{"id":148249,"date":"2025-09-11T05:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T05:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/148249\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T05:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T05:41:07","slug":"new-sculpture-sparks-controversy-in-fruita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/148249\/","title":{"rendered":"New sculpture sparks controversy in Fruita"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KKCO) &#8211; On September 2, we reported that Fruita received <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kkco11news.com\/2025\/09\/03\/i-think-it-just-adds-ambiance-fruita-adds-5-new-sculptures-its-downtown\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">five new art sculptures<\/a> for its downtown area. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Following the installation of the sculptures, residents have spoken up about their disapproval. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">One sculpture, created by local artist Pavia Justinian, depicts a colorful naked female body. Justinian says the sculpture is meant to represent strength and grace, and the name of the sculpture, <a href=\"https:\/\/paviajustinian.com\/zafira\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Zafira<\/a> means succesful in Arabic. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cI didn\u2019t really intend for that to be a controversial thing. I sculpted a female figure, and she\u2019s anatomically correct,\u201d said Justinian, \u201cI really hope that the city stands up for free speech, I hope Zahira gets to stay and spread joy to the community, I think she\u2019s a joyful piece.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Fruita was supposed to host an art walk on September 10, with the artists of the new sculptures, but the event was postponed due to the recent controversy. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cTonight will be an arts and culture meeting at the public works facility. That will be their first chance to interact with the community and a chance for them to listen,\u201d said Dan Caris, Fruita Assistant City Manager. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">City officials say there\u2019s a chance this meeting could result in the removal of the sculpture. <\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 KKCO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KKCO) &#8211; On September 2, we reported that Fruita received five new art sculptures for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1029,228,15105,226,227,3832,91706,229,88,91700,91701,91715,91705,91711,91709,91710,91702,58406,58405,91713,91707,91703,91712,13708,91708,91714,91704],"class_list":["post-148249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-culture","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-colorado","tag-dan-caris","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-fruita","tag-fruita-art","tag-fruita-art-work","tag-fruita-assistant-city-manager","tag-fruita-colorado","tag-fruita-controversy","tag-fruita-facebook","tag-fruita-officials","tag-kjct","tag-kkco","tag-mesa-county-art","tag-naked-sculpture","tag-pavia-justinian","tag-public-works-facility","tag-sculpture","tag-sculpture-of-david","tag-western-slope-art","tag-zafira"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}