Gleeson.us has learned of a simultaneous horrible art scandal on the opposite coast from the events surrounding Nudegate. The Byzantine web of interconnected conspiracies is starting to coalesce. Take out your graph paper and start making your chart. Put “Horrible Art Scandals” at the top. On the east side is Washington, right? Well, on the west, write “Livermore.” Now draw dotted lines connecting everything. What further proof do you need?
“Okay, Sean, but why did you make me write ‘Livermore’?” you may well ask. It’s a town in California, which borders on the United States, the capital of which is Washington, a town comprising the home of one Kayti Didriksen, barmaid, and the offices of two very close senators, both named John. These two Senator Johns’ offices are in the same building, under the same roof. Coincidence? Wake up, America!
Sorry, got ahead of myself. The town of Livermore, CA, hired a Florida artist named Maria Alquilar to do up a nice mosaic for the town library.
“Livermore officials selected Alquilar in 2000 to create a mosaic at the entrance to Livermore’s new library. It shows a tree of life in its center surrounded by icons representing science, art literature and history.”
The townsmen paid $40,000 for this mosaic. Forty. Thousand. Dollars. Plus expenses. At the unveiling in May, the first thing they noticed was… well, how godawful hideous the thing is, I’m sure. But after that initial shock wore off, some of the more strong-stomached among them chanced to read some of these “icons representing science, art literature and history.” They found that eleven of them were misspelled.
Yes, eleven misspelled words. At the entrance to the library, of all places. Including Einstein (”Eistein”), Shakespeare (”Shakespere”), Michelangelo (”Michaelangelo”), Van Gogh (”Van Gough”), and Gleeson (”Gleason”).
Okay, not Gleeson. But there were eleven! And the really funny part is, they’re stuck with it! California has a bizarre Bad Art Protection Act which states that public art cannot be altered without the artist’s permission, and Alquilar refuses this permission. She’s quite insulted and personally miffed that anyone would be so “mean” as to want words spelled correctly at a library.
“None of us are particularly good spellers anymore because of computers,” she said. “When you are in a studio full of clay, you don’t give it much thought. When you look at Michelangelo’s David, do you point out that one [part] is lower than the other?”
Hey, Maria, you leave Mikalanjelo’s Dayved out of this.
More on this breaking story as it develops.
UPDATE 1: I’ve put three off-topic links in Charles’s comments sections today. Terrible habit, sorry. To make up for it, here’s an off-topic link back to his latest really good update on Rathergate. (Or is it off-topic? Mark my words, this could all turn out to be connected somehow.)
UPDATE 2: Nudegate: day three
UPDATE 3: View the comments to see the complete list of all eleven misspelled words.