Lawrence Argent's I See What You Mean, better known as the Big Blue Bear, turns heads as it peers into the Colorado Convention Center.

Herbert Bayer's towering, yellow Articulated Wall improves any trip on Interstate 25 near Broadway.

Like many pieces of public art, they are impossible to miss. But there is another variety of public art that is nearly invisible - until you know where to look.

Call it a case of hiding in plain sight: These works offer a surprise for those who walk or drive by that at first may shock, but ultimately rewards.

The potential demolition of the buildings in the Broadway block that includes the Colorado History Museum and Supreme Court reminded us of the remarkable mural installed under the arch of the latter.

And it made us wonder: What other art is out there that is installed in such a way it's hard to spot? We asked readers for their suggestions and found out we're not the only ones who enjoy an element of discovery from a piece of art.

So join us for a look at five notable pieces of public art that are easy to miss, as well as a list of other works good enough to inspire a hunt.

More not to miss

Other public works of note suggested by readers, as well as Rocky art critic Mary Voelz Chandler:

• Sound art in this region belongs to Jim Green. Soundwalk (Curtis Street between 15th Street and the 16th Street Mall) is a surprising piece, even if you know it's there. It can catch you unaware because that block is so, well, unspectacular. Green's work also is in the Colorado Convention Center (Laughing Escalator) and Denver Art Museum (Singing Sinks in the Ponti building).

• Look up: Erick Johnson received reader mentions for two suspended pieces: Tail Spin, in the Colorado Convention Center lobby, and Calculated Risk, a piece hanging in the outdoor entry of the former Permit Center. They exemplify Johnson's skill at taking industrial materials and turning them into soaring sculpture. The convention center piece was reworked from another that had hung for years in the former convention center.

• Defining the term "hide in plain sight" are Kevin Oehler's Jade Spire and Union Spire, wood pieces installed in 1990 in lower downtown. Jade (17th and Blake streets) and Union (14th and Wazee streets) were restored by the artist in 1994, though Jade continued to deteriorate and was recast in bronze in 1998. The latter, especially, is part of photographer Diane Huntress' daily routine through lower downtown.

"It gets your eye going upward," she wrote. "It seems to have started out as a classical column that got chipped away to reveal an interior of geometric designs which was worn away to reveal a stone rope which would have kept going if it hadn't been capped. As a passerby it seems like a familiar shape out of the corner of your eye. 'What a nice flagpole! But, they forgot the flag.' . . . It is comfortable and yet challenging about its meaning. To me it lifts the spirit."

• The Denver Zoo has installed several small bronze sculptures on pathways through the place. A monitor lizard, by Paul Rhymer, caught the eye of zoo visitor Christina Strickland. "It is located on the main path across from Predator Ridge. Seeing this wonderful piece of art always gives me a smile and an appreciation of the work that went into making this figure."

• Reader Bob Cooperman tipped us off to a large abstract piece in front of Penrose Library at the University of Denver. "Ever since I attended DU in the mid-70s, I've been in love with the figure-eight sculpture in front of the Penrose Library," he wrote. "It does everything sculpture should do in the way it changes shape with each step the viewer takes walking around it. And it's fitting that it's in front of a library, since the piece is both an implacable solid, the way wisdom can be, and also constantly changing, as in the state of knowledge in any given period of history."

Turns out Gyo Obata, architect of the library and then-head of design for HOK, commissioned the 1973 piece as a gift to the school. Its title, Bullet Proof Campus Art, by Charles O. Perry, stems from a joke made to the effect that the school wanted something " 'bullet-proof' to resist the depredations of the student body," according to Dan Jacobs, director of the school's Victoria H. Myhren Gallery.

And, yes, it is a fine work.

Tell us more

Know about great public art that others might have missed? Go online to tell us about the piece and where it can be found at:

RockyMountainNews.com/ drmn/spotlight

A reader wrote that Jonathan Borofsky's huge white Dancers near the Denver Performing Arts Complex was hard to notice. Another suggested the same for the giant bronze cow and calf behind at the Denver Art Museum's new Frederic C. Hamilton Building. In both cases, all we can say is: If only.