You half expect to see Charlton Heston beating the sand here , don't you ?
"Oh my God. I'm back. I'm home. All the time it was... We finally, really, did it. YOU MANIACS!
YOU BLEW IT UP! AH DAMN YOU!..."
Around the bend from our place, on the new beautiful 24th Street bridge over Interstate 80
in Council Bluffs, the Iowa West Foundation (the philanthropic organization funded by casinos) has paid $3,000,000 to erect 4 pointy,twisted, partialy rusty structures.
When we saw the first rusty, jagged spires of "Odyssey" erected, the kids said that they looked like the Shards-O-Glass pops in the satiric anti-tobacco ad.
The bridge is at the first exit in Iowa on Eastbound I-80 from Omaha, Nebraska.
I thought those prickly things were like wrapping Council Bluffs' (and Iowa's) welcome mat with barbed wire.
Title: Paley’s “Odyssey” Creates a Destination in Council Bluffs, Iowa from Iowa West Public Art on Vimeo.
The artwork is complete, and NOW I see the important artistic statement in the completed structures. There is a message of warning here, and "Odyssey" is the perfect name.
As Circe warned Odysseus about the Sirens in Homer's "Odyssey" (Thanks, Yahoo search) Paley's "Odyssey" sculpture warns travelers what happens to those who follow the siren call. 
They look like shipwrecks.
Consider the shipwrecked lives of gambling addicts- the folks casinos depend on for as 30%-50% of their revenue.
It took Tens of Millions of dollars lost at casinos for IowaWest Foundation to spend $3 Million to fund this display, making Paley's Odyssey fitting, and an ironic bite of the hand that fed him.
4 comments:
When the moon is full, these "sculptures" come to life and combine into one big Transformer robot. Then the big robot just kind of sits there, so it isn't nearly as cool as it ought to be.
I think the Transformer observation's on the mark.
so great to see ya at WHT!...hope alls well my friend!!:)
The death of beauty -- it is inevitable that what is ugly and cold is now considered to be "art."
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