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You can be an art critic. There's plenty to judge.

Public art is all around us in a variety of forms. It is there to create discussion and perhaps inspiration. You can be a sidewalk art critic because that is what the artist intended.

CLEVELAND — The canvas on which the children splashed on paint and brushed it into the shapes of fish, sea mammals, and underwater plants was filled with images from one border to the next. Over their shoulders, a world-renown artist offered advice as he pointed with his fingers, all stained with paints. The children giggled with the advice, but found deep passion.

The scene was the Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School in downtown Cleveland where the special guest artist showing the ins and outs of creating paintings was Wyland. It was Wyland, the artist whose huge building-sized  paintings of whales in the ocean, who offered strong advice.

RELATED: Artist behind iconic Cleveland whale mural to restore artwork on Cleveland Public Power plant

"Yes!  Yes!  Now you've got the idea of how to make that underwater scene even better," he said to the smiling high school students who were not only learning about art, but also getting a good lesson in public art.

Public art is the umbrella term used for all art forms made in public spaces. Wyland (uses only one name) maintains a headquarters in Laguna Beach, CA, but the entire world has become his canvas. He has long promoted the importance of conserving water and keeping pollution out of streams, rivers, lakes, and the ocean itself.

"The lakes, the rivers, everything connects to the sea," said Wyland.  "I want to make that connection through public art."

In Cleveland in 1997, Wyland made a big splash when he used the Cleveland Public Power building on the city's East Shoreway as his canvas for a painting of whales in the ocean.  The whales have become his symbol for the need for clean waters worldwide.

Throughout Cleveland and the rest of Northeast Ohio, there are many instances of public art. They run the gamut from paintings to sculptures and anything in between. Cleveland City Hall has a huge 91-year-old painting of an artist's depiction of workers in the city at the time of the painting. There is also a new mural at Cleveland Hopkins Airport which is as long as a football field depicting people working in various jobs in the city. It is all public art.

Steven Litt, art and architecture critic for The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland sees this resurgence of public art as a good thing. 

 "We need focal points," said Litt. "We adorn our public places."

Litt spoke as he stood in the shadow of towering metal sculpture called "Judy's Hand," rising more than 30 feet high just outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland's University Circle neighborhood.

"Today, architects, landscape architects, and urban designers are in collaboration in getting more bang out of the buck," said Litt, commenting on the use of both public and private money to create artistic areas which are pleasing.

Of course, one person's treasure could be called another's trash. That is why everyone can be a critic of public art. The creations are there to draw the eye and to draw comment. Pieces of public art can be seen on the sides of buildings and can rise as high as the structures themselves.

The public need only to look around and take in what it sees.There are no whales in the waters of Lake Erie, but along the shoreline of the great lake, there are images of the largest mammals on the planet on the front of the Cleveland Public Power building.To say public art has gone "big" is the understatement.  

    

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