Art in the Wild
"Gateless Gate" by Paul D. Zenian at Washtenaw Community College.
As a student at Washtenaw Community College, I occasionally wondered about the story behind the large metal shapes leaning into each other near the school’s main entrance. Day after day, I took in the sculpture’s dominating presence as I passed it on the way to WCC’s Student Center. Standing 22 feet high, it’s hard to miss. In their book “Public Art in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County,” Martha Keller and Michael Curtis describe it as looking like “two irregular dominoes.”
To me, it just seemed like two giant rectangles propped up against one another, their meaning an abstract mystery I never bothered to solve.
Paul D. Zenian created the “dominoes” — titled the “Gateless Gate” — for the campus over two decades ago. According to Keller and Curtis, Zenian taught at WCC for 25 years before his retirement in 1994. The piece’s inscription explains that he intended for it to symbolize the “door to education” WCC offers. [Full Story]