Back in the days when WRVA played music and I was also member of the Circle 8 Square Dance Club, there was a song to which we actually danced called “Poor Old Kalijah” about a mute wooden Indian who couldn’t win the affections of an antique Indian maid.
I don’t know if this song figured in any of the conversations about the future of what is commonly known as the Diamond Brave. The sculpture is actually named Connecticut, and it's a constant thread through the past couple decades in the career of sculptor Paul DiPasquale, who built it.
And right now, it’s a 2,400-pound, 10-foot-tall challenge for the Richmond Metropolitan Authority, which needs to have the former Richmond Braves mascot removed by April 15, the start of the 2010 season, when the Richmond Flying Squirrels begin playing ball at the Diamond.
The RMA, in charge of the city’s expressways among other things, is the regional agency that also built and is responsible for the much-discussed Diamond.
The RMA has issued a Request For Proposal to move the sculpture to another location, “preferably within the greater Richmond area.”
To assist in choosing the proper disposition of the sculpture, the RMA appointed a group to oversee the decision. According to RMA spokesperson Linda McElroy, this includes: herself; RMA director Jim Kennedy; Venture Richmond’s Jim Watkins; Suzanne Savery, Valentine Richmond History Center's director of collections and interpretation; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' chief conservator and deputy director for collections management, Stephen Bonadies.
“A number of criteria will be involved in the process,” the RMA’s press release reads, “including, the proposer’s ability to maintain and care for the artwork, its ability to pay for the sculpture’s relocation costs, the future location and the public access to the sculpture. The committee will also take into account the proposer’s commitment to the sculpture’s long-term sustainability.”
It’s a tall order to fill.
“That’s wild, isn’t it?” DiPasquale said of the effort. He’s never known of an RFP offered to relocate a public artwork, and he hopes it’ll work. The sculpture is a coprighted work of art, meaning that DiPasquale has final say on its disposition.
“Selecting a place for public art is always unique,” he observes with a good-natured, if weary, chuckle. (His other best-known sculpture is the statue of Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue.) “Not just in recent times but since ancient times. But they are trying to do it the best way they see fit.”
He and Connecticut have been together a long while. DiPasquale was teaching at Northern Virginia Community College outside of D.C. when he chose in 1981 to commit to making a huge piece of public art dedicated to the native peoples. He quit his job and got permission to locate the sculpture at Calvert and Connecticut streets in D.C., overlooking Rock Creek Park.
“I was rather naïve at the time,” he recalls. “I didn’t know how much would be involved.”
He ran through the $10,000 he’d saved for construction of the colossal Indian of isocyanate foam with a skin of dyed fiberglass and epoxy resin. He raised more money in the process by selling 50 original etchings for $200, that sold out in two weeks.
The effort attracted the news media and got into the pages of the New York Times. This drew the attention of both Ed Slipek Jr., then in charge of the Best Products Showrooms stores real estate, and VMFA curator Fred Brandt.
Between them, they got the concept onto the desk of Best Products chief and pioneering contemporary-art collector Sydney Lewis, who favored putting it atop a suburban Washington, D.C., store. And that’s what happened.
“They had it for two years and paid me rent,” DiPasquale says.
Then Lewis retired, and Connecticut was suddenly homeless. The artist began shopping around for locations, but it was in 1985, with the Diamond’s creation and the arrival of the Braves, that the place and situation seemed perfect.
Signet Bank purchased the sculpture and gave it to the baseball stadium. “That paid for my barn,” says DiPasquale, referring to his Fulton Hill studio.
All was well until last year, when the question was finally settled of whether the Braves would stay or go. Since then, somebody somehow got in and ripped off a piece of a finger from the sculpture. McElroy can’t explain how the digital thieves did it.
“We cannot imagine how somebody could’ve stolen this piece," she says. "It would’ve taken a lot to get a finger off that statue. Whoever did it climbed up onto the concession-stand area, climbed down under his arm and squeezed through to get to that part of the finger.”
Dexterous, in other words.
Clearly something must be done with Connecticut; the Flying Squirrels don’t want him. Whether anybody else does remains to be seen.
“I think people will miss it being there,” DiPasquale says. “But they could get used to it if it’s displayed elsewhere, in an appropriate manner — and I should emphasize that — and an interesting one in the public-art realm. It served Richmond beyond being a mascot.”
He thinks the group making the decision is a good one, though he might’ve suggested adding the city’s community-development director, Rachel Flynn, and representatives from the city's economic-development and tourism departments.
Whether Central Virginia Indians may have reason to want it is a question fraught with political and emotional issues. Some Indians seem to like it, others not. According to the artist, “They’ve said, ‘Well, it’s not a Virginia Indian. It looks more like a Plains Indian.' ” Conversely, California Indians he's spoken to believe it to be more Eastern in appearance. “I guess it’s like saying, ‘Make a piece about an Asian,’ " says DiPasquale. "There’s any number of nationalities and ethnic components: Is it Japanese, Chinese, Thai?”
DiPasquale plans to make a presentation to the Virginia Council on Indians in March to gauge their interest in the statue.
