decision <\/a>by the Fruita Arts & Culture Board means Zafira was moved Friday to an undetermined location, wrapping up days of public outcry from some in the community who found the nude representation of the dancer to be out of step with public art. Justinian said the pushback on the piece \u2014 entered in the city\u2019s HeART of Fruita sculpture exhibition\u2014 came as a surprise. <\/p>\n\u201cI certainly wasn’t expecting it to get as big as it has, the controversy. There’s always a couple of people that may have a comment about things, and I’ve had comments here or there about my work,\u201d Justinian said. \u201cI mean, I think that’s part of the role of public art is to start conversations, and so plenty of people are going to have something to say about it, but I didn’t expect it to be a super controversial thing, and she is supposed to represent joy. That’s really why I built her.\u201d <\/p>\n
Much of that conversation, for better or worse, played out online via social media and community message boards, with opponents noting that the anatomical element of the statue in question would be at eye level for children and supporters noting that Michelangelo\u2019s David is universally considered to be a masterpiece. Some teased that the first syllable of the city\u2019s name should be replaced with the word \u2018prude\u2019 in light of the discussion. <\/p>\n
The decision was ultimately made by the volunteer arts board after consulting with Justinian. The board also considered removing the statue or modifying it. Before that, the matter did rise to the level of the Fruita City Council, drawing public comments as well as discussion over how the statue was selected. <\/p>\n
Zafira is actually the second statue Justinian has displayed as a part of the sculpture series. During a city council meeting last week, Council Member James Williams noted that the second statue \u201chasn\u2019t caused any issue.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI wonder why? It\u2019s a naked woman as well, but it\u2019s not grotesquely a naked woman. So, maybe there\u2019s an issue there that people can go, \u2018Hey, maybe not everybody\u2019s completely prude.\u2019 There\u2019s a naked woman right there and nobody\u2019s having a problem with that,\u201d Williams said. <\/p>\n
That sculpture, Molly, depicts a woman in binary and was built using exhaust pipes, Justinian said, creating a gap space down the middle of the body of the woman depicted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought that the negative space was cool and the idea of playing with a split personality. So she has the two sides with the two different colors. We have cool colors on one side and warm colors on the other,\u201d Justinian said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Justinian\u2019s art, including Zafira, has been displayed elsewhere in Colorado. In fact, Justinian said Zafira was pulled from a display in Parker early for similar reasons. Justinian said Zafira\u2019s status as a statue scofflaw won\u2019t impact future artistic decisions. In most cases, Justinian said, the statue is received with the joy intended.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe’s actually been really embraced in most of the communities where I’ve put her in, and every once in a while, it doesn’t go that way. But yeah, I think what happened in Parker was a lot less of a controversy than what’s happened here, I guess, or at least, if it was, I wasn’t really privy to it because I’m not from Parker,\u201d Justinian said. \u201cI’m from the Grand Valley and I’ve been living in Fruita for 13 years, so I’m privy to a lot more of the shop talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pavia Justinian sees joy when she looks at Zafira, a colorful sculpture she created, which is balanced on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,25006,304,305,306,308,93,26172,61,60,26173],"class_list":{"0":"post-33093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-culture","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-fruita","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-mesa-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}