CALL FOR ARTISTS.

Pittsburgh Regional Transit is looking for artists to design artistic enhancements to the new University Line. The transit corridor will connect downtown with four universities, all of which hate each other, and will go through neighborhoods with long traditions of community activism. We are therefore specifically seeking artistic enhancements that are not very interesting, and thus are unlikely to attract unfavorable attention, or any attention at all. If you are an artist with pedestrian tastes whose art has been hailed by critics as “dull,” you may be exactly the sort of artist we are looking for. Get off at the Wood Street subway station, walk up Sixth Avenue to the PRT Downtown Service Center in the Gimbels Building, and speak to Mrs. Beeler behind the counter, and if you can make her understand what you want, you have passed the first stage of the selection process.

Comments

  1. One of the Chicago L stations near me has this as its law-mandated public artwork. It’s supposed to be lotus blossoms that double as architectural columns holding up the roof, and triple as places people can sit (but not quite sit comfortably or securely enough to fall asleep or anything like that).

    When first installed, half the neighborhood demanded the columns be removed because they looked too much like a part of the male anatomy which Dr. Boli’s spam filter would probably rather not have me mention by name, even using Medical Latin.

    • Occasional Correspondent says:

      Looking to Sanskrit rather than Latin, the terms yoni and lingam are on offer, albeit it can require a bit of research to be sure which is which.  (It will be interesting to see whether this comment passes muster with the good doctor’s filters.)

      • Ironically, I *do* know those terms very well, but it’s all thanks to a parody mashup of “Xena: Warrior Princess” and “The Pirates of Penzance” that I read on USENET almost 30 years ago now. I believe the lines in question went something like:

        “My armor’s very scanty
        but my weapons are ironical
        my sword is very phallic
        but my chakram’s rather yonical
        and to understand what that means
        you must study Indo-Aryan
        I am the very model of a Heroine Barbarian!”

        It is AMAZING what sort of stuff sticks in your brain forever, while important stuff like did I take some meat out to thaw for dinner today or not get forgotten almost immediately. Almost as amazing as the fact that the parody musical in question was first posted to a discussion group for Quakers, of all places.

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