It could be outdoor advertising as rendered by animated anarchists Ren and Stimpy. Or, in a more retro analysis, it might be described as Lady Bird Johnson`s worst nightmare come to life.
Whatever it is that glares into a curving stretch of Illinois Highway 122 from the farm of Tom and Connie Korn, it says a lot about the tolerance of rural Americans for weirdness plopped in their midst.
Consider the controversy in cultured Chicago when the Picasso sculpture was unveiled in the Daley Plaza.
Ponder the recent stink in sophisticated suburbia over the ”Big Bil-Bored” junque art in Berwyn`s Cermak Plaza Shopping Center.
Now weigh the volume of complaints that the Korns have received concerning the wacked-out billboard that has stood on their farmland since May, when a Chicago artist, some of his buddies and assorted small children erected it about 15 miles west of Bloomington in central Illinois.
”The only negative comment I`ve heard came from a friend of our oldest son, who asked him if his parents were hippies or something,” said Connie Korn.
Not even Picasso dared to invite public comment by putting his private telephone number on his gift to Chicago, but the creator of the Korns`
contraption did just that.
Artist Ken Indermark of West Rogers Park inscribed, ”Oh My God!
Shrineworks,” and his phone number on a corner of his work. And from whom has he heard?
”Just three newspaper reporters. You`re the third,” the artist said.
”Surprisingly, I have not gotten any calls complaining about it. Maybe it`s because its location is not all that traveled,” Indermark theorized,
”but I put it there because I liked the idea of a surprise around the bend.”
`Found` items
The story of the Chicago artist`s surprise around the bend in rural McLean County began last fall when he staged an exhibit of his work at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington.
A Missouri native, the 48-year-old artist describes his work in general as ”assemblage-construction three-dimensional sculpture.” His A-C, 3-D work usually incorporates ”found” items, which are sometimes described by the less artistically inclined as discarded junk: wrecked bicycles, tossed-out toys, old hubcaps and such.
”I collect a lot of my materials from Rogers Park alleys,” he confirmed.
As a sensitive child and as a sensitive adult artist, Indermark is influenced not so much by Picasso or Renoir or any of the usual suspects as he is by ”See Awesome Meramec Caverns!” and ”Jesse James` Hideout Ten Miles Thataway!” he said.
”I have found that a lot of my stuff refers to the roadside attractions that excited me as a boy,” he said. ”I remember begging my parents to turn and go back after seeing a sign about Meramec Caverns. The lure was there, and for me the message was probably more exciting than the show.”
Indermark, who has a degree in fine art from the University of Kansas, said he is also intrigued by the creations of outsider or visionary artists whose work, often known as folk art, springs from pure inspiration rather than formal art education.
Folk artists often take everyday items and put a new twist on them. Indermark`s twisted take on tourist billboards is a departure from his usual work, which has generally been tabletop-compatible, said Joyce Patton-Kavanagh, a Bloomington artist who curated his Illinois Wesleyan exhibit because she enjoys the whimsical nature of Indermark`s art.
A perfect match
”I grew up in the Ozarks, too, and I found a kindred spirit in him,”
she said. ”His work reminded me of the signs and junk shops in the Ozarks. I like the humor and the power of them, the juxtaposition of the serious and the absurd.
”For lack of a better description, I see a sort of whimsical sacredness to his work,” she said.
During his exhibit at Illinois Wesleyan, Indermark told Patton-Kavanagh that one day he would like to build one of his works on a larger scale in a rural setting. As it happened, the curator knew someone who knew someone who might be interested in having one of Indermark`s works, she said.
The Korns were ripe for outrageous art, Indermark discovered.
”Really, I was surprised that anyone would want it,” he said.
Indermark remained skeptical until he met Tom, who is a firefighter for the city of Normal and keeps honeybees on the side, and Connie, who works in an auto parts store. The Korns have a few hogs and chickens but do not farm crop land.
”The first time we visited their place, Tom was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt and he told me he couldn`t figure out where he went wrong with his son-who raises pigs and is a Republican-and I thought, `Yeah, this guy will like my stuff.` ”
The artist was also impressed because Tom had erected his own medium with a message on his property.
`We`ll take it`
On March 15, 1989, a tanker truck carrying a load of Treflan weed killer failed to negotiate the section of Illinois 122 that curves around the Korns` property.
The tanker crashed and spilled a toxic green ooze that wiped out all vegetation on that corner of the Korns` property and caused a mess that took hundreds of thousands of dollars and more than two years to clean up.
While lawyers bickered over who was responsible, the free-spirited Tom Korn erected signs to protest what he perceived as irresponsibility on the part of the company that spilled the goods on his land.
”Polluters have rights too-rights to your tax dollars to clean up their spill!” read the notices he posted along the road.
When Indermark visited the farm and saw Tom`s protest signs, he arrived at a theme for his own work, the artist said.
”I thought it would tie in perfectly with my roadside spiritual-type themes, so over the winter I did some sketches and sent them to Tom to make sure he was still interested,” Indermark said. ”I wanted to make sure they knew what I was going to do on their property.”
The Korns concluded that their scarred corner and the artist`s scary work were perfect for each other.
”After I saw an exhibit of Ken`s work and all the junk in it, I said,
`Hey, we`ve got a whole art supply warehouse at my place,` ” Tom noted.
”We also thought: `Free art? We`ll take it.` ”
Team effort
The artist constructed bits and pieces of his work in his garage before heading to the Korn farm in mid-May. A friend from Missouri and his two children and a load of lumber rendezvoused with Indermark there, as did the Korns and their youngest son, David, 7.
All pitched in for a sort of New Wave, old-fashioned art-raising party. The children were allowed to paint the work and to make handprints at their whim, and when they were finished the environmentally concerned artist nailed their paintbrushes to the sculpture.
The adults affixed ornamentation such as a stuffed goose, an old bicycle, a pair of gilded cherubs, a windmill and several bouquets of plastic flowers. Scattered lettering jig-sawed across the art-board delivers the cryptic message, ”See! Sacred Land On Rt. 122 at Curve.”
”I like the sacred land concept,” Tom Korn said. ”People stop and ask me where the sacred land is, and I tell them, `It`s all sacred, I guess.`
Others have asked me what it means, and I tell them that whatever it means to them is what it means.”
A friend of Korn`s, whom he described as ”famed horse breeder and art critic Jeff Curry,” came up with this frank assessment: ”It means somebody wanted to save a couple trips to the dump.”
As for himself, Korn interprets the work as a ”roadside attraction-a cheap and gawdy roadside attraction.” He confessed that as the billboard was pieced together he fretted a little over the reaction of his neighbors.
Just don`t look
Farmer Bob Iutzi and his wife, Bonnie, live directly across the road from the sign, which radiates into the east side of their home. Bob Iutzi said his primary concern was not so much a matter of taste as a fear of traffic.
”When it first went up, it was almost a traffic hazard,” the neighbor noted. ”If you are headed west on the road, you are halfway around the curve before you see it and people were just slamming on their brakes and stopping right there on the road to look at it.
”Luckily so far, nobody has been right behind anybody who did that.”
Noting the irony of something so unattractive touting the sacredness of the land, Iutzi said he did not particularly care for the artwork, but added that he doesn`t plan to protest it publicly.
No lawsuits. No letters to the editor. No petitions. No protest demonstrations. In rural America, if you don`t like looking at something, you deal with it in a straightforward, sensible fashion, he said. You simply don`t look at it.
”I would just as soon not have it there,” Iutzi said, ”but we generally keep the curtains closed on that side of the house anyway.”
