Park Play

But Fors, whose previous public art experience includes a temporary sculpture in the 2000 Avenue of the Arts, recognizes that exposure is one the best things about public art.

The day after "Lllooppi" was installed, Fors sat in his car in the parking lot not far down the road from the sculpture. He had just finished taking digital pictures of his piece and videotaping it, and he watched it through the windshield of his '87 Volvo as drops of rain began to collect. A melancholy Louis Armstrong song was playing on the car stereo, and the sculpture's bright colors began to shimmy in time to the music as the raindrops trickled down the glass.

A serious collector of rock and jazz records, Fors had 45s in mind when he came up with his design for "Lllooppi." Music has always been important to him -- he talks nonchalantly about meeting the Sex Pistols in a hotel in New York City and being invited backstage at a Frank Zappa concert at Memorial Hall one night after he brought the musician a pumpkin. Lately Fors has been going to concerts with his 15-year-old son -- they've seen the White Stripes, the Strokes, the Hives and the Vines.

Not everybody gets the piece's 45-rpm reference, but that's OK with Fors, who encourages viewers to decide for themselves what the sculpture represents. One day during the sculpture's installation, he says, a group of bicyclists rode by. Each of them had a different suggestion for what the aluminum disks at the top were supposed to be -- doughnuts, records, LifeSavers. Fors told them they were all correct, but the cyclists decided that the life-preserver angle was pretty cool, considering that "Lllooppi" sits across the street from the Leawood Aquatic Center. They told Fors they liked the sculpture and pedaled off.

"My first review was not bad! And it was from innocent citizens," Fors says.