ART: Check out the shelf life first

While the translucence of the $110,000 art feature — Allium blossoms — for the entrance to McEuen Park may have been the selling feature for the Coeur d’Alene Arts Commission (Press, Nov. 6), that same translucence may be the bane of its existence and a waste of taxpayer funds, requiring its replacement in two to five years.

Did the Arts Commission ask for a longevity study or consider how an acrylic or plexiglass polymer would look after a few brief years of extreme hot and cold temperatures, damaging UV sun rays, the stress of ice, and repeated wet and dry climate changes?

Now, imagine those lovely opaque purple-speckled blossoms you saw inside the library building become distastefully yellowed, faded and replete with scratches resembling cracks, a process called crazing.

Allow me to suggest that the Arts Commission may have been either short-sighted in their selection or overly optimistic that the taxpayers would dig deeper into their pockets for a $110,000 replacement.

By the way, weren’t we promised art representative of the uniqueness of our town? The Allium plant has more than 500 species that thrive throughout the northern hemisphere. What’s so unique about that?

D. MITCHELL

Coeur d’Alene