These Phoenix public art projects are must-sees. Here’s your guide, including Her Secret Is Patience downtown, Trace Elements at Sky Harbor Airport.

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First, historical statues and monuments, sometimes controversial depending on what they’re commemorating. Second, big conceptual sculptures that are almost always controversial, because inevitably some people think they’re awesome and others think they’re monstrosities, eyesores, a waste of taxpayer dollars.

But most public art falls into neither category, according to the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture. There are just over 200 city-funded art projects spread around the city, and most of them rarely draw much attention at all.

That’s because many of the installations are basically urban camouflage, such as a series of multicolored square panels lining the concrete wall outside the Deer Valley Water Treatment Plant on West Dunlap Avenue, titled “Sky Looms.” Dedicated in 2017, it came with a price tag of $475,000 — but not all of that went to Texas artist John Runnels. It also paid for new landscaping and bus stop shade.

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Whether it’s the oddly shaped pedestrian overpass on the Piestewa Freeway or the multicolored metal “umbrellas” casting shade on Roosevelt Street, these public art projects are little bits of visual enrichment to break up the strip-mall monotony and unsightly infrastructure of a sprawling city.

After spending a few days driving around Phoenix to look at some of the most prominent works in the permanent collection, I was surprised by how many of them registered as familiar. I had walked or driven past them without really taking a second look. And yet, I think I would have noticed their absence, somehow. Their presence adds a subliminal brightness to the environment, even if your eyes are on other things.

Here are 12 city-funded public art sites in Phoenix that are worth that second look, from the big and splashy to the humble and homey.

Phoenix public art: “Her Secret Is Patience” (2012) by Janet Echelman. Civic Space Park, 424 N. Central Ave. (Photo: David Kadlubowski/The Republic)

Artist: Janet Echelman of Boston. Giant sculptures made from colorful, diaphanous fabric are her specialty, and she has created them in cities around the world.

Often described as a giant jellyfish, Phoenix’s most recent love-it-or-hate-it public art project is a 100-foot-tall sculpture made of high-tech netting suspended above Civic Space Park, just across the street from Arizona State University’s journalism school downtown. “By day it’s the ugly duckling, but at night it transforms radically,” Arizona Republic art critic Richard Nilsen wrote when it debuted. “The poles and guy wires disappear against the night sky and the jellyfish itself burns with the light that shines on it, revealing the colors that were lost against the brightness of the daytime sky. It loses all the sagging weight of daytime and instead floats weightless above the park, a ball of transcendence.”

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Phoenix public art: WaterWorks at Arizona Falls opened in 2003 at a century-old convergence of canals at 58th Street and Indian School Road. (Photo: Christine Keith/The Republic)

The name sounds like a water park, but you definitely don’t want to ride the waterfall here, created more than a century ago as part of Phoenix’s irrigation system. The site was once used as a picnic spot and even had a dance floor at one point, and later it became a hydroelectric station. By 2003, “Arcadia Eyesore Eliminated” was the headline in The Republic when this walk-in concrete sculpture opened, with a shaded viewing area surrounded by rushing water.

Phoenix public art: A sculptural column of buckets, representing the early days of irrigated farming in Phoenix, greets traveler’s along “The Zanjero’s Line,” which follows the Highland Canal from Francsico Highland Park. (Photo: Kerry Lengel/The Republic)

Where: Highland Canal from 28th Street (Francisco Highland Park) to 40th Street (south of Baseline Road).

The Highland Canal used to feed to the flower fields along Baseline Road. Now it’s a scenic route for walking, biking and horse riding, with artwork honoring the community’s agricultural heritage, including, of course, the zanjero, or “ditch rider,” charged with opening and closing the irrigation gates.

Phoenix public art: “Trace Elements” (2012) by Daniel Mayer of Tempe greets passengers as they cross the bridge from the Sky Train to Terminal 4 at Phoenix Sky Harbor. (Photo: Craig Smith)

Sky Harbor is home to an ambitious public art collection, which brightens commuters’ days from park-and-ride lot to the terminal. One of the most beautiful pieces is this 9- by 115-foot glass mural of giant leaves — enlarged digital images based on living specimens — set off by a vibrant blue “frame” lit from behind. You can find it in the bridge connecting the Sky Train to Terminal 4.

People enjoy Bloomcanopy, a major new downtown shade and public-art project, on July 1, 2017, in Phoenix. (Photo: David Kadlubowski/The Republic)

Colorful ceramic strips make up these “umbrellas” that offer shade and whimsy on Pierce Street outside Phoenix Public Market Café. Ed Lebow, program director for Phoenix public art, called it a “complete street” project. “There’s no question parts of this city are getting hotter over time,” he said, “and we want to combine trees and structures in places people want to be.”

Phoenix public art: “Art Is a Guaranty of Sanity” (2006) by Louise Bourgeios. In the West Building of the Phoenix Convention Center. (Photo: Catherine J. Jun/The Republic)

Artist: Louise Bourgeois. The French American sculptor created monumental works for cities around the world before her death in 2010 at age 98.

The Phoenix Convention Center is a hot spot for public art, from the giant cartoonish bugs outside the southeast corner (“Social Invertebrates”) to the lifelike rendering of an “Arizona Beach” inside the main entrance. If you’re looking for sheer impact, “Art Is a Guaranty of Sanity” is a little mind-blowing. From the main floor, it’s a huge oval mirror (emblazoned with the title in red light) overhead. It’s perched atop a huge steel column stretching down to the basement level; it’s impossible to take in the whole structure from a single angle.

Phoenix public art: “Veiled Mountain” (2019) by Kevin Berry is at 4653 W. Pinnacle Peak Road, aka Odor Control Station 72. (Photo: Kerry Lengel/The Republic)

Artist: Kevin Berry. The Valley-based sculptor has designed about two dozen public projects in Western cities, including selfie-ready transit shelters in Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tempe.

It’s mostly desert scrub this far north, but that’s better scenery than Odor Control Station 72 was until this year, when its unsightly pipes were curtained in a swooping, vaguely Asian-inspired structure made of rusty, spiky steel fence posts. It’s great because it disguises ugly, utilitarian machinery with something that is beautiful but still alludes to the gritty, industrial nature of the facility.

Phoenix public art: “Wall Cycle to Ocotillo” (1992) includes this Teapot Gazebo just off the Piestewa Freeway south of Ocotillo Road. (Photo: Kerry Lengel/The Republic)

Popularly known as “the Squaw Peak Pots” (before the renaming of Piestewa Peak), this was Phoenix’s biggest public squabble over public art in recent memory. A series of monolithic ceramic pots along the State Route 51 freeway, it was criticized as a waste of money as well as an intrusion into the old neighborhoods it was meant beautify. Only six giant pots were visible from the highway, and they came down in subsequent expansions. But 19 works — from Native American motifs on ceramic to a giant metal teapot — remain along a bike path that winds along both sides of the freeway.

Phoenix public art: “Shadow Play” (2015) by Meejin Yoon is sit-and-shade sculpture on Roosevelt Road between First and Third streets. (Photo: Kerry Lengel/The Republic)

Another “complete street” project to add shade and visual interest to Roosevelt Street, the heart of downtown’s First Fridays arts district. These geometrical sculptures are urban-funky from a distance but pure abstract beauty when framed up close against the sky.

Phoenix public art: Nisbet/Mountain Pass Bridge (1998) by sculptor Laurie Lundquist. (Photo: Kerry Lengel/The Republic)

Pedestrian overpasses are a common target for public art, since they’re seen (if not always appreciated) by thousands of freeway drivers every day. There are grander examples than the Nesbit Road overpass, but none that display the same visual economy, sculpting a perfect mountain range out of drab chain link.

Phoenix public art: “Peace” (1997), by Shannon Owen and Ronald Turner, is a civil-rights memorial at Eastlake Park. (Photo: Kerry Lengel/The Republic)

An arched canopy formed from the star and rays of the Arizona state flag sweeps around the sculptural Steps of Honor at this civil-rights memorial at Eastlake Park. The heart of a thriving African American community in Phoenix’s segregated past, the park was the starting point for protest marches on the state Capitol.

Phoenix public art: “Dunlap Avenue Tree Guards” (1990) by Garth Edwards. (Photo: Kerry Lengel/The Republic)

They’re basically cartoon figures, inspired by Western and Native American iconography, cut out of metal and lining a dusty stretch in north Phoenix that could use some friendly faces — although it’s not entirely clear what they are guarding the trees along the sidewalk from.

Talk to the writer about arts and culture at [email protected] or 602-444-4896. Follow him at facebook.com/LengelOnTheater and twitter.com/KerryLengel.