POST SCULPTURE

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In 2012, a friend alerted me to the absence of Post Sculpture from its site and I thanked her for her observation and wrote the following:

 

MY POST SCULPTURE

HAS HAD QUITE A LIFE! 

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Within a week of installing the five sculptures I had a call from University Security notifying me that one was missing. As I stood on site with the security officer, wondering where the 500 pound above-ground section might be, I conjectured that since it was the end of the University’s final exam week and spirits run high then that some nearby fraternity may have taken them up the hill to their frat.

 

But “No,” the security guard said, they wouldn’t have been that ambitious!” So we scratched our heads and then he said, “Look in the water—isn’t that a long, rusty color? Sure enough the culprits, after breaking the piece off at ground level had only been able to throw the piece a few feet onto the lower bank that was under water.

 

So the University, now owning the sculpture in return for my use of the site, pulled it out and I had to spend a week welding it together. (I was pretty disgusted with vandalism!)

 

After just a few years, the University decided to bring a pipeline across the river at the point the pieces were planted and I directed them to move the 5 pieces closer together—that was better for the presentation of the art, too.

 

Following that, a top piece fell off of one and I notified the Sculpture Department in the School of Art & Art History. I was told to bring the piece to the studio and they promised to repair it. After a couple of years of not seeing it return, I asked the head of Sculpture if they had made some progress. They were still trying to get to it, he said. A couple of years later when I asked, he apologized—someone had stolen it (or more likely melted it down for their own sculpture!) So now we were down to 4 “posts” from 5, so I had the University dig up the rest of the one missing post.

 

Then the University decided to install steam tunnels across the river, again in the area of the sculpture. While installing those steam tunnels, we experienced the 2008 massive flood and construction on the tunnels dammed up the river.

 

I’m not real certain, but by 2011 I noticed that the top of another one had fallen off. I contacted the University and was told they had the piece and were waiting to hire someone to re-weld it. In late 2011 I had an advocate in UI’s Physical Plant who was going to bat for me to get the work done. I asked that they repair it or else once again remove the one that was damaged.

 

Another friend emailed me in spring 2012 telling me she had looked for, but had not seen any of the posts on the site. Her observation came as a surprise as the “posts” were not visible from the nearby streets that I regularly drove by and I wondered if the University had become tired of the sculptures and had just decided to scrap the whole thing or were they still going to repair the one that needed it?

 

That remains an unsolved mystery. Interestingly enough my original concept was that over maybe a thousand years, nature would subsume the work because Post Sculpture points to people putting up boundaries to separate themselves from each other. In addition, the dagger-like underground part was almost like an assault on nature as well as society’s decisions in general. So maybe, instead of waiting so long, nature just wanted to play this out in my lifetime?