Last year, just after we got back from our vacation to America, one of my first blogs was a commentary on an art project in our neighborhood. Mostly, I did not approve. Most of the exhibits seemed to me strikingly inartistic, cobbled together, ugly, and pointless. Like a lot of modern art, like a lot of installation art. I couldn’t wait for it to all be gone.
And then,eventually, most of it was. I don’t recall the point at which it all disappeared. Like a cold or a minor ailment, like a sore foot for instance, you don’t really perceive the moment when it’s gone. Just, one day it’s not there and your mind is taken up with other things.
But, there are still two pieces left over and, being as it’s almost a year later, I guess they’re sort of permanent. And, it’s O.K.
One looks like a black leather sofa that’s been folded over so it sort of looks like a kneeling man, in between our local pizzeria and our local supermarket, and it’s not leather it’s like fiberglass or something. I think of it as a monument to Colin Kaepernick, although I have no idea if that was the artist’s intent.
The other is in the park, and I thought of it as perhaps the ugliest piece of all. A bunch of metal containers, cylindrical in shape and with holes in different lattice patterns. They looked like some kind of military surplus item, khaki green with peeling paint to reveal the rust below. Thing is, though, they are very popular with kids. It’s like an instant fort, or a place to play house, I guess, all depending on the age, gender and inclination of the child. Empty spaces just waiting to be filled, worlds just itching to be colonized.
So, I guess they had some artistic merit after all.
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