Campus art critique

As students rush onto campus to avoid being late for class, many cannot take time to stop and smell the roses, let alone take time to stop and appreciate the art.

Ohio State is bursting with sculptures and structures. Some of the pieces seem to pop up overnight, while others seem to have always been around, stumping even the fifth-year senior as to when the public art arrived on campus.

The number garden, mysterious pillars that support nothing, a turbine blade, a pyramid of cinder blocks, a sprawling aluminum structure and scaffolding not part of the building process all raise speculation as to their artistic merits.

"They just look like they are out in the middle of nowhere," said Jennifer James, a sophomore in business, regarding the pillars standing at the corner of Woody Hayes Drive and Tuttle Park Place.

The columns were a gift from Austin Knowlton, the benefactor of the new school of architecture. He wanted to see a part of the project completed in his lifetime. The columns are "accurate representations of the orders of architecture," said Julie Karovics, the public art program manager at OSU.

"The idea was to build them at full scale, out of marble, in proportions so that they become a teaching tool," said Jeffery Kipnis, curator of architecture at the Wexner Center. "It's a page out of a book turned into a marble sculpture for no reason whatsoever."

Sometimes really bad art becomes popular because of the affection that people have for them, Kipnis said. "It's like loving the runt of the litter."

Kipnis said the columns are the worst of the bad art existing on campus.

Michael Hunt, a graduate student in math, disagrees with Kipnis' harsh criticism. "I like them here with the new building and all. It's sort of a view into the future."

The Garden of Constants, located outside the Central Classrooms building, was installed in the spring of 1994 by artist Barbara Gygutis. It is perhaps one of the most puzzling pieces of art on campus.

The Garden consists of a group of 10 large number sculptures, and a collection of numbers and symbols set into the main walkway pavement. The largest of the numbers is 16-feet-tall.

The prime numbers are grouped together; all of them stand vertically and are the same color.

Zero and one are covered with tile because they are the binary numbers which form the basis of all computer language. Zero is placed separately in the center to express its importance as a counting device.

The 46 insets in the sidewalk are symbols and numerical representations of mathematical constants compiled by faculty and graduate students housed in Dreese Laboratory.

Opinions on the garden vary.

"I think it's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen. It's embarrassing," Kipnis said.

"The teal is ugly," said Brian Dennis, an undecided freshman. "I'm not big on this symbolic crap."

Joe Cora, a junior in computer science, says he thinks it looks like something preschoolers would come up with.

"I don't know how you can call that art," Cora said.

One of the most interesting parts of campus surrounds and includes the Wexner Center. One feature many students notice is the large grid of white scaffolding along the east side of the building.

Visiting performer Spaulding Gray once told his audience before his show that the Wexner Center was like a "spaceship that crash-landed on the prairies."

To the Wexner Center architect, Peter Eisenman, the grid resembles a scaffolding that typically encloses structures that are under construction. The scaffolding was designed to suggest a structure that was forever coming into completion, never quite finished.

"It's really all about the idea that architecture has a right to demand as much attention as art," Kipnis said.

To the north of the Wexner Center is a white block pyramid named "Tower". It was created by world famous artist Sol LeWitt.

Originally this was only temporary, but university officials liked it and decided to keep it.

"They have no idea what they are talking about," Kipnis said of the Campus Art and Memorial Committee, which is in charge of selecting the public art around campus. "They just liked that fact that it's by a famous artist."

LeWitt is famous for his works using modules, which are systems based on grids.

"Tower" was a witticism to reflect Peter Eisenman's work with grids on the Wexner Center, which was LeWitt's specialty.

"It was great at the time, but to have that thing up there forever and ever I think is really a shame," Kipnis said. "It was intended as a witticism, and nobody wants to hear the same joke for 10 years."

"It's a mathematical equation," said Jared Gambatese, a senior in Japanese, "and it would make a good grinding surface."

The sculpture consists of eight related geometric components arranged vertically as tiers of a tower.

The first level of the tower is eight blocks wide and one block high. Each subsequent stage decreases one block in width and increases one block in height.

Each tier follows the same rule: The sum of horizontal and vertical blocks on the facade of each stage equals nine.

"I don't pay much attention to it unless I have to walk around it," said David Kaplan, a sophomore in political science and international studies.

South of the Wexner Center, in front of Page Hall is the white aluminum sculpture "Breaker" by David Black. Black is an internationally recognized sculptor who lives in Columbus and is a professor emeritus at OSU.

Milton Folson, a graduate student in chemical engineering, said he has never really noticed it.

"It's interesting that it has no definite shape to it," he said.

As for what "Breaker" represents, students are left bewildered.

"I have no idea what it is," said Evan Lubline, a sophomore in history. "It's some sort of something that has fallen. A plane, maybe?"