Sitting atop a cascading stepped waterfall and overlooking both Castle Square and the fountain which forms its centerpiece, Amber Hiscott and David Pearl’s half leaf / half boat sculpture is one of Swansea City’s most attractive public works of art. The piece takes as its inspiration the line ‘We Sail a boat upon the path, paddle with leaves down an ecstatic line of light’ from Dylan Thomas’ poem ‘Rain Cuts the Place we Tread’. The glass sculpture, unveiled on 27 November 1996, stands glistening and proud even after nearly 20 years of display - a remarkable feat considering its location at the entrance to the city's infamous Wind Street (a controversial area that is often castigated and which has been described by one of the city's own MP's as 'an area of drunkeness and debauchery').
Amidst a long, gloomy and very wet winter, the Leaf Boat, with its gold-tinted glass panels aglow from the rays of long-missed sunshine, was a real tonic to my eyes today. Swansea is often much maligned for its love of concrete, its poverty and disrepair. But this jewel of a scene reminded me there and then that Dylan Thomas' description of Swansea, as being both ugly and at the same time lovely, stands as true today as it did in his day.