To Communicate

Here is another public sculpture by local artist Jerzy Kenar. "To Communicate" was installed in 2005 and dedicated by Mayor Daley. It is located at the Hans Christian Andersen Community Academy (elementary school) on Division St. between Honore and Wolcott. While the title, location, and basic form seem to speak to the technology of communication (the form evokes a telegraph or transistor contact) as it relates to education, there is a problem with the scale in this understanding of the piece. The large ceramic mound takes on a figural reference (a lump of clay to become a man?) with metal coils encircling where the nascent figure's head would be. The form at this size (about 8 feet tall) becomes a Frankenstein about to be shocked to life (or to death--it could be an electric chair). I'm left with the feeling that this sculpture monumentalizes a more torturous process than communication. Maybe some teachers feel like communication (and education, by site extension) must be forced into the lump-of-clay noggins of their students like electrons through a copper coil, but for the sake of Andersen students I hope this is not the educational philosophy ascribed to there. Do you think the artist meant to evoke a device of torture, death or revivification with this sculpture, or is it merely an electrical contact of communication made grossly large for the sake of being easily seen by people in passing cars?