Lansing: Cast in Stone
Written: Jun 02 '00 (Updated Sep 29 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Sculptures speak to our soul
Cons: The elements have damaged many of them
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| Redlass's Full Review: Michigan |
Review Topic: Sights & Attractions
Take a look around Lansing. You’ll see something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. A wedding? Nope. What you’re seeing are car parts, galvanized steel, wire tubing, molded bronze, kitschy cows (pardon, bulls), and melted pennies. No, it’s not a junkyard, it’s art–art of the public and permanent variety.
How many guests would be at a wedding of Lansing’s sculptures? According to the Smithsonian’s inventory of outdoor sculptures, taken in 1993, there are more than 200 outdoor sculptures in the Greater Lansing area. And you’ll find a little bit of anything.
Lady of the Lake
For a taste of something old, sample the artwork brought to Lansing by the Board of Water and Light. The Dye Water Conditioning plant on Cedar, just south of Oldsmobile stadium, processes water for the utility company. It was built in 1938, and the building itself could be considered a piece of outdoor sculpture with its carved doors and intricate stonework.
The 32-foot concrete relief over the main entrance is industrial art deco that could have come straight out of Gotham City. A woman, the mythical Greek water carrier Aquarius, stands erect in a Roman-style gown with the material draping below an exposed breast. In one hand, she props a pitcher of water on her right shoulder. In her other hand is a model of a turbine pump spilling water over her four thirsty children who cling to her gowns. The children represent the people of Lansing.
The artist, Samuel A. Cashwan, has many sculptures throughout Lansing, including “Open Cage” at General Motors, (see sidebar) “The Three Musicians” a Cubo-Futurist concrete sculpture at Michigan State University, and Moses, also at MSU. Cashwan was commissioned to create “Aquarius” and other works by the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration.
Rise and Shine
Continue your tour with a bit of something new. Beaner’s in East Lansing is home to a piece of abstract sculpture that is sure to inspire java-lovers. It is a full-scale silhouette in concrete with an abstract coffee table with the sun coming up over an abstract coffee cup.
The sculpture is called Buna Bet, an Amharic word for a shop where people gather to drink coffee, relax, talk, and study–much like Beaner’s itself. Amharic is the major language spoken in Ethiopia.
The sculptor, Jim Cunningham, a professor of veterinary physiology and African studies at Michigan State University, said that he tries to make all of his public art meet two criteria:
1. It has to be site-specific. “It has to somehow relate to the setting. The Beaner’s sculpture is symbolism about the profession,” Cunningham said.
2. It has to be understandable. “I want the art to be understandable–either through the piece itself or through the plaque. Sometimes abstract art is pretty inscrutable. I always tried to make pieces that are abstract but also can be understood by the average person.”
Heart of the City
More of Cunningham’s work can be found in the heart of Lansing–in a neighborhood called Fabulous Acres. In the middle of the community, on Garden Street near Mt. Hope and Washington is a park called Barb Dean’s Tot Lot that rose from a former parking lot of the Diamond Rio factory.
Cunningham heard about the revitalization of this neighborhood that once was overrun with crime, but had been turned around through the efforts of the neighborhood association. He created for the park a 13-foot sculpture out of stainless steel and bronze.
The sculpture consists of five shapes–one black, one white, one yellow, one red, and one bronze. Each represents one of the five ethnic groups that are represented in this neighborhood. The title of the sculpture? Community.
Why stainless steel and bronze? Cunningham began sculpting when he was a member of the Peace Corps; a sculptor in Nigeria took him on as an apprentice. Cunningham went from wood to stone to welded steel. He’d use the same type of steel that cars were made out of and paint them. “That material was subject to the same problems as cars, so I switched to stainless steel and bronze–they don’t rust and are more permanent.
Bring on the Rust
Not that all sculptors are worried about rust. At least one Lansing sculptor planned for his work to rust. In the late 60s and early 70s, a company that was then known as Universal Steel Company donated its scrap metal to students taking sculpture classes at Michigan State University and Lansing Community College.
“They’d come over a couple times a month while the guys were out to lunch,” said Karl May, a retired Universal Steel employee. “They’d go hog wild. They’d really appreciate it. They’d take it away but the truckload.”
One of those students, Robert Ellison, showed his gratitude by creating a sculpture out of his “something borrowed” material. The result of his work still stands in front of the building at 1800 Willow Street, which is now Alro Steel.
All of the material in the sculpture came from Universal Steel. It’s made of a material called Cor-Ten steel that was used for a while in the 60s for overpasses and building awnings. “You don’t paint it,” May explained. “It builds up its own rust and then it stops. The rust acts as a natural barrier. It was really a wonderful product.”
While the rust “protects” the steel, it can’t have water sit on it, or it will rust just like most steel. So Ellison designed the 13-foot sculpture so that no water would be able to pool on it. The entire sculpture is made up of curves that allow the water to run off.
Ellison got his masters of fine arts from MSU and continued his career as a sculptor. His works can be found in Illinois, Alaska, Wisconsin, Iowa, Washington State, and California. He has exhibited as a solo artist and in groups in shows throughout the country and overseas.
Pennies from Children
We like sculpture because it makes us feel civilized. Stone and bronze imbue us with visions of immortality. Cunningham pointed out that before the 60s, our outdoor art was most commonly a man on a horse, someone looking noble.
But it is not always the noble and grand that memorialize. It can be as simple as a child and a cat.
In 1927, in what was the worst act of terrorism in the United States until the Oklahoma City bombing, Andrew Kehoe set off dynamite charges at Bath Community Consolidated Schools, killing 37 children and 7 adults. Fifty others were injured.
The school was rebuilt with donations. Included in the donation were pennies saved up and donated by schoolchildren around the state. Carlton Angell, an art instructor and museum artist at the University of Michigan, was commissioned to memorialize the tragedy. He did so by using the donated pennies.
The pennies were melted down to create a copper statue–one of a little girl holding a cat with the wind, possibly from the explosion blast, blowing back her hair and dress. The child’s grief is found in her eyes and face as the cat hangs limp over her arm. The base of the statue is engraved, “Donated by the Children of Michigan.”
In 1975, the statue was moved to the museum at James Couzens Memorial Auditorium at Bath Middle School.
Mistress Mary Quite Contrary
What is a wedding without a flower girl? Lansing’s flower girl used to grace the 4-H Children’s Garden at Michigan State University. A sad and somber child, this sculpture stepped out of the pages of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Secret Garden.
The 4-H Children’s Garden is filled with wonderful kid-oriented art–from the Mama Bear shrub holding out its arms to hug visitors to the spitting frogs of the merry-go-round fountain pond. It is the sculpture of Mary Lennox, the lonely child in the children’s classic, that tends to linger longest with adult visitors. Perhaps because she reminds us that even sad stories can have happy endings. Unfortunately, her tale is now waiting a happy ending. Vandals recently attacked her and her presence is now gone from the garden. With luck, perhaps the vandal’s work will be undone and you will once again be able to see her.
Mary Lennox once stood inside the bricked off garden, which children can enter through the door or merely peek through the keyhole. She was surrounded by phlox, bee balm, and many other plants and flowers.
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
Fortunately, sculptures of children can evoke happy memories as well as melancholy. Oldsmobile Stadium, home of the Lansing Lugnuts, has been the source of Lansing’s revitalization and a growing excitement about downtown. What better way to turn the celebration into something permanent than by bronzing our images of innocence and exuberance?
Standing on a pitcher’s mound outside Oldsmobile Park is “The Natural.” Sculptor Gary Price captured the joy of an All-American kid as he stands on the pitcher’s mound with a baseball mitt on one hand and a ball in the other. The smile on the boy’s face is infectious, just try to look at it for very long without smiling back!
On the east side of the front lawn is a sculpture with several pieces to it–“Hometown Hero” is placed on a mock baseball diamond, with three children and the hero–a baseball player taking time to autograph the ball of one of his young fans. The hero sculpture reflects the diversity of fans–with one child being a girl, one being an African American, and the hero himself being either white or of Hispanic origin.
Make Mine Green
If we’re going to talk about sport icons, we can’t bypass the most famous, most photographed, most often guarded-by-band-members sculpture around–Sparty. Sparty sits in the heart of a campus rich in sculpture–it would take an entire magazine to cover all of the sculpture found on campus. Sparty is more than 11 feet tall and weighs 3000 pounds. He is the world’s largest free-standing ceramic statue.
It may be a fluke that Sparty holds that honor. The original plans were for Sparty to be cast in bronze. But sculptor Leonard Jungwirth was doing his work from 1943-1945–a time when the war made metals scarce. So Sparty was made of terra cotta and was salt-glaze fired at the Grand Ledge Sewer Tile Company.
Jungwirth, a sculptor and professor at MSU for 23 years, has more works throughout campus and Lansing. He created the city seal reliefs for the exterior of Lansing City Hall, “The Three Bears” at the Willow Street School in Lansing, and the Stations of the Cross for St. Thomas Aquinas Church in East Lansing.
And That’s No Bull
We have our something old, something new, something borrowed, and something green (we’ll leave the blue to that other university town in Michigan). But what is a wedding without gifts? Amid the china, crystal, and silver of wedding presents, there’s always a few gifts that make the bride and groom do a double-take.
Lansing art lovers will need to go north for their unusual gift. In Elsie, a 13-foot specked Holstein bull guards the intersection of this single stop-light town.
The bull is a 2000-pound sculpture, made of fiberglass, steel, and wire mesh. “It’s a village icon,” says Don Passmore, Elsie’s superintendent of public works. “Everybody sees it. It’s the first thing they see at the traffic light. They always stop, get out, and look at it.”
Placing the bull was Passmore’s first job after he got hired in 1990. The bull had been donated to Elsie by Jack Dykestra the previous fall. Sam Smith, a longtime chair of the Elsie Dairy Festival Committee, convinced Dykestra to donate the bull to Elsie when he sold his dealership. At the time, the bull was black and had been used extensively in television commercials.
Smith said that Dykestra called him on a Monday and said that if they could get the bull by Thursday, it would be theirs. Smith got Highball Crane to donate their services and they took cutting torches and moved the bull to Elsie. It sat in a barn over the winter and the women of the dairy festival came in and painted it to make it a Holstein.
Why a Holstein? Elsie is home to the world’s largest registered Holstein farm, the Green Meadow Farms.
Time for the Honeymoon
Like all good weddings, visits to these sculptures is just the beginning of a lifetime of discovery. Lansing is rich in statues, reliefs, memorials, and artwork. Sculpture speaks to our soul and Lansing artists will continue to create new works to inspire and puzzle us.
Note: This review was adapted from an article that was published in Lansing City Limits last summer. However, I am the author of said article and they purchased only first-time publication rights. Also, you’re getting to read the updated and non-butchered version.
Recommended:
Yes
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Member: Bridgette
Location: Lansing, Michigan
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