The Cry Baby statue will no longer live at Cry Baby Hill.
From News 9: “Future of statue project now uncertain: The “Cry Baby Cry” statue is nearly complete. The statue was set to be a companion piece intended for the hotel site, but with no hotel to accompany it, the city is considering other locations for the installation.” (Emphasis ours.)
First of all, “The ‘Cry Baby Cry’ statue is nearly complete” sounds like a threat. Second of all, this got our big gorgeous brains thinking: where would we, The Pickup, put this magnificent piece of $250,000 art if we had our way?
Here’s where we would put it:
The Philbrook Gardens
This is the obvious answer. Who wouldn’t want to see A.I. art inside the city’s finest art garden? Cry Baby Cry could be acquired easily by Philbrook, as Ken Kelleher is certainly desperate to have at least one of his “creations” (let’s use this term loosely) find a physical home. Imagine walking out of a swirling, labyrinthine, Italianate swath of tulips, only to see Cry Baby Cry’s singular idiotic face. And hell, isn’t Crystal Bridges currently showing a KAWS exhibition? Why not let all of our legacy art institutions sell out to dumb corporate slop?
–Z.B. Reeves
Use it to bridge the other side of the Route 66 sign leading into town
Sure, the sign’s incompleteness is a statement. But still, it looks a little incomplete, no? Let’s patch that baby up. If Ken Kelleher really wants to be a part of Route 66 history (he almost certainly doesn’t give a shit), here’s his chance.
–Z.B. Reeves
Set it up in the middle of Zink Lake
The perfect synergy of dumb ideas. Equip the sculpture with a fountain element for maximum impact when floating through Tulsa’s toxic water play paradise.
–Alicia Chesser
Store it safely and invisibly inside the Golden Driller
Look. The Golden Driller is 75 feet tall. The Cry Baby Cry statue, if it is indeed finished, is going to be around 21 feet tall. If we want the statue to live in Tulsa (we don’t) but we don’t want it to be seen, why not simply install it inside the Golden Driller? That way, any time we want to be reminded of our terrible, overwhelming hubris, we could just open a little hatch and look inside to see the literal cost of outsourcing our artistic integrity.
–Z.B. Reeves
Replace the entirety of Utica Avenue between E 2nd St and E 1st St
This one’s a no brainer. The smooth chrome surface of Cry Baby Cry is meant to be associated with cars, right? Ken Kelleher really cares about cars, and driving? Prove it. Let’s install Cry Baby Cry as a road patch and let the drivers of Tulsa think, as they drive over one 20’ patch of potholeless road on Utica, “I paid $250,000 for this.”
–Z.B. Reeves
Donate it to one of those Smash Rooms where you pay to beat shit with hammers
I grew up in Chelsea, Oklahoma, 40 miles up the road from Tulsa on Route 66. Every year we held the “Chelsea Jamboree,” our name for the festival that rode through town, offering a ferris wheel, bumper carts, ticket games, and endless cockamamie entertainments: dog beauty pageants, singing contests, and the endlessly-awaited Cop Car Bash. For a small fee, the citizens of Chelsea were handed sledgehammers and allowed to beat the absolute dogshit out of a cop car, whatever model was going out of service that year. The event always ended up with a police car dented and dinged to hell, raising tons of money for whatever the Chelsea Police were out there fundraising for (my guess? New cop cars for the Chelsea Police Department). There are so few times in this world when one can count on animus for an institution to fund that very institution. Sorry, what were we talking about?
–Z.B. Reeves
Auction it off for charity
The rich wanted it; the rich can have it. Is it possible to zone art for indoors-only use?
–Z.B. Reeves
Send it to McAlester where it will be made into a bomb
Sorry, I know this one's dark, but I'm mad. Seeing as McAlester is the bomb-making capital of Oklahoma, why not send the statue there, where it can be made into a beautiful instrument of American empire? Seeing as your tax dollars already fund the creation of weapons in McAlester, this can be seen as a mere middleman. Tax money flows into Ken Kelleher, who creates Cry Baby Cry, which is sent overseas to explode all over random citizens; this, we are led to believe, creates abundant freedom for citizens of U S of A.
–Z.B. Reeves
Stash it inside the Promenade Mall
It’ll be a beautiful time capsule in sixty years when the owner finally sells it. Lord knows they’ve got plenty of room in there.
–Z.B. Reeves
Open a fake Big Boy restaurant off of the statue’s star power
Court controversy by creating our own Big Boy style restaurant, called Small Boy. Put the statue next to it. Big Boy will obviously sue, but we’ll claim artistic license. The menu will be AI generated; we’ll call it a commentary on modern life. The food, too, will be made by a robot. Indeed, if you look into the owners behind the restaurant, you’ll find that they, too, are fake: AI pictures of AI persons. There’s no one to sue!
–Z.B. Reeves
Give it to Discovery Lab
Let the kids climb all over it like a piece of playground equipment. Let them spill juice boxes on it. Let it be part of pretend play scenarios, hide and seek, science experiments. Put this baby face to face with real children and see how it fares.
–Alicia Chesser
Sell it to a therapy provider as a reminder that everyone should be allowed to cry, even bad artists
If I were bilking taxpayers half a continent away for work that I outsourced to trillions of microchips while I claimed artistic work that wasn’t mine (built off of the backs of established brands), I’d feel bad too! Luckily, the modern American has access (limited) to therapy. A therapy office with this statue out front would make a bold statement: You’re allowed, even encouraged, to feel bad!
–Z.B. Reeves
