Melt Down the Grand Rapids Blob

Grand Rapids — This was once known as Furniture City. Wood flowed into town on the Grand River and artisans made it into furniture for homes and offices. Iconic Michigan companies were built in the area, including Herman Miller, Steelcase, and Haworth.

Despite this rich history, the symbol of Grand Rapids is a giant orange monstrosity.

La Grand Vitesse, known locally as the Calder Statue, sits on a giant concrete slab outside city hall.

The statue, manufactured in France by an American ex-pat, has the distinction of being the first funded by the Art in Public Places program of the National Endowment of the Arts. That funding, combined with local donors, provided a new symbol for the city. But that symbol looks like a misshapen grappling hook.

After its installation in 1970, the first question on every local’s mind was: What does it mean? If the city was going to plop a 42-ton piece of metal into the center of town, shouldn’t it say something about local culture or commerce?

Locals campaigned against it in the newspaper. One man wrote, “After Calder gets his (money) and goes back to France, some evening he’ll be sitting in some pub and saying, ‘Boy, did I hoodwink those guys over in Grand Rapids.’”

The media did their best to sell the project, with the Grand Rapids Press telling readers that the statue “means something different to each person who views it. That’s why one person sees a pile of junk and another a soaring tribute to mankind.”

President Richard Nixon, not knowing how else to describe it, called it “handsome.”

It’s a bad sign for art when no one knows why it even exists.

One commenter described it as looking “like the propeller of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Another wrote that it looks like “a young earth evangelical tried to draw a dinosaur based on a sermon they heard once 10 years ago.”

If the Calder statue was just a bad idea that emerged from bad postmodern art culture, maybe all would be fine, but in 1982 the meaningless statue became part of the city logo. The logo, which appears all around town, consists of a yellow background representing the sun, a blue line representing the Grand River, and a red shape representing the Calder.

That’s right: The source of all energy in the solar system, the natural feature responsible for the city’s location, and a meaningless hunk of metal built in France. These three things combine to give Grand Rapidians a sense of identity.

Locals jokingly call the logo the Pac-Man, and the garishness of it stands out against the sylvan splendor of the city.

Some intellectuals will claim that the statue gave Grand Rapids a broad symbol that they can build an identity around, but I don’t buy it. At most, it gave the locals something to fight about.

After such a long time, Grand Rapids clearly needs a rebranding. That could start with melting down the Calder and forging it into a giant office chair. That would be far more fitting in Furniture City.