[metaslider id=3252]
When I was first starting at Fredonia, I remarked on how lovely the campus was. The grass was green, the stoners were smoking, and the landscape was bare as could be.
Seemingly overnight, piles of metal, wood and literal garbage started to appear on campus, and no one said anything about it — like when you’re at a party and your ex shows up: the atmosphere gets tense but you don’t want to say anything about it to avoid being “that guy.”
It’s time to break the silence. It’s time to be “that guy.”
Fredonia, we haven’t talked in awhile. Are you alright?
A recent study, conducted by none other than myself — Phyllis T. Cupp, the Lampoonist — showed that over 50 percent of art installations on Fredonia’s campus are ugly — a surprising jump from 0 percent when I first went to school here and there were no sculptures at all.
John Clement’s “Popeye,” the red steel sculpture outside of Rockefeller Arts Center, is awe-inspiring. It’s one of the staples of Fredonia’s campus, in all of its twisty glory. Comparatively, since its 2007 installation, things have just gone downhill.
Since we’re on the subject, have you seen Three Man Hill? You know, that hill with the three massive metal aliens who constantly watch over the campus? It’s about as welcoming as the idea of anal probes.
And don’t even get me started on most of the artwork between Mason Hall and Reed Library. I didn’t know I’d have to go over the hills and far away through Teletubbieland to get to a practice room.
It seems like the weird dystopian art never ends. Last year, in an effort to raise awareness about going green, a giant orange mesh briefcase filled with plastic bottles was installed near the Science Center. Recycling is cool and all, but subtlety is even cooler.
What is most eerie to me about the art is that it feels like it’s all been here for years: that, somehow, I’m intruding on its home, even though I’ve been here longer than some of it.
When one goes to Fredonia’s In Sight/On Sight page, the sculpture project initiated in 1999, there are dozens of images of on-campus sculptures. However, I have been here for years and have never seen half of them.
Is the website outdated? Or are these ugly monstrosities lurking underground, waiting to emerge at the perfect time to unsettle the students even more?
I mean no offense, Fredonia, but I have an art project for you to consider: it’s called “cleanup.”