Clocktail party gets Hour Town ticking

 Wingspread's courtyard filled with clocks; Bill Reid's Loonatick is at right

 There are many great quotations about time. Here are just three:

• Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. ~Ambrose Bierce
• The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. ~ Albert Einstein
• Time is money. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Time was much on the mind Saturday night, as a clocktail party at Wingspread -- renamed Club Wingspread for the night -- introduced the 60 artist-designed clocks that will decorate Downtown Racine this summer, our ninth public art project -- Hour Town.

The clocks played off puns about time, quotes like Henry David Thoreau's "Time is but the stream I go fishin' in," and many of the words and phrases you can think of relating to time: the sands of time, a New York minute, fish'n time, time flies, and the White Rabbit's anguished cry from Alice in Wonderland: "I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!"

For the most part, the clocks were brightly painted. But there were mosaics, engraved tin, ceramics, beadwork, a Frank Lloyd Wright-ish design, and a Bill Reid Loonatick. And, surprisingly enough, almost all of them showed the same time....

Starting Monday, they'll be on display Downtown. For now, here are a few that caught my eye.

Sandy Schmitz carved Tin to Tin's design into thin pieces of metal

Fish In' Time, a 3-D clockface by by Robert Anderson

Daun Johnson created Clock & Roll, this clock/bicycle combination,

with her daughter Crystal and their neighbor, Kim Nelson.

Here's a closeup of the intricate beadwork in Clock & Roll

Jerry Trieber was the only artist to turn the concave clock base 

inside-out, to create Time Flies, Cat's in the Cradle