Roy Exum
It’s not much of a secret that I’m a pretty tough art critic and am not bashful about guffawing at what some people may think is attractive. It is also true that I’m not a big fan of “public art” because I believe, in a neat and orderly world, it is more often than not as out-of-place as wearing brown shoes with a tuxedo.
So the other day, just before the City Council spent $27,000 in the middle of a recession to buy a sculpture of an ocean wave breaking over some empty railroad tracks, I hooted the move and, in doing so, violated one of my most rigid principles. I hurt a friend.
When I illustrated my latest case of “stupid is as stupid does,” I focused on the newest piece of public art to dot our horizon, which is a sculpture of a fat man and a poodle that now stands in front of the Tallan Building at the corner of Martin Luther King Blvd. and Carter Street.
Had I only known that Cessna Decosimo was the artist, I would never have mentioned it because I’ve adored him and his free spirit forever. Cessna’s daddy has built one of Chattanooga’s finest companies and, at the same time, Joe and Rachel Decosimo have raised one of this town’s greatest families. Several of Joe’s boys work for their father and have further strengthened the financial firm.
But Cessna is the misfit of the bunch and, oh, I adore that. Once a lawyer was talking to the singer Willie Nelson about financial planning and Willie said, “Let’s not plan – it’ll be more fun.” That’s Cessna. While the other Decosimo boys are straighter than a No. 2 pencil, Cessna is a box of brilliantly-colored crayons.
And while there is absolutely nothing wrong with being prim-and-proper – it is quite admirable – my hero Cessna has evermore charted his own course and I dearly love the way he lives in Technicolor while some of my friends know only black-and-white.
That said, on Friday I got a pointedly-pithy e-mail from Tom Decosimo referring to the statue of the fat man and the poodle and Tom slapped me around about mocking it, which is fine by me. But minutes after I sent him an equally-dumb reply, I got this horrible sinking feeling because it dawned on me that Cessna, one of the brightest stars in my personal constellation, just might be the artist.
Well, it was true. I came to find out that the fat man and the poodle actually belongs to “Poppa Joe” and that Joe himself decided to put the piece on display in front of the building where his huge company does its noble work. So here I am, making mockery of the fat man and the poodle, when in fact Joe is so proud of the statue Cessna created he wants to share it with the community.
Don’t I feel like the dummy! Cessna is the same guy who created the wonderful monument down on Market Street to honor our policemen who’ve been killed in the line of duty and he also did the huge sculpture that stands in front of the tow-truck museum. Word has it he’s also done a beautiful work at Bryan College in Dayton that I am eager to see.
When they dedicated Finley-Davenport Stadium some years back, I was standing next to Gordon Davenport when they unveiled a bust of him that Cessna had done. Gordon squinted at it and asked, “Do that look like me?” and somebody immediately quipped, “Nah, it’s better lookin’!”
So allow me to say that, today, the statue of the fat man and the poodle in front of the Tallan Building is “better lookin’” than it was on my first impression and the thought that I may have caused Cessna some strife is more than enough to warrant a sincere and public apology.
In his e-mail Tom said that I am sometimes the butt of jokes around the Decosimo table and that doesn’t bother me at all – that just means they are giving somebody else a rest. And when big Joe wrote me a zinger after I called Signal Mountain a “police state,” my responses were running about 20-to-1 so that didn’t faze me either.
But to think that I slandered or hurt Cessna in any way runs completely counter to what I’m about because his free spirit, his delightful laugh, his unique presence and his zest for life is something I admire so very much and for me to put a dent in any of that is not the person I aspire to be.
Now, do I think the “Rail Wave” is ridiculous? I sure do. Am I against “public art?” Not if it’s done with taste and style. My view is that the arts community has among it some misguided souls who need to take a course in what is tasteful from people like Tony Portera, whose sculpture garden is so very wonderful because it all fits.
But Cessna earned an “off limits” pass from me many years ago and when I take off against the “white wine” crowd in the future, I’ll do a better job of watching out for my protected species.
royexum@aol.com