Attention: Sculptors

Yesterday, while riding on the bus, I got to thinking about sculptures of little children. Now, now--this is not as creepy as you may first think--my thoughts were inspired by the sculpture of playing children that sits in the little park next to Children's Memorial Hospital at Halsted and Fullerton. Contrary to what I can assume is the artist's intent, that sculpture has never failed to put a chill up my spine in a sensation often referred to as "The Heebie-Jeebies".

The sculpture evokes the nightmare of a meteor, made up of molten bronze, that crashed to the earth and fell on the very grassy knoll where a group of small children were playing Ring Around the Rosie, thus freezing them in mid-play. I haven’t actually examined this sculpture in detail, for fear of being possessed by the ghosts of these children, angry that they couldn’t grow up to be the doctors, nurses and electronic engineers that they wished, but I can only imagine that their eyeballs are still glowing red with the fiery radioactivity that the comet once possessed.

Or maybe, I considered, they were playing Ring Around the Rosie and ironically fell prey to the very Black Plague about which they were singing.

Either way, the sculpture creeped me out and I was relieved that the bus lingered near the sculpture no longer than necessary to pick up a few passengers at the stop nearby. Although I wasn’t subjected to the blank gaze of these bronze zombies for more than a few moments, I spent the rest of the bus ride assembling an inventory of all the sculpture, public and private, I remember having seen. Out of a subsequent sub list, which I entitled “Child Sculpture,” (and, which, I beg not to be confused with “Sculpture by Children,” which is adorable), I came to the conclusion that I’ve never seen a sculpture of a child that I liked. Make that, I have never seen a sculpture of a child that didn’t startle me, scare me, make my skin crawl and give me night terrors.

I came to the conclusion that most Child Sculpture is usually publicly owned or at least publicly displayed rather than kept in a gallery or museum. It seems that the only people who want to recreate The Essence of The Child are the people who are in the business of Children’s Essences and want you to know it, such as a children's hospital in the case of the Ring Around the Rosie art. All of the examples I could come up with supported this thesis: the eerie swinging children sculpture in that one day care facility playground in Springfield, Illinois; the ghostlike reaching children in the Arthur Ashe monument in Richmond, Virginia; and the demon children that Harry Caray is wading through in his sculpture that sits in front of Wrigley Field, to name a few of the most spine-chilling.

To be honest, I’m not so sure that the latter sculpture actually incorporates children. Those little people at Mr. Caray’s feet may be Cubs fans beaten down to half-size by many brutal losses and disappointments, but either way, you get my point: children should never be cast in bronze (or made of plaster, steel, glass or Silly Putty, for that matter).

The only sculpture I can think to discredit this argument is Degas’ Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen. I grew up passionate about dance and this lovely sculpture always struck a chord with my little girl heart. As a child, I had the opportunity to see it in person and it has forever made an impression on me. The Little Dancer is so delicate and graceful and warm, owing largely to the real aging white crinoline the artist used for the dancers skirt. But I have decided to omit this example from my earlier examination, reasoning that the sculpture more effectively depicts a dancer’s elegance than a child’s heart. And besides, is a fourteen year old girl really still a child? If she were jewish, she'd already have had her Bat Mitzvah.

So, let’s face it, sculptors: excluding that one Degas piece, there is no reason for you to believe that you can recreate, through any tangible means available to you, the spirit of a child. That which makes a child a Child is not concrete. At the risk of sounding like a diaper commercial or an Oprah speech, I’ll say that a child is a sparkle, an energy, a way of thinking that is, by any possible description, fundamentally light and airy. And, from my vantage point, it is impossible to create something as concrete as a representative sculpture out of something so something so quick and elusive.

I am happy to be proven otherwise.