Monolith Mystery
I assume you have read about the monoliths appearing around the world.
Fifteen space aliens, disguised as senior citizens, carried a steel monolith through Eden Park in Cincinnati, Ohio standing it up only briefly to rest before proceeding on their way. The dozen photos below prove it.
Because of Covid everything in Eden Park was closed.
The Cincinnati Art Museum was closed.
The Cincinnati Art Museum was closed.
The Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park was closed.
Krohn Conservatory was closed.
There was no traffic.
Hardly anyone taking a walk.
We had been in quarantine most of the year.
We got too close to each other unnecessarily here.
We were starved for human interaction. And some just plain fun.
My friend, Brad Newsham, said, “So you threw some hippie at it.”
We did.
The volunteers asked me to think up another lark do next.
Above photos by Prince Lang
Space aliens from other planets created monoliths with invisible welds. Spot welds gave mine texture. And this did have to be created practically over night, be light weight enough to be carried by space aliens who were retired, and be able to be cut apart afterwards so that the material could be made into other art if no one bought it. But someone did. It now resides in the offices of The Elevar Design Group, Inc., the architecture firm that bought it. Maybe I should have signed it.
Update: The June 18, 2024 New York Times reports a new monolith was found near Gass Peak in the Desert National Wildlife Refuge north of Las Vegas. The photo of it shows it to be triangular in cross section, like mine, but of a polished stainless that gives it a mirror finish. So it’s still going on. And by people with the time and money for polished stainless (of the type I use in the disks that I make).
Another Lark?
The volunteers from my lark want me to think up another lark? Hmmmm. What about this? I’ve long wanted to make a sculpture, of sorts, a mile long. It would be a single line of text, on pavement, of a selection from Huckleberry Finn, the best Black Lives Matter story that ever could be written, taken from the most important work of literature ever written on this continent, with “n…..” used to substitute for the word that had no negative connotations when it was written (and therefore could return to that status someday). It could be laid down with spray chalk sprayed through templates. There are spray chalks that wash away in the rain. So it should be done in summer during a dry spell so it would last a few weeks. It possibly could start at the exit from the Freedom Center, Cincinnati’s Underground Railroad Museum, snake across the bridge through Kentucky and back to where it would end at the entrance to The Freedom Center in Ohio where one finally was on the northern side of the Mason Dixon line. But other cities could be appropriate too.
Could part of the lark be helping to do the crowd funding to finance it (to pay for templates for all that text, a pallet load of spray chalk, permits, feeding the people spraying the chalk, etc.)?
Isn’t it about time someone pointed out that Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn was inspired by a story that a black woman told to him as they sat on the porch of his house one evening chatting? And that he did not hate black people? And that the original reason that the book was banned shortly after it was published was that it showed a black man and a white man living as equals, making it the first important work of literature to do that?
Could the whole thing be approached in a light-hearted enough way to make it a lark that was fun to work on? In this day and age, I suppose the backlash might be too intense. But if you think we should do it, send me a note: Contact
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