Different interpretations
Community members share ideas about sculpture
John Krudy
Issue date: 3/6/08 Section: Focus
The concrete and bronze sculpture has stood in the center of the Hillsdale County Courthouse lawn since 1981. It's been there so long people have forgotten what it means. It's been there so long, people don't even remember whether they like it.
"It's alright," says Karen Woodward, an employee at Nash Drugs, which sits opposite the fountain on Hillsdale Street. "It's something about being suspended between heaven and Earth, I think. I wish they'd make the water shoot up a little higher in the summer."
Up the street, Aaron Williams leans back from the counter in David's Dolce Vita, and stares hard out into the winter light.
"It's some war memorial type thing," he finally declares. "It's fun to look at when you're hammered."
A drunk, snow coming over his boots as he trudges across the courthouse lawn from Broad Street, doesn't find the same inebriated and aesthetic pleasure in the art.
"This sculpture," he half-shouts, facing the fountain's sunny west side, "is about all the people who have died in wars, ever. Do you know what's wrong in Iraq right now?"
John N. Pappas, the creator of the piece, admits he wanted the statue to have multiple meanings, but it's doubtful he meant to evoke such varied feelings.
"It's intended to be design-oriented and figurative," says Pappas, who taught sculpture at Eastern Michigan University for 40 years before he retired in 2000.
The fountain, he says, is called "Commemoration," and intimates the headwaters of the five rivers that spring from Hillsdale County, and the American Indians who once lived around them.
"Literal images didn't fit with Indian art," says Pappas. "Their figures were rarely more than stick-figures. I used the circle and square of the fountain to symbolize the Earth, the bronze to evoke the Indians who were forced to march out of Hillsdale County."
Those figures are the most striking part of the work. Their roughly shaped, clay-textured bodies, joined together, stretch garland-like across the circular hole in the concrete square on top of the fountain. A leafy branch of bronze runs in a cord across the top of the circle.
"It's alright," says Karen Woodward, an employee at Nash Drugs, which sits opposite the fountain on Hillsdale Street. "It's something about being suspended between heaven and Earth, I think. I wish they'd make the water shoot up a little higher in the summer."
Up the street, Aaron Williams leans back from the counter in David's Dolce Vita, and stares hard out into the winter light.
"It's some war memorial type thing," he finally declares. "It's fun to look at when you're hammered."
A drunk, snow coming over his boots as he trudges across the courthouse lawn from Broad Street, doesn't find the same inebriated and aesthetic pleasure in the art.
"This sculpture," he half-shouts, facing the fountain's sunny west side, "is about all the people who have died in wars, ever. Do you know what's wrong in Iraq right now?"
John N. Pappas, the creator of the piece, admits he wanted the statue to have multiple meanings, but it's doubtful he meant to evoke such varied feelings.
"It's intended to be design-oriented and figurative," says Pappas, who taught sculpture at Eastern Michigan University for 40 years before he retired in 2000.
The fountain, he says, is called "Commemoration," and intimates the headwaters of the five rivers that spring from Hillsdale County, and the American Indians who once lived around them.
"Literal images didn't fit with Indian art," says Pappas. "Their figures were rarely more than stick-figures. I used the circle and square of the fountain to symbolize the Earth, the bronze to evoke the Indians who were forced to march out of Hillsdale County."
Those figures are the most striking part of the work. Their roughly shaped, clay-textured bodies, joined together, stretch garland-like across the circular hole in the concrete square on top of the fountain. A leafy branch of bronze runs in a cord across the top of the circle.
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