artistic murals banned in plant city

Without question, art is subjective.

Where one sees an armrest, another might see a penis.

Let’s say that when you look at a certain public mural painted on a downtown public wall, your first thought is “Hey, I think that’s a penis.”  Where do you go from there?

If you are the Plant City City Council, you claim that all murals are bad and they should all be banned entirely forever.

Let us back up a bit.

Mural Artists James and Blake Emory, along with David Rothman were commissioned to create a new painting in downtown Plant City.  They final result was to be an homage to Norman Rockwell’s The Game, which appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post for April Fool’s day in 1943.

These artists had already completed a couple of other murals in Plant City, and this latest project was unveiled at the end of July.  In August, city council ok’d another mural, although no specific artist was mentioned (in the article).   Some time later, someone noticed the funky-looking armrest.

Temperatures soared, complaints were lodged, and the artists ended up repainting the armrest out of the picture.  Alas, it was too late.  Plant City Council Chairman Mike Sparkman had a photograph of the original, and the public hearing was set.

Trib reporter George Newman quoted Sparkman in his article:

“We have an obligation to protect our kids, or citizens, and this community from things that are not of our character, and things we do not want in our community. To think we could allow this kind of trash is ludicrous,” Sparkman said, holding a picture of the mural… “We have to stop it and we have to stop it now.”

But it was stopped!  The artists had already repainted the offending portion.  Still, city commissioners voted 4-1 to basically ban any new outdoor paintings in the historic downtown area.

Perhaps another mural flap from these same artists were in commissioners’ thoughts while voting.  Back in 2008, one Plant City leader accused these guys included a racial stereotype in a public painting, saying a black woman was drawn to look like Aunt Jemima.  The complainer later admitted he was wrong, but the woman had disappeared from the painting anyway.

To be sure, we certainly don’t want to see guy junk displayed in a public area in any manner – we’re happy the artists were quick to change it, but to outright ban all public paintings is a little parochial, don’t ya think?