's castle was the inspiration for Disneyland's Magic Kingdom castle.

To see King Ludwig's castle, as envisioned by the clever abstract sculptor, you had to look through the viewing portal which directed you to look at the metal in a way which pulled all the pieces together into a recognizable image.

My favorite of the three is the one below. Can you guess what the twisted gold metal turns into when you look through the clarifying viewing portal?

The face of the Egyptian Pharoh Khafra, also known as the Sphinx.

The Sphinx was my favorite because it was the most difficult to see. In all three you had to move your focus around as you looked through the viewing portal til you eventually find the sweet spot which makes the vision clear. With the Sphinx I thought it to be amazing how all those chunks of metal could come together like this and looked solid, with shading and color tone changes, giving it a three dimensional look.

The third piece of abstract sculpture was inspired by Russian bad boy, Ivan the Terrble (Tsar Ivan IV).

Ivan got his terrible reputation by doing things like blinding the architect who designed this palace so that he could never create anything so beautiful again. Ivan the Terrible had this palace built to commemorate the capture of Kazan and Astrakhav.

The reason the above was my least favorite of the three was only due to the fact that it took no effort to see the random chunks of metal looking like what you see above. The Sphinx took a bit of effort.

Anyway, quite impressed with Keller today. That town has really grown since I first came to town late in the last century.

Below is a YouTube video I made when I came upon the first of today's works of public art...