Harvest Preserve made the Screaming Barn of Iowa City rise from the grave only a couple of days after I mentioned it after our autumn walk on October 2 (Monday). Halloween is the inspiration!
It looks great! There were enhancements in addition to the returning theme of grisly epitaph dad jokes.
It should be visible to a lot more drivers on Scott Boulevard in that area, mainly because of traffic detours from street construction.
What’s also different is a safety barricade which is for the safety of walkers. It stretches across the street entrance to the barn from Scott Boulevard. You can get great pictures from across the street near the Harvest Preserve entrance gate.
The other day we went out for a walk on Scott Boulevard. There is an old barn right across the street from the Harvest Preserve entrance. It’s picturesque but on that day, it was festooned with Halloween decorations including goblins and ghouls and the ground was covered with gravestones inscribed with comical epitaphs.
We’ve been in the neighborhood for a couple of years and the old barn never looked like this. I recall reading something on the web about it undergoing this transformation in the past, but I can’t find it now.
I got in touch with Harvest Preserve and they told me that, while ACT owns the barn, they let Harvest Preserve decorate it. That is awesome!
The skeleton flying near the top of the barn is a spooky spectacle. What’s just as creepy is the mannequin inside the barn. There is a big door in the back that’s open and when the wind blew it creaked horribly.
If this were permanent, it would probably qualify for listing on the Roadside America web site.
We took a walk on Scott Boulevard on a gorgeous day. We said hello to the Sitting Man. And we found a new sculpture of a praying dog just inside the entrance to Harvest Preserve. It looks like a very pious Bassett Hound. We don’t know the significance of the piece. I did a quick google search and couldn’t find anything comparable although there were hits on praying dog sculptures.
The Sitting Man reminded me of a quote I thought was by Winston Churchill and it turns out it’s by Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “Be sincere; be brief; be seated.” Sena did a pretty good job of calling a Mourning Dove. However, we never got a reply.
Also, inside Harvest Preserve yet visible from Scott Boulevard, is a sculpture of a boy climbing out on a tree limb to catch a cat. I wondered whether there was ever a quote about going out on a limb. It turns out there is: “Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb, that’s where all the fruit is.” There are variations of it and it’s often attributed to either Will Rogers or Mark Twain. Quote Investigator says it’s from a journalist named Frank Scully, who coined it in 1950.
I don’t know if we’ll ever find out what that praying Bassett Hound is all about.
Sena and I took a walk down Scott Boulevard today. The weather was practically balmy, compared to how cold it has been. Forty degrees above zero compared to 9 degrees below feels miraculous.
We walked past the Harvest Preserve entry. Across the street is what we’ve just learned is an old building that is known as the “Haunted Barn” (photo taken in August 2021).
We passed the 20-foot-tall, 110-ton Sitting Man sculpture, now on the west side of Scott Boulevard after it was moved from the east side of the road in July, 2020.
Today was the first time we trekked past the Sitting Man to Rochester Avenue and beyond. If we hadn’t, we would not have noticed a fascinating, blindingly white abstract sculpture mounted on a concrete block which we initially believed was on the Harvest Preserve property at the northwest corner of the intersection. Sena said it looked like a person, noting the head, arms, and body. I didn’t notice that.
After we got back home, I couldn’t find out anything about it on the web, no matter how much I connected the search terms to Harvest Preserve, the Sitting Man and so on. I found only one item with a photo and it was an announcement about a tour on Harvest Preserve in 2018. The impression is that the sculpture is on the property.
I sent an email inquiry to Executive Director of the Harvest Preserve Foundation, Inc., Julie Decker, whose email address is available on the website.
Ms. Decker informed me that the sculpture is technically not on Harvest Preserve property. She knew the sculpture is entitled “Family,” and the artist’s name was Eugene Anderson, who died in 2008. That’s all she knew.
It turns out that what little she knew led to an astonishing story that was even deeper and more engaging than we imagined. You can read the obituary of the Iowa City artist Eugene Anderson on legacy dot com. The highlights are that he started his career in architecture, was the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics (UIHC) architect for 25 years, and then began creating original art work to display in the hospital to comfort patients. He later became a full-time sculptor, and was on the board of directors for “Arts Iowa City.”
I was a medical student, resident, faculty member and a consulting psychiatrist at UIHC, a career starting in 1988 and ending with my retirement in June of 2020. It’s possible I saw some of Anderson’s work while I was galloping around the hospital.
In 1994 he created the “Family Group” series of sculpture which have been displayed at Chait Galleries in Iowa City, Des Moines Art Center, and the Brunnier Art Museum in Ames, Iowa. The piece we saw might have been one of those. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything on the web about the series.
And what is more intriguing, Anderson also traveled extensively, even to Egypt where he cruised on the Nile and took a sunrise balloon ride over the pyramids.
How is it possible that so little of Eugene Anderson’s life and work are not better known? Come to think of it, I guess time can erase the memory of our accomplishments.
This little story reminded me of the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. I’ve forgotten all of my college freshman English Literature but a web search indicates that Ozymandias was based on Ramesses II, a king of ancient Egypt. Ozymandias was a great ruler of a vast empire. His sculptor built a huge monument in the desert and gave it the oft-quoted inscription, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley-1792-1822
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Today we searched for links on the web to find out more about a mysterious sculpture. We found links of a different kind, links to a stranger and to the near and the ancient past. Anderson’s sculpture, “Family,” is still standing, tall, clean, and bright for all to see.
This is just an update on my Sitting Man post. I just found a YouTube presentation about the Sitting Man that clearly shows the title inscribed on the side of it was Man on a Bench in 2014. The inscription on the rear was illegible back then. I’m guessing that when the sculptors, Doug Paul and J.B. Barnhouse, moved it last summer from the east side to the west side of Scott Boulevard, they might have altered and refurbished the inscriptions at around the same time.
When we visited the site, the year inscribed on the side was 2013. Other people have described it as being finished in 2015. I’m not sure it matters to the artists. They might see it as a timeless artifact, which they happened to uncover, according to free-lance writer, Lori Erickson.
It reminded me of another sculptor’s work entitled Palimpsest by V. Skip Willits, from my post about the Iowa City Public Art Program. I think it might fit the palimpsest definition: something that’s been reused or altered but still has traces of its earlier form.
Anyway, back when it was on the other side of Scott Boulevard, it was even harder to access. It was on private land that you had to ask Harvard Preserve permission to enter. In fact, for photographer David Weldon, the path to the sculpture was muddy and difficult to climb in 2015. There was no parking and that is still the case. If you’re not within walking distance, you have to scramble out of your car and grab a quick snapshot while avoiding traffic. And it’s still on private land owned by Harvest Preserve, although now you don’t have to obtain permission to climb the hill.
The artists have said that The Sitting Man was never intended to be called a Buddha, although it’s often called just that. You can make your own interpretation of what it means to you. However, according to Roadside America, Doug Paul has called it “distinctly Iowan.”
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