National security

Art and terror
Most of the art students sketching Nevada artist Michael Heizer’s sculpture in front of the Thompson Federal Building drew the security guards into the picture. Art imitates life. In some of the drawings, the guards were portrayed as snorting critters.

That’s the kind of artistic expression one might expect, says UNR art professor Edw Martinez, from a group of art students who felt unduly harassed by those uniformed folks in charge of making sure the federal building on South Virginia Street isn’t targeted by terrorists.

To be fair, not all 15 students from Martinez’s Art 100 Honors Section had difficulties with a recent assignment to sketch the Holy Ironing Board (a.k.a. “Perforated Object”). The homework accompanied a discussion on public art, commissioned sculptures and the “oft controversy surrounding their acceptance,” Martinez says. He told students to visit the federal building, sketch the sculpture and write an impression of the work.

The welded sculpture is 27 by 9 feet, weighs two tons and cost $166,000. The art is based on an artifact—a 4-inch-long bone with 90 small holes that might have belonged to a prehistoric shaman—Heizer’s father unearthed inside Humboldt Cave in 1936.

When Martinez’s next class met, students had more than sketches and impressions of “Perforated Object.” Some had interesting stories to tell. Two students were confronted by security guards, they told their instructor. The students said they were asked to leave and their drawings were confiscated.

“You know that anything, even a rolled-up piece of 80-pound white sulfate paper, can be sued as a lethal weapon in the skilled hands of a co-ed, Tri-Delt Ninja terrorist,” Martinez quips.

The guard took the students’ names and the name of their instructor. (Martinez jokes about the men in dark suits and glasses coming for a visit and says his office hours are posted.) Other students, on arrival, said they were told they could not draw the public sculpture, and they could not loiter in front of a public building.

“One student went across the street and drew the sculpture from a distance,” Martinez says. “One of the guards stood in front of the piece, arms folded across his chest, and glared at her. Of course, she included the guard in the drawing.”

On another note, one student reported a guard standing near her as she drew, offering observations. He told her what he personally thought of the sculpture and remarked that the work was a waste of taxpayers’ money.

“Exactly what I was looking for,” Martinez notes.

Six class members said they were not bothered at all by security guards during the sketching episode.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Bob Cose says that, to his knowledge, no students were asked to leave and no sketches were confiscated. He was on the site while the last students sketched the sculpture. He watched guards approach “one young lady sitting to the side” of the sculpture.

“We just had a chuckle about it,” Cose says. “But we’re obligated to find out who is doing what outside the building.”

Every now and then, a tourist or architecture buff will walk around the building taking photos. Security guards always ask questions—even before the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City by domestic terrorists and before the Sept. 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center.

“They’d be remiss if they didn’t do it,” Cose says. “It’s a secure building.”

In the view of security, an art teacher sending students to draw pictures of a secure federal building is akin to sending airplane aficionados to the Fallon Naval Base to take pictures of airplanes.

“[That’s] the way the world is today,” Cose says. “When you deal with security, you look at things differently.”

Martinez says that sometimes class assignments go in “strange but interesting directions.

“It is good to know we can sleep safely tonight as the marshals are on the job,” the art professor says.