It’s as if aliens landed in downtown Greenville.

Wings of the City is a collection of nine life-size+ bronze sculptures by the Mexican artist Jorge Marin. Their six-month visit to Falls Park and the Peace Center plaza is part of an ongoing tour of the U.S. The official description of the exhibit says they are “an aesthetic experience where the perfection of the human body is mixed, in balance, with allegorical and fantastic beings.”

Well… okay.

I just think they’re fun.

The winged creatures, wearing Renaissance-style bird-beak carnival masks, look as if they’ve just landed or are about to take off again. Some look at us quizzically as if they find us as strange as we find them. Others look off into the distance as if searching for another place to explore.

One wears an old-time aviator’s cap. Why would a winged creature wear an old-time aviator’s cap? Because it’s fun. Wearing a bird-beak mask is fun. Especially if you have a set of powerful wings on your back with which to fly around the city. It’s playful, imaginative fun.

So I had to join in the fun and sketch them.

The bronze figures at the Peace Center plaza have no wings but are engaged in vigorous acrobatics. Appropriate for the entrance to the preforming arts theater.

One of the winged figures in the park is notably different from the others. I think it offers a clue to the artist’s process. This figure is not quite complete. Unlike the others, it wears no bird-beak mask. Nor is it resting on the ubiquitous circus-like exercise ball that anchors all the others. Its wings reach upward and its pose suggests that it is beginning to rise up. Most strikingly, it has no arms or eyes and the back of its head is missing. This figure is incomplete. Or, is it in the process of being completed?

What does a sculptor use to create a sculpture? His arms and hands, his eyes, and his imagination. I think that this figure lacks just these things because the artist—that is, the viewer—is being asked to use those personal tools to bring the figure to completion. The artist is inviting you to join in the fun of making art.

And if that invitation seems a bit obscure, the artist has created a set of large bronze wings set on a simple scaffold where you can step up in front of Reedy Falls and have your photo taken as the ninth fantastical creature in the Wings of the City exhibit.