Every 12 years, the Chinese Zodiac celebrates a different animal. If you were born in 2006, you were born in the year of the dog. It’s also the year of the dog in 2018, and we’ll see it again in 2030. People born in dog years are considered intelligent, patient, reliable, sincere, and brave. Year of the Dog birthdays include Mother Teresa (1910) and Steven Spielberg (1946). If you were born under the sign of the dog, your lucky colors are red, green, and purple, and your lucky numbers are 3, 4, and 9.
One modern artist/sculptor known for fun canine creations is Jeff Koons. I was lucky enough to visit the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NYC and got to view the amazing 10-foot-tall balloon dog sculpted from stainless steel with mirror-finished surfaces. The golden dog on display in MoMA’s roof garden terrace reflected everyone looking at it as well as the New York skyline and Central Park. Koons, a Pennsylvania native, is famous in the Pop/Contemporary field of art thanks to his imaginative work with vacuum cleaners, basketballs, and Play Doh. The orange version of his balloon dog was sold by Christies’s auction house in 2013 for $58.4 million, setting the record for the most expensive work sold at auction by a living artist.
10-foot-tall balloon dog by Koons
Koons also created a 43-foot-topiary West Highland Terrier (you could say, it’s still growing!) using living plants at the Guggenheim Bilboa Museum in Spain. There’s another giant Koons topiary Westie in Europe in the courtyard of the baroque Arolsen Castle in Germany.
Koons says: “I want to create optimism. Art happens inside the viewer…and the art is your sense of your own potential as a person.” That actually works for every art form – including writing.
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- Guggenheim Bilboa Museum in Spain
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- Guggenheim Bilboa Museum in Spain
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- Arolsen Castle in Germany
