I guess it’s about time to update some earlier blogs, since the world of public sculpture changes and grows and it would be unfair for old stories to moulder and die…
My first entry in January told of the discovery of 140 shoes filled with butter found in the highlands of Sweden. The “artist” who left them was unknown, but top contender was Chinese Yu Xiuzhen who had done something similar in Tibet. But the word is out now and it’s nothing so exotic. According to Stargeek.com, “It's an art project by German/Swedish photographer Boris Duhm who put the shoes on this mountain and filmed it and he will be showing it at an exhibition in Sweden in January. He forgot to tell the locals.”
Also in January was the story of Kalat, an Iraqui sculptor who shaped the melted down remains of a Saddam statue to honor an American solider with a little girl behind him. The press here reported that he had been forced by Hussein to make busts of him, and tha tit was gratitude that had spurred the new work. Not exaclty true. He hadn’t been forced by Saddam, but he needed the dough and when gvien the opportunity to sculpt the dictator to feed his family, he did it. And it was the same spur that stuck him when American soldiers came and asked him to do a statue of their comrades. The ticket was $8 grand and each side got what he wanted…
And on May 26th, I wrote about recent art thefts, including that in Reston, VA of a life-size statue of a woman in shorts. A few weeks later, the cops found the $38K babe, battered and cracked, in a paint-huffer’s apartment in Fairfax County. They’d busted him near his apartment complex’s pool and a housekeeper who was supposed to care for his pets tips off the authorities. The sculptor was relieved and expressed hope that she was well-treated.
10:57:42 PM 
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