John Raymond Henry’s “Pittsburgh” (aka “The French Fry sculpture”), Frank Curto Park, Polish Hill

To call reaching the awkward Frank Curto Park–on foot, in the snow–a “slog” makes every other legitimate slog seem like mere inconvenience. It’s just two miles from home, but the ascent of the Bloomfield Bridge, up and down through slick Polish Hill back streets, and then the final unpleasant half mile hike along busy Bigelow Boulevard on an uncleaned roadside walkway deserves its own taxonomy for journalistic hardship.

But we’ve had this one on the Orbit‘s big list for some time–and you don’t mess with a blogger’s list! French Fry Sculpture in snow the item reads and that’s what we were after. With this weekend’s first legitimate whitening coinciding with a gloriously obligation-free Saturday, well, the die was cast. We booted-up and made the super slog.

Officially titled Pittsburgh, John Raymond Henry‘s giant public art piece is more commonly referred to by locals as “The French Fry Sculpture.” That’s clearly a bit of gentle fun-making, but it’s not undeserved. Aside from the zip code it happens to reside in–and possibly the Aztec gold that echoes the color of the “three sisters” bridges (and others) downtown–there’s just not that much that cries out as any reference point to our fair city.

On the other hand, the long squared-off yellow pieces collide in a cattywampus pile as if tossed directly from roiling oil bath to serving tray by a giant. These can’t help but abstractly resemble a certain delicious deep-fried side dish this city takes with perverse seriousness. Pittsburgh: you’ve been rebranded.

According to PittsburghArtPlaces.org, Pittsburgh (the objet d’art) was “created as part of the 1977 Three Rivers Arts Festival Sculpturescape program. The work originally resided at the University of Pittsburgh near the Hillman Library” [before moving to Frank Curto Park the following year].^[1]

The piece is very much of its time–and maybe that’s no coincidence. Henry seems to have in part defined that time as he was something a big name in the big public art world for a couple decades, starting in the 1970s. The artist has several dozen such “monumental sculptures” in public parks from Miami to Salt Lake, Washington, D.C. to Sioux City. Why, if you’re a second- or third-tier urban center without “a Henry,” you’ve probably got a lonely patch of grass and some bored public works crews.

The Orbit remains undecided. The piece has been well-maintained by its owners (the city), but that’s not to say it’s aged gracefully. It has a certain generic modern public art feel and a clumsy scheme that makes one all too aware of its joints. Looking at Henry’s other works (similar in aesthetics and scale, but often more visually successful) this one just feels like it doesn’t hit.

That said, as a blast of high-saturation yellow, it reads well against the lush green of the park in the warmer months, and still pops when surrounded by white snow and bare trees, as we see here. It’s something you can appreciate whizzing by in a car on Bigelow (probably the way most Pittsburghers have experienced it) and still rewards actually stopping in the park and giving it a walk-around. And hell, who doesn’t like french fries?

Note: There ended being a lot more to talk about here than we first expected, including our harrowing egress from the park and the obvious questions Who was Frank Curto? What’s up with this “park” that no one can get to? and What about the wild turkeys that hang out there? It also turns out the space has a number of other public artworks, as well as a art garden project–you just wouldn’t catch any of this through the windshield. We’re going to save all these for a future Orbit story.

Sources:
[1] Pittsburgh Art Places entry for Pittsburgh: http://pittsburghartplaces.org/accounts/view/628
[2] Frank Curto Park wiki entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Curto
[3] John Raymond Henry website: http://johnhenrysculptor.com/