Gov. Bill Owens is weighing in on the debate over an artist given a $5,000 state fellowship grant, after hearing about the works of art that depict sex toys on hooks.
“Obviously, this is offensive and in extremely poor taste,” said Owens, who couldn’t view the piece himself but had it described to him by staffers. The governor is in New York for an awards ceremony for the University of Northern Colorado Business School.
The artist, Tsehai Johnson of Denver, received the fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts in 2003.
The work, originally titled “Twelve Dildos on Hooks” and completed in 2000, was one of several pieces submitted to the CCOA by Johnson when she was applying for the fellowship grant.
Johnson changed the title of the piece to “Large Implements on Hooks” before officially submitting the work to the council.
She told 9News in an interview that she changed the title for artistic reasons.
“I wanted the title to be a little more open-ended so that it didn’t become so easily dismissed,” she said.
Johnson described the piece to 9News: “They’re meant to be sex toys, but sex toys that are talking about a lot of issues.”
But Owens questions the use of state money.
“It serves as an important reminder that whenever tax dollars are involved, government must be cautious and prudent,” he said in a prepared statement sent to 9News on Wednesday morning.
Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a think tank based in Golden, agreed with Owens.
“It’s hard to say we’re in a budget crisis when taxpayers are paying for this kind of smut,” said Caldara.
The institute found the work while researching a book it plans to publish on government waste in Colorado, and it has started a “Fraud and Waste Hotline” for Coloradans to call if they know of cases of government waste.
Elaine Mariner, executive director of the Colorado Council on the Arts, told 9News, “Frankly, it did shock me and I did find it inappropriate.”
Mariner was not with the council in 2003 when the grant was awarded. She says fellowship applicants would submit slides of their work and professional artists would make decisions based on the artistic value of those slides but that the CCOA has final approval on the recipient list. The fellowship no longer is available.
Pictures of two of Johnson’s works, including “Large Implements on Hooks,” appeared on the council’s website Tuesday. By late Wednesday afternoon, the pictures and information on the artist had been removed from the state website.
