St Mary At Latton & Solo Flight

Another example of old & new sitting alongside one another - St Mary At Latton Church watched over by the "Solo Flight" sculpture. (By Antanas Brazdys, 1982) Solo flight (possibly my favourite of all the works to be found in the town) was originally commissioned for the Harvey centre, and indeed stood there for some years until eventually being replaced by a lift, when a new site was found for it.

3 other works by this artist can be found in Harlow, including "Echo" at Staple Tye which is of a similar polished stainless steel construction. 

Like most art the scultures provoke strong feelings, although this from a lady calling herself "Colleen" on the blog of Harlow MP Robert Halfon seems a little strong;

"'Solo Flight' is iconic in its own way: in its sheer dreadfulness and the terrible choice of location. There it sits, under the Stansted flight path, a shining, mud splattered, resource squandered totem of out of control consumerism and runaway aviationism, artistically coated in brown goo by children who use it as a climbing frame and slide. If it really is a bird, as some claim, and not a plane, then it must be a predatory pterodactyl."

I'm not entirely convinced that she likes it?! She goes on to talk more about sculture, and quite a lot of other things too, as you can see over at Rob's Blog - these things are clearly subjective as I love Solo Flight and anyone who has ever watched children playing around, under and indeed through it can't fail to realise that this interaction is one of its strongest points.

St Mary At Latton is one of the town's oldest churches and town designer Sir Frederick Gibberd deliberately ensured when putting together his plans for the town that it remained surrounded by green space in order to reflect its rural heritage. In fact the church makes good use of the space in front as they hold afternoon teas there in the summer!