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GREAT GALLERY ON THE PLAINS
Written by: Rhonda Chriss Lokeman, The Kansas City Star, Kansas, MO., USA
8/17/2003
GOODLAND, Kan. There are some things one has come to associate with the Midwest, some of them based on fiction some of them based on fact.
Take those Kansas cornfields just off Interstate 70, for instance. It may or may not surprise some of you to learn that crop circles, depressions made by enormous spaceships, were seen there.
No, they've not been, really.
The aliens haven't landed in Goodland. Not as far as anyone can speak of anyway.
But seeing as how Hollywood has furthered this image of the Midwestern farm belt as a destination point for everyone from E.T. to unidentified slithery beings (see Signs ), it wouldn't exactly be shocking to happen upon a field flattened by an extraterrestrial SUV.
Such is the portrait of Small Town, USA. Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and crop circles. Right? Not exactly.
How about van Gogh, as in Vincent van Gogh, the brilliant and tormented late artist? Think about lovelorn Mr. One Ear and you think immediately of Goodland. Admit it. You do. You do if you've been to Goodland lately. It can't be helped.
Like or not, there's a giant-sized van Gogh reproduction rising from the prairie. It's adjacent to a cornfield (of course!) and a hop, skip and jump from several motor shops.
Kansas may be flat as a pancake elsewhere, but not in Goodland.
Goodland is where Canadian artist Cameron Cross' Big Easel Project: Sunflowers includes a 24-by-32-foot-high van Gogh reproduction atop an 80-foot-high easel.
This part of Sherman County is the only place in the United States that Cross chose for his exciting but slightly controversial sculpture. The project involves placing different van Gogh sunflower reproductions van Gogh did seven in various cities around the world.
First came the sunflower in Altona, Manitoba, in Canada in 1998, then another in Emerald, Australia, in 1999. Goodland, the third stop on Cross' serious tour de farce, accepted the artist's proposal in 2000. The sculpture, consisting of four panels of paint and Fiberglas, has been up in Goodland since 2001.
Just down old Highway 24, look up in the Goodland sky, and it rises right smack dab in the middle of an open field. Like those crop circles, you'd have to see this to believe it.
Seeing is exactly what the Sherman County Convention and Visitors Bureau hopes you'll do. County officials and merchants, even those with a harrumph stuck in their craw, would like to make a little money from this. While you're here for the van Gogh, they wouldn't mind if you also stopped by the airport restaurant for the pie lady's famous rhubarb pies or strolled down Main Street for some antique shopping.
Why should Oakley, home to Prairie Dog Town, with its six-legged steer and other oddities, have all the fun?
You come into Goodland and there's the van Gogh, the one-room schoolhouse, the museum and so much more, said Donna Price, director of the county Convention and Visitors Bureau. It's a great entry for our community.
It was Cross' intent to have the sculpture last indefinitely. When asked when it would come down, Price replied, It won't.
The artist explained his reasoning behind the project in a mission statement online at
www.thebigeasel.com.
By placing virtually the same sculpture in seven countries with distinct cultures, I am curious as to how these sculptures will be interpreted, Cross wrote. The Canadian and Australian will certainly view the work differently than the South African or the Argentinian. Will the sculpture be perceived for its reference to the sunflower, van Gogh, or art in general?
The local reaction has been mixed. Cross isn't surprised. I think that's the nature of public art, he said in an interview Friday from Winnipeg.
The response outside Goodland has been mostly favorable. The Goodland art has been written up in several Kansas newspapers, in at least two recently published travel books and appears in the August issue of Midwest Living magazine.
Aside from a grant Cross received for the project from the Kansas Department of Commerce, no taxpayers' money has been spent on the project, Price said
Cross' choice of Goodland makes sense, and not just for the wild sunflowers that proliferate the landscape.
Goodland basically is sunflowers, Price said. We are one of the places in the nation where everybody sends their sunflowers.
Cross said: My goal was to erect these sunflower easels in places that had some relevance to the sunflower and van Gogh. Altona's the sunflower capital of Canada, and Emerald is in Australia.
Price points out that a leading manufacturer of sunflower oil has a plant in Goodland and so does a maker of sunflower confections. Furthermore, a well-known potato chip company has switched to using sunflower oil from Goodland as a healthier alternative to other oils, she said.
Judging by what's happening in Goodland, not only is the sunflower art big but the sunflower market may be as well.
Rhonda Chriss Lokeman's column appears on Sundays. To reach her, call
www.kcstar.com
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