Go Retire Psychiatrist

Well, it has been a week and we wondered if the Iowa City Sculptors Showcase for Art in the Parks latest 2026-2028 had the title/artist plaques installed yet. The Iowa City Parks webpage that’s supposed to notify people about the progress of the showcase was down for some reason (“Page not found”) today.

No new plaques yet. But we braved the 96-degree heat (heat index probably nudged the temperature close to 100) to see the sculptures again.

One of my personal favorites, the one we call the Walking Man at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area, was festooned with extra decorative additions from passersby. He was carrying a bouquet of wilted wildflowers in his left hand and an empty water bottle in his right hand.

And there’s this thing poking out of a hole which is probably his throat which somebody might have thought was his mouth and stuck what was maybe intended to look like a marijuana joint. But that’s just me.

It looked like that the first time we saw it last week, but it was grass wrapped in white paper towels with twist ties to hold it together. Today, it was replaced with brown paper. Sena removed all this and we threw it in a trash receptacle.

Sena thought several of the sculptures needed a little fixing up. They did seem a little loose and springy, even my favorite, the Plumb Bob on the Iowa River Trail.

The Shoe sculpture at Mercer Park struck us today as being less of a mystery and more like a pattern puzzle. It’s really pretty clever. See if you can figure it out. We think we have the answer. Comment if you think you know what it is!