The lion is a symbol that connotes both the regal and the ferocious. Why do they exist on a government building? Why are they a common feature on civic buildings more broadly? What is their meaning today, in Pasadena, nearly 100 years after construction of City Hall? Using the lions as a familiar though ambiguous symbol, Freewaves’ piece generated new relationships to the City Hall.
Conceived as a poetic expression of local democracy, the collaborative, accumulative piece is produced by Freewaves and created by Anne Bray, Inouk Demers, Daniel Garcia, Robert Hilton, Vera Makianich, Gayle Nicholls-Ali, John Muir H.S. Drum Line, Hands On’Semble, Rasheed Ali and various drum circles.
The project is the first in a year long series called My Pasadena, produced by City of Pasadena and Side Street Projects and funded by the National Endowment for the Arts grant called Our Town.
Pasadena Heritage, the John Muir High School Drum Team, the nearby Senior Center residents, City politicians and workers, PUSD 2nd grade students on public art walking tours, and others.
Preview at ArtNight Pasadena. Launch of sound installation, running 24/7 except during special events.
Official opening. Performances of video, audio and music.
Drum circle in City Hall courtyard, hosted by international recording artist Rasheed Ali
Drum circle in City Hall courtyard, hosted by international recording artist Rasheed Ali
Lunch with the Lions at 12pm in the City Hall courtyard.
Guest speaker Kelema Lee Moses, Ph. D., Architectural Historian, leads discussion on lions’ significance.
Drum circle in City Hall courtyard, hosted by international recording artist Rasheed Ali
ArtNight Pasadena. Video, audio and performance by Hands On’Semble @8pm.
Project Finale. Video, audio and performance by musician Robert Hilton.
Have you noticed the lions on Pasadena City Hall?
What do the lions mean?
Unsure? Lets consider: Are they:
Why did they put lions on City Hall?
Remind us that we need to do good things here.
Subtle definition of strength.
They’re familiar but exotified by the environment.
Those things are just meant to ward off evil spirits and portray dominance.
To imply venerability. Solid. Stable. Venerable.
In oriental culture, they are put in front of buildings as a symbol of protection.
Inviting part of the pride in Pasadena, we watch over for one another.
The more you look, the harder it is to figure it out. They are there to hold up the fruit.
Somebody was a Leo! (Leos look out for other Leos)
Sound conveys a whole different message than visuals, than an image.
Strength of a public institution or strength of community.
Fortitude of royalty, of strength, upholding the crest of the city and placing it as a symbol. subtly.
They’re iconic, so in that regard, they don’t have a geography of place.
In China it means protection, and it might have been a symbol of social class in the past.
Contrast between nature and construct of man.
Capture a sense of freedom.
Lion is the king of the jungle and city hall is the place where our leaders do their job.
They are treated exotically because of the details, the fruit.
They don’t have negative connotations until they eat your leg, but they don’t eat a lot of humans.
It is the faces of the building, rather than showing the entire lion which is separate from the building.
They are invisible until they bite your leg off.
Invokes to majesty and poverty of government, reminiscent of Florence renaissance.
City Hall is supposed to symbolize justice in a way, and the lion is a creature of nature. There is no flaw in nature, animals can kill each other and it’s ok. Survival, it’s natural, so that’s justice.
Implicit implication of government serving the interest, reminder of those working there and those coming in.
Lions eat people and other animals, but they want to be healthy, they don’t want to eat more.
They look like they are in service to the community or their leader, they look like they are somebody’s lions.
Protection against any evil spirits from the fathers of the city from conducting the business that is important to Pasadena.
It’s enforcing to understand the power of sound.
To bring together the feeling of wilderness in the middle of an urban.
It’s protecting the ideals of the city.
Superstition.
I have been in this space a million times, I have only processed them as shields, I’ve never processed them as lions.
To me it’s ornamental, they have fruit and vegetables coming out of their mouths. Pacified, almost.
Top of the food chain in dominance.
They are part of the environment.
For nature, environmental, not for the actual building.
Lions represent strength and they represent a headship, they are the head of their pride.
Like gargoyles. The City of Pasadena wants to identify itself with something powerful and beautiful.
Architectural eclecticism that allows itself to incorporate lions to where the lions do make sense. They fit in to the architectural diversity of this site.
They’re here to imply that the city is watching you.
The felines, considering the size of their brains, I think they know more about life than we do.
They are exotic because they are African, and they are also exotic because they are an extraordinary thing, they are beautiful.
Noble by nature, but savage when they need to be.
It looks like they’re eating something, but it’s fruit, or vegetables, not animals. I’d say they are protective over aggressive, but somewhere in between, because they’re definitely devouring something.
The lion in Budhism means accomplishment.
To bring awareness to all mass lion killings.
A strong beast that can over power you and hurt you, if they want to. subconsciously.
I don’t think of animals as exotic, they might be endangered, but I think of them as sainted spirits, and when I think of them that way, they are familiar.
They are awake, they still have souls when they’re statues sometimes.
City employees should protect and serve the community.
Does it mean anything to render a lion full-bodied versus a lion decapitated or partially shown to us?
Like a “king’s palace”
The architecture is a mix of different styles from different countries, just like in America we are all mixed.
Makes me think of a riddle, the snakes, the riddle of the snakes! in order to pass through between them, you need to know something.
What’s a greater animal than a lion? It’s on top of the food chain of dominance. Maybe it is supposed to intimidate.
Safety within the sanctuary
It’s architecture, there aren’t many reasons necessarily.
Integrity.
It looks like the lions are in service presenting some sort of harvest or abundance.
They are weirdly familiar, I’ve see the same lions in other buildings before.
The city is fearful of the future.
There are pictures of what most city halls are inspired by and it’s four different spots. there are animals in all of those. Maybe it’s lions.
The city has really old bones.
They were important at the time but contemporaneously they’ve become lost because of technology.
“We are the bosses in Pasadena.”
Lions, Tigers… are millennia-old pitch models for power and authority fashioned out of religious figuration intended to exploit the animal instinct in humans for primal fear that, like the King of the Beasts, irrationally penetrates every sinew to create the conditions in which leaders subjugate instead of facilitate followers. Not unlike using scantily dressed women […]
They seem to be strangely out of place, just not based in any kind of reality, for me.
In the architecture of the building, it’s all on display, but people don’t notice them. people are trained to move forward without taking notice of anything around them. It’s not an environmental thing, it’s a human problem.
That’s the place where they take care of everyone and everything.
They are captively free, confined in roles but have oversight.
Traditional sign of sovereignty and power. Trying to imitate the cowardly lion on Wizard of Oz.
I wish people knew that things could be this pretty and be ecological too.
It is not that we are all seeing the same lion with the same body, we were given the face and we are meant to visualize the body ourselves.
Halls of power, representation of the people that work there.
They are by definition, one of the most exotic animals of all of society, because of their power.
They are images of lions, not whole lions, just their head.
Protective of their own, aggressive to everything else.
Sometimes things that are invisible are important.
They are on many government buildings, affiliated with hierarchy. The highest before man.
It is an alien figure. there’s no lions in America.
They are desensitized on the building.
Pasadena is the focal point of San Gabriel Valley, king of the jungle.
They are put in important places.
They are a feline family. That’s what’s so interesting about cats, you see them asleep and they’re not. Sort of a cover up.
There is a legacy of colonialism, they weren’t lions in Europe but lions came to symbolize certain regal royalty, but lions are native to more than middle east and Africa, as well, there are Asian lions, there are lions in South America, but where there lions in Europe? I don’t even know. There’s this idea […]
It’s this idea of creating a sublime nature within the city.
Strategic, to attract a certain kind of person to the city. “If you want a certain stable life just come to Pasadena, just look at our City Hall.”
As a nature form of art conversing with the structure of man.
To represent power, nobility, and two continents coming together.
Decoration, those fruits had to end up somewhere.