Mind Games

Houston artist Kaneem Smith couldn’t hide her elation. The graduate art student at Syracuse University believed her years of work and study were finally paying off.

Smith had submitted her plans for a sculpture to a special review committee. The result: She was to be one of eight emerging artists featured at the posh Omni Hotel Houston, as part of Houston Sculpture 2000. The international conference drew artists from around the world.

Her vision — seven eight-foot-tall cylindrical shapes, internally illuminated by solar-powered lighting — would finally move her from obscurity to discovery, she reasoned.

By last week, Smith’s artwork had indeed been discovered. Smith picked up the telephone at her Houston home to hear frantic words from the show’s curator, Greg Bruegger.

Hotel officials, he told her, were excited about her sculpture. It was downright arousing, but for the wrong reasons. Some hotel guests complained, the hotel staff told him, that the objects were, well, phallic. While her sculpture was unnamed, some visitors looked on the lawn by the reflection pool and thought they were seeing splendor in the grass.

Worse yet, the Omni was preparing to host a conference of the hotel chain’s top general managers. They wanted to showcase the Houston facility — not her artwork. The Omni wanted it gone, yanked down before the executives arrived.

“I felt horrible because my work has absolutely nothing to do with that [sexual overtones] and never has,” says Smith, 26. “I’ve been making pieces similar to this for the past five years. People around town know what I do. They [hotel officials] knew what I was doing, and all of a sudden it’s not right,” Smith says in a voice choking on emotion.

The light yellow tapered shafts are constructed of welded steel, polyester resin and cloth material. They symbolize many concepts, she says, but sex organs aren’t among them.

“A lot of my work deals with things that are hidden in our past; things that we choose not to deal with, and bringing them back out,” Smith says of her work, which has been highlighted at Project Row Houses and DiverseWorks. “It’s about things that resurface that we try to cover up in terms of the human experience.”

On any given night, hotel guests can be found sitting on benches gazing at the structures. “It’s a quiet, serene area,” Smith says.

Public relations worker Mark Hanna, who serves on the hotel art committee, concedes that Omni officials considered temporarily moving the sculptures for the Omni meeting. In his best spin, Hanna says the relocation was only because they occupied prime space on the 3.5-acre grounds. However, the hotel already had published a brochure citing the artworks on display.

“At no time did it occur to anybody that anything was offensive,” Hanna says. “The consensus was, ‘Don’t move them. It took a week to put them in.’ “

Ray Brum, the marketing director, also denies receiving complaints or hearing of concern from hotel management that the objects had sexual overtones.

“Art is in the eye of the beholder, and we feel like it added to a number of things we try to do here,” Brum says. “It creates conversation with the guests. And it gives us a different edge.”

Works by other artists include floating Lucky Charms-shaped objects in the reflection pool, red Monopoly houses for children and a huge caterpillar near the pool that goes in and out of the ground — something that sounds about as suggestive as the eight-foot-high shafts.

“I’ve heard [Smith’s work] called fingers, bananas, lighted trees,” Brum says. “If people refer to that [phallic symbol], then that’s their own personal interpretation. We here don’t interpret it that way.”

“Did we think [the exhibit] was going to be whimsical? No, not really,” Brum says. “But it ended up being that way. When you start something, you have a picture of what it’s going to look like, but until it’s actually done you don’t really know. That’s part of the fun of it. That’s part of the creative edge.”

Despite the deniability offered up by the hotel staff, curator Bruegger says yep, of course it is suggestive. Big deal.

“It is phallic in nature,” Bruegger says. “Go look at it. It’s cylindrical, and the material makes it seem skinlike, or condomlike. I think the issue more is the courage of the hotel to either show it or not show it. Anybody can look at it and tell that it’s phallic.”

Artist Smith comments reluctantly, saying she had mixed feelings about the publicity.

“There’s a part of me that wants people to know what happened, because I’m sure it happened to other people [in other venues],” she says. “But it’s something that bothers you that someone higher up can sort of kick around someone smaller, even though I was commissioned and they knew what I was doing, and all of a sudden it’s not right. It is a form of censorship.”

However, the Omni is holding firm on its first decision. This full monty’s only in the mind, after all. Brum says the exhibit will remain until September as scheduled.