Talk:Rain Forest (1959)

Proposed merge with James FitzGerald (artist)
Article should be deleted or, preferably, merged with the artist's page. It would supplement the artist page well. On its own, there is not much to say about the sculpture. the two refs provided amount to about two sentences: minor mentions that do not satisfy notability. HappyValleyEditor (talk) 21:53, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I added the two refs in a hurry as the original piece was just an info box & more refs, but I found additional info about it. Several of FitzGerald's other pieces have their own pages, and as this was both one of his first major creations and the piece that launched the college's collection IMO it stands on its own.  Just needs fleshing out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by  JamesG5 (talk • contribs) 22:04, 10 April 2016‎
 * I'm with JamesG5; we should give this some time to be built out rather than rushing to merge. FitzGerald is an historically important PNW artist and I'd like to see more of his works get their own articles. - Brianhe (talk) 22:17, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I hear what you're both saying, but I don't think it cuts it in terms of notability. The artist is notable, but this particular sculpture is not on its own. I could only find one picture of it in a search. There is no crtitical writing that actually talks about the work itself in the way we would expect notable things to have writing about them. The references are essentially guidebook mentions. For these reasons I think it's better as part of the main artist article. All in all, it's not a notable scultpure in the way that say Richard Serra's Tilted Arc or Anish Kappoor's Cloud Gate. The Serra piece is paricularly notable for the wide media coverage and critical writng about it. (Serra also did a piece for the Western Washington University scultpture collection, called Wright's Triangle. It's not an extremely notable piece when compared to Tilted Arc. Interestingly it has no Wikipedia page, which it probably should, given the availability of actual crtitical references.) The point here is that artists can be notable, but not everything that make is notable. This is the case with Fitzgerald's Rain Forest: no significant media, scholarly or critical coverage, and a limited place in public consciousness means it is not a notable piece. Happy editing! HappyValleyEditor (talk) 17:04, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * An alternative would be a separate article on the WWU sculpture collection. Comment here. --50.53.32.229 (talk) 05:49, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * User:50.53.32.229, I'm amazed there isn't one already as the collection itself is significant. I've seen it and I am surprised there's not article... it would also be a good place to 'collect' together works like Rain Forest. HappyValleyEditor (talk) 16:57, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Following the suggestion above, I cobbled together a page at User:HappyValleyEditor/Western_Washington_University_Outdoor_Sculpture_Collection. Feel free to edit it or publish if you feel it's worthy. Most of the information is available at the Western Washington University page, but I have a feeling that if I could come up with two refs in five minutes, there must ne many more. HappyValleyEditor (talk) 23:11, 12 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Et voila! Western Washington University Outdoor Sculpture Collection. I notice that of the 36 sculptures in the collection, Rain Forest (1959) is apparently the only one with a Wikipedia page. I lieave that thought to you all. Perhaps we just have to expand the list to include articles on the other sculptures? Nancy Holt's Rock Rings and the Serra and Di Suvero pieces are perhaps first candidates. PS: now you can see that I am actually pro-northwest. And I don't even live there. HappyValleyEditor (talk) 01:52, 13 April 2016 (UTC)