WHAT AND WHY RI Time for a lesson on that fun downtown clock

Providence’s downtown is filled with a collection of creative and quirky spots, if you know where to look.

There are unusual bits of history, like the Greek-style Arcade building that has the distinction of being the oldest enclosed shopping mall in America. You can’t trip without discovering a new restaurant that you want to try. There are festivals like WaterFire, which glows in a category of its own. And then there’s the public art.

It’s a bit of public art that brings us to this week’s What and Why RI question, from a reader who wanted one of the downtown’s landmarks explained. “What’s with that squiggly clock ... in Providence?” they asked.

It’s called the Time Wave clock. Towering over Washington Street since 1998, the Time Wave clock was designed by California artist Robert Ellison, and it was picked from more than 180 proposals from around the country by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts as a public art piece to complement a renovation of the Shepard Company Building. “There was a feeling that this stretch of Washington Street was pretty gray and blank,” Randy Rosenbaum, then executive director of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, told The Journal when the clock was installed. “I think the selection panel that picked Ellison’s work was looking for ways to bring it to life.”

When designing the clock, the artist, who did visit Providence prior to submitting his design, said he wanted to create a counterpoint to the original cast-iron Shepard clock that stands on the other side of the building on Westminster Street. To juxtapose the formal design of that clock, he conjured up a 30-foot piece with squiggles and swooshes painted in bold purples, greens and yellow-oranges.

“It’s meant to be very colorful and animated,” Ellison told The Journal when he came to watch the piece being installed. “It’s not supposed to be something you have to think too much about. It’s supposed to be fun.”

The state, through the Art in Public Places program, paid $80,000 for Time Wave.

What and Why RI is a weekly feature by The Providence Journal to explore our readers’ curiosity. If you have a question about Rhode Island, big or small, email it to klandeck@gannett.com. She loves a good question.

KATHY M. BORCHERS/THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL The Time Wave clock is raised by crane to its location on Washington Street in downtown Providence in 1998, under the direction of artist Robert Ellison, left, and his assistant Don Spitzer.

KATIE LANDECK/THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL The Time Wave clock, with its squiggly design, was designed by Ellison, a California artist, as a playful counterpoint to the Shepard Company Building’s more traditional cast-iron clock.