CHANDLER: Striking a blow for 'free-range' culture

Mary Chandler

Published December 12, 2008 at 3 p.m.

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Since 1990, Denver's Percent for Art program has installed more than 207 pieces of art.

Most are pleasant enough, but not particularly noteworthy. And some - for example, the piece everyone calls the Big Blue Bear - are overnight crowd-pleasers.

But every once in a while, a piece of public art hits some sort of nerve.

Maybe it's anger at something challenging being put in a public place. Maybe it's annoyance that money from a publicly funded construction project is being spent on art when it could feed the hungry, clothe the poor, cure the sick and clear a path to world peace. And maybe it's just confusion over a work that is conceptual in nature and abstract in form, and not intended to be lovable.

Thus the buzz over National Velvet, a sculpture by Colorado artist John McEnroe installed last month on the Platte Street plaza at the foot of the pedestrian bridge that spans I-25. The work cost $53,000, is 20 feet tall (including its pedestal) and is illuminated when the bridge is.

At night the work looks like a cross between an outdoor fire pit, a massive glowing ember and a beacon asking people from both sides of the highway to come together - especially when viewed from the Highland side of the bridge. During the day, the piece is an obelisk-like mound of shiny red organic, well, blobs.

It makes you wonder what it is - and that's not bad.

Others have called it, variously, Beanis (the madcap Caplis and Silverman show on KHOW radio), a plate of wieners (a co-worker) and a pile of intestines (a Highland resident), plus some other body- part phrases that look ridiculous in print (a Westword blog).

"We get complaints any time we install something," said Kendall Peterson, who administers the city's Percent for Art Program and adds that any phallic chatter misses the mark.

"It's more like an obelisk. To me it looks like charcoal briquets."

She said KHOW has asked to examine the city's records on how the piece was chosen and funded. There, they will learn about the wonkishness that underpins the public-art process.

All that aside, National Velvet is very John McEnroe, an artist who during the past decade has pushed the limits in exploring the use of various materials and innovation. In this case, he filled prosthetic pantyhose with silica sand, piled up hundreds of "bags" to form a cone, coated it with layers of red resin to form a hard skin, then drained the sand from the back to reduce the weight and create a space for an interior light.

McEnroe was a finalist for the much-delayed commission with another Colorado artist, Andy Miller. McEnroe originally proposed that a work be put on the underside of the bridge, a graceful span designed by the engineering and design firm Jacobs as the final part of a three-bridge link from lower downtown to the Highland neighborhood.

Engineers decided that would not be a good technical move when dealing with a concrete span, and in the interest of safety, the installation site was moved to the bridge plaza on Platte Street. A work with titles such as Odalisque and Red Dervish eventually became National Velvet.

"I struggled with that a long time," McEnroe said. "I wanted a title people could recognize. It's a velvet thing or a scarlet thing."

Any sort of flap over the piece is fine with him.

"It encourages me that a single object can still provoke thought and action," McEnroe said. "Most public art is sort of designed to please the public. But it should be as good as the art in a museum."

McEnroe thinks part of the reaction is because the work is not in a museum or gallery, but right out in the open. He calls it "free- range culture," where a work becomes a surprise. "I don't deny I'm trying to make something that's never been made before, or seen before. It's what I do."

The president of Highland United Neighbors Inc., Kristin Morley, likes that "free-range culture" concept but says the response she's heard from her neighbors about the piece has been less praise or complaint than "a little apathetic" or a comment on it being goofy or creepy.

There also has been curiosity about how the work was selected and how the site was chosen. The Highland side of the bridge, after all, "ends at a cement plaza. A lot of people are confused," said Morley, herself an artist.

Still, Morley said, "I've enjoyed the discussion it has sparked. I'd rather have people hate it or love it than be apathetic about it."

If the city wants to put more pub- lic art in that part of town, she's all for it. With $3.6 million in Percent for Art money from the 2007 bond- issue vote earmarked for 40- plus projects, that's a lot of territory.

And a lot of potential hysteria for those allergic to free-range culture.

Chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2677.

National Velvet

* What: Percent for Art sculpture by Colorado artist John McEnroe

* Where: Platte Street side of the pedestrian bridge spanning I-25

* Price: $53,000, tied to the costs associated with construction of the bridge

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