Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Patience for art naysayers at Ground Zero

Well, I'll miss the damn thing. If city workers do indeed peel the "Ground Zero" artwork off of City Hall to make way for an elevated sidewalk, I, for one -- maybe the only one, if the prevailing assumption is true -- will be sorry to see it go.

I'll miss the way it funks up the blank curve of City Hall -- Vegasizes it with strips of colored plastic. I'll miss the way it thumbs its nose at the churlish prigs who think "public art" has to be art approved by all the public (down that path lies bland statuary). And I'll certainly miss it as a symbol of the pitfalls and pratfalls of attempting serious public art in Las Vegas.

Of course, "Ground Zero" wasn't supposed to be any of that. As conceived by Boulder, Colo., artist William Maxwell, it was to be etched into the building's side. The sun would throw shadow patterns derived from desert wildlife, Paiute ghost-dance lore and Nevada's nuclear heritage. Meanwhile, at its base, computerized pumps would create animal shapes on the surface of a reflecting pond.

Of course, in America, public art is rarely a matter of simply hiring an artist to put up some art. We're fiercely egalitarian, suspicious of fancy-pants artists who, as we all know, enjoy nothing more than putting one over on us Regular Joes, and being paid handsomely in taxpayer dollars for doing it ("Ground Zero" cost around $200,000).

Equally problematic is the inevitable government involvement. Politicians flip-flop with every change in the public temperature, approving a project one day and bad-mouthing it the next; mid-level bureaucrats dig in their heels; the right hand, having lost the applicable memo, doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

In short, Maxwell's piece was compromised and redesigned several times.

And so we were left with what we have now, a flawed monument to a gimpy, politicized process. And, yet, it still could have been grand. "That first night, when it was really working, everyone liked it," says Patrick Gaffey, then a member of the Las Vegas Art Commission. But it broke down that night, and, although working out the bugs is part of launching any intricate project, it was never fixed. "If it had stayed like that, it would not be a failure," Gaffey says.

The piece has rarely gotten a fair shake in the local media. Commentators, who hate to appear hoity toity, rushed to make it clear they didn't like it. I don't know art from velvet Elvis paintings, ran the typical pundit line, but I know this sucks!

Last week, the libertarian brute squad on the Review-Journal's editorial page wasted no time gloating over "Ground Zero's" probable demise. It was a $200,000 taxpayer boondoggle, they said -- about one-tenth the boondoggle the R-J is trying to perpetrate with a proposed $2 million tax exemption on its printing press.

"I'm still in the process of finding out what's going on," Maxwell says. "They have not included me in the loop." He says he's willing to revise the piece to keep it viable in some form.

But that may not be possible. You can sense the relief emanating from City Hall at the thought of not having to deal with the carping and wisecracks any longer. "It was controversial, which art should be," Maxwell says. "It's not there to just be ignored." But, of course, that's exactly what politicians want in public culture -- safe, sanitary plop art that everyone thinks is cute and no one hates: bronze fire hoses that spell "art" and so on. Too bad. Public art should prod, provoke and dismay as well as please. Otherwise, what are we paying for?

Clearly the "Ground Zero" flap put a damper on serious public art in Las Vegas. Maxwell's piece was to be the first glorious step of an ambitious public art program. Let me know when you find the second.

Meanwhile, Maxwell is reviewing his contract with the city. "It contains certain provisions," he says, "provisions for artist protection, rights, things like that."

I hope they don't just trash it, I told him.

"I doubt that'll happen," Maxwell said. "But you never know."

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