Statuary to inspire

While most of it is long gone, a proliferation of beautiful statuary was harbored once  at Sonoma’s Plaza.

For decades, the only ‘resident’ was Whatshisname-With-Flag-On-A-Rock marking the site where, in 1846, rag-tag (i.e., drunk) white settlers raised the Bear Flag in revolt against Mexico, establishing the short-lived Republic of California.

But several years ago, Whatshisname was joined by bronze statuary popping up everywhere.  The rate at which the Fine Arts commission was sprinkling our public lawn with ‘installations,’ the Plaza would soon rival Egypt’s Avenue of the Sphinxes.

First came a handsome rendering of General Vallejo, the founder of our fair City who laid out the beloved Plaza. His likeness still sits pensively (with book) on a bench, tolerating tourists who snuggle up for selfies and the occasional dog who pauses to express an opinion.

His pose not lost on the historically aware, Sr. Vallejo looks decidedly away from Whatshisname.

Then for a time, Sr. Vallejo was joined on the Plaza by (a) a herd of metal deer grazing north of the Duck Pond, (b) a bronze boy crouched on a wolf crouched on a platform at the southwest corner, (c) two bronze women at the southeast corner (one holding a pelican?) staring in alarm at the growing number of tasting rooms across the street, and (d) somebody bronze, & possibly drunk, curled up in a ball nearby.

And who can forget that large “L O V E” erection (no, just a sign) in front of City Hall?

The City is to be applauded for having exposed residents and visitors to the work of talented artists whose contribution to Sonoma is far more attractive and inspiring than another tasting room/craft beer start-up.  As our struggling school district can attest, Art Education is no easy job in a culture like America’s.

Not so elsewhere.  For centuries, exquisite art has infused cities from Paris to Florence to Kathmandu to Beijing, where residents and visitors throng public squares, museums, and galleries to experience and absorb it.  Alas, American tastes run more toward pie-eating contests, gun shows, large-stadium sports, NASCAR races, rodeos and other animal-abuse events, and sales extravaganzas ending in “-O-Rama.”

That’s why quality Plaza statuary could firmly put our little town on the Cultural Map. While Whatshisname and Sr. Vallejo focus the tourists’ mind on local history, missing is statuary that sparks serious contemplation of contemporary America’s situation & its struggles that will someday — any day now, actually –be seen as globally historic.

In the continuing outrage following the overturning of Roe v. Wade by Supreme Court justices appointed by Stormy Daniels’ lover, perhaps no personage is more worthy of a Plaza statue than Ms. Lorena Bobbitt of Manassas, Virginia.

Lorena was a Joan of Arc in America’s endless battle against misogyny.  Older readers will recall that in 1993 Ms. Bobbitt, having endured endless physical & emotional brutality from her husband, famously seized a kitchen knife and separated him from his manhood. Google it.

If art can uplift us in the face of judicial outrages, nothing could compete with a larger-than-life Plaza statue of Ms. Bobbitt, blade in one hand, holding aloft her ‘prize’ in the other. Whatshisname would leap from his rock in terror; Sr. Vallejo would firmly cross his legs; in Italy, Michelangelo’s ‘David’ would frantically look for his pants.

And in Sonoma, millions would flock for a selfie with Ms. Bobbitt. Local hotels, restaurants and tasting rooms would be packed.