Posted on 08/02/2006 5:31:41 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
(CBS) CHICAGO A plan to beautify a new CTA station with art is raising some eyebrows.
Critics say the sculpture resembles a certain part of the male anatomy. CBS 2's Rafael Romo reports on the offending flower.
At a Northwest Side workshop, Chicago’s next public art project is being created. Josh Garber is a local sculptor in charge of creating the two pieces of art that will decorate the Kimball CTA station.
“These are petals right here and they come up to about 20 inches above the ground,” Garber said.
But his sculptures are in the middle of a controversy. Some in the Albany Park community feel they look phallic, after seeing a picture that was e-mailed to community leaders.
“I can only compare it to the leg bone of a chicken,” resident Ann Telfer said and laughed.
But Garber says the picture is stretched out of proportion.
“Someone would have to get down like this and look up and just see the two petals narrowing in to the stem, and who's going to get down on the ground at the Kimball Station and just lie there and look at that?” he said.
The community group that approved the project is standing by its choice.
“Nobody in the group saw this or any inkling that this was sexual in nature or phallic in nature or whatever,” said John Friedman with the Hornet Park West Association.
Some CTA riders say they especially like the fact the sculpture's petals will double as chairs to sit on.
“We need to have something … for the people who come to the "L" have an appreciation of and that it is enhancing of the city,” said resident Barbara Morton.
As to the phallic resemblance, reaction is mixed.
“I've been to Rome. I've seen more,” Telfer said.
The project's title is "Hope and Renewal" and it reflects the aspirations of the immigrant community that lives in the area.
Interested in seeing the models for the Kimball Station Art Project? The following exhibit is open to the public:
It is obviously a flower.
And people think that is phallic... there a lot of orchids that look like female genitalia.
It doesn't look phallic.
It also doesn't look like art.
It looks like crap.
Should have made a 30 foot vagina.
Then the critics would be raving.
The most remarkable carrion arum is the titan arum or bunga bangkai "corpse flower" (Amorphophallus titanum). Native to equatorial tropical rain forests of Sumatra, Indonesia, this amazing plant flowered at the New York Botanical Garden in 1937. At its maximum development, a spadix over 8 feet tall (2.4 m) emerged from a huge vase-shaped, pleated spathe over 4 feet (1.2 m) tall and 12 feet (4 m) in circumference. This floral giant developed from a tuber measuring 6 feet (2 m) in circumference and weighing over 100 pounds (46 kg). According to B. Meeuse and S. Morris (The Sex Life Of Flowers, 1984), the enormous blossom generates such an overwhelming smell that people have been known to pass out from taking too close a whiff.
I don't think it looks phallic, some folks look to deeply into thinks...sometimes a piece of art is simply a piece of art...
Well, if it's big enough that you can sit on the lower parts
then the only view you are going to have is looking up at it.
Sounds like a sweetheart deal for the sculptor.
I think they meant to say it looks "pathetic."If they think that's phallic, we'd better cover all the fire plugs. It's just bad art.
Sometimes a cigar, is just a cigar.
It's hideous, but it doesn't look like a penis.
It takes one to know one, I guess. Looks like crappy art to me.
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