An "Upside down barefoot Mailman" has reportedly burrowed its "head" in the Founders Circle at Bal Harbour, a small village on the northern tip of Miami Beach, Florida.
No, it is not a real mailman. It is a sculpture made by artist Christy Gast for Bal Harbour's public art commission "Unscripted". Unscripted is a public art installation project that the village had started to encourage artists to experiment. It was created in October 2012 to challenge and support artistic talents in South Florida and promote Bal Harbour to be a "creative destiny".
Sometime back in February, Unscripted had commissioned Gast to install a piece of art in Bal Harbour. It was then that Gast decided she would create a piece that would have historical value, add to the village's culture and also make people think.
Gast's Upside down mailman sculpture is officially titled "Self Portrait As The Barefoot Mailman". The mailman is a historical symbol of Miami. During the 1880s, a man carried post, barefoot on the first U.S. mail route between Miami and Palm Beach. The structure is a 12 feet high faux bronze sculpture, made of fiber-glass with its head butted inside the ground!
So how did she manage to make that sculpture?
Apparently, Gast got a laser scan of herself posing as the legendary mailman, taking a monument-like posture and based the design of the structure on her scan. Therefore, it is not gender definitive.
But why did she get it installed upside-down?
She wanted the structure to look "blown over by the strong winds" and personify the saying "having one's head buried in the sand".
"I wanted the viewer to see this piece and immediately be able to discern that it's a historical rendition of a person upside and blown over. I was toying with the notion of history by adding to the history of Bal Harbour," Gast said in a statement.
Moreover, she wanted to add an element of humor and uniqueness to it.
"But if I just had a sculpture that looked like something you'd find in Paris, it wouldn't look contemporary. So I decided to turn it upside-down, literally, and people will wonder, 'Was there a storm? What is it even commemorating? What are they saying? Was it destroyed?'" Gast said to SouthFlorida.com.
Gast will be talking to Thomas Collins, the director of Miami Art Museum about the structure and her practice and support for art on May 16, 2013.
Miami is fast becoming a commercial/retail hub. Chanel just revamped its boutique store in the Bal Harbour shops Mall and John Varvatos also opened his third Bowery Concept Store on Lincoln Road.