photographs by Gus Samarco

You know the days when you get home, but you don’t actually remember making that specific turn into your neighborhood or cars you passed along the highway? Our brains have an extraordinary ability to tune out objects that we see everyday through a process called adaptation. Unless something new comes along or changes, we can ignore—truly not see— what is literally right in front of us.

On the following pages, we discover anew striking additions to familiar local surroundings: sculpture. Whether you’ve yet to find time to visit these works or, for whatever reason, mentally edited them out of your day-to-day, here’s a chance to readapt. Sculpture can transform a plain landscape and energize a space through color, material, location, and even interactivity. It helps distinguish one city from another by telling its story and showcasing its distinctive history, icons, culture and vision. It’s time we take a second look. —Laura Petrides Wall