Readers sometimes ask me where my ideas for these essays come from. Heck if I know! Actually, they’re triggered by the ordinary — and sometimes extraordinary — events of living.
Often one thing leads to another and one connects the dots. As one ages, one has more “dots” — experiences — whose interconnectedness one sees. The most recent series of columns was sort of a serendipitous accident. We updated our wills, and I thought about what would become of my cherished prehistoric axe head. A conversation with archeologist Michele Greenan kindled an interest in the mounds of ancient native Americans that are all that remain of a far-flung civilization.
I used the Internet and also bought a book about the mounds and their builders and ended up with far more material than I could handle. For example, Abraham Lincoln commented about visiting a mound in Ohio. I came across a funny story. The bones of an oddly shaped skeleton were found in Alexandria, Indiana. Thousands of people came to look at it. Eventually some wags admitted that it was a hoax and that the misshapen skeleton was made up of chimpanzee bones that they had stolen from the Muncie zoo.
Last week Bill and I were Grand Rapids for a few days where a wonderful event, the Art Prize, takes place. Hundreds of artists from all over compete for the top prize of $200,000, second prize of $100,000 and other prizes. There’s art everywhere — out in parking lots, in hotels, restaurants and bars, private homes, museums, and down on the river. Even on weekdays , throngs of people walk around, view the art and vote on their phones or laptops. We were smart this year and avoided Saturday because it was estimated that 100,000 people were there on Saturday last year! A desire to create and enjoy things of beauty existed long before we came along. For example, the wonderful paintings of animals in the caves of Lascaux, France, were painted about seventeen thousand years ago. I saw pictures of attractive objects crafted by those who build the mounds here in America.
You’d think that art would always be a peaceful and contemplative experience, wouldn’t you? Not so! One of the goals of the founders of the Art Prize is to promote public dialogue and discussion about art, and they have surely succeeded!
Last year the judges of the Art Prize disqualified an artist’s big dragon that was made of thousands of gold buttons because she had supposedly violated a rule that an entry could be no older than a certain number of years. Bill’s niece, Lynn, and we encountered her this year when we were looking at her entry, a huge griffin made of bamboo that she said took eight months of twelve-hour days to create. She said, “And to think that I was in the top ten when they disqualified me last year!” They did away with the rule this year.
Grand Rapids’ civic symbol is a red, metal, modernistic sculpture by Alexander Calder that caused controversy when it was installed in front of the Mayor’s office because some declared that it was a piece of junk. This year the organizers permitted an artist to scatter white flowers on it. Someone notified the Calder Society who complained that it was an insult to the artist. The flowers were removed.
One artist sculpted four nude figures. One of them was a male figure that faced a busy street. Drivers craned their necks and slowed to gawk, so they turned the statue away from the street. I understand that sometimes the role of art is to comment on the human condition rather being beauty for beauty’s sake. However, for my part, I might have refused the entry because those had to be the ugliest renderings of human bodies with sagging bosoms and bloated bellies I’ve ever seen! rwclarke@comcast.net
