"Leland 1" is the official name of the ugly sculpture I continue to think of as "Rusting Chunks No. 5". That link, and this one provide some additional info about the artists. Apparently other works by one of the artists have been stolen. And this one hasn't, probably just because it's so big. Still, you'd think that a few enterprising meth tweakers could make short work of it, score a fair amount of money for the scrap metal, and do society a big favor in the process. But no. Not so far, anyway.
That abomination should not be confused with an unrelated artwork that came up during a search on the phrase "leland 1". I rather like this painting. Its actual title is "1994 X", where X is the Roman numeral. Seems like quite a sensible naming convention to me. The "leland 1" connection is that the artist's last name is Leland, and this is the first of six images on his faculty bio at the University of Tennessee.
Meanwhile, the (again unrelated) leland.com simply offers a photo of a happy middle-aged couple, with the caption "Future home of leland.com". One could argue it's actually the current home of leland.com, technically, and it's just a very small home. But it's probably not worth arguing about. The Leland Report, once again unrelated, covers Leelanau County, a beautiful corner of the Michigan lakeshore, and a place that I'd never heard of and was entirely unfamilar with until just now. It's an oddly fitting place to end up, since outsiders often wrongly imagine that all of Michigan is a barren landscape of rusting chunks, which sort of brings us full circle, or something.
Updated: Linky from Edward Blank.
Updated 7/31/2010: Added a Google map and a Flickr slideshow, for added tasty modern interweb goodness. Sorry 'bout that, dialup users...
Updated 10/5/2020: Replaced that crufty old Flickr slideshow with a non-Flash one as Chrome is pulling the plug on Flash support at the end of the year. The replacement is not exactly tasty or modern, but at least it'll work next year. Also enlarged the map to fit the margins this humble blog has had for mumble-mumble years, since I was in the neighborhood anyway.
2 comments :
I had the occasion to visit the town of Leland, Michigan. I ate dinner at a local restaurant and the next day came down with HEPATITIS. The whole downtown smells like an old fish, and the locals brag about it, calling it fishtown. I'll never go back.
You may want to consider renaming your sculpture.
You are not kidding about the smell in the downtown area. The smell must diminish on cooler days. When I visited it was summertime. The smell was just awful.
I noticed the smell even while indoors. I never could determine if the smell was from old fish coming from those shacks along the river, or the town people.
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