By Marilyn Bauer
The Cincinnati Enquirer

It was standing room only Thursday as angry artists, educators and citizens turned out at a meeting of the Cincinnati Park Board to support Oxford artist Susan Ewing and the construction of her Crystalline Tower.

After an hour and a half of impassioned pleas and complaints, Ms. Ewing had $55,000 more for her $200,000 tower, and Director of Parks Willie F. Carden recommended that the board suspend for 90 days any decision on the public art project for the Theodore M. Berry International Friendship Park.

Ewing

"This is an opportunity to make it right," Mr. Carden said.

The brouhaha started Monday when Ms. Ewing learned that the park board planned to vote to scrap the tower and use the money to cover $160,000 overspent in construction. She and sculptor Vratislav Novak of the Czech Republic won an international competition last year for one of two projects for the park. The other, by Welsh artist David Nash, will go ahead.

"I am embarrassed for the park board and the city," said author and educator Laura Chapman.

"Hear me clearly," said sculptor Patricia Renick. "This will go forward nationally and internationally by major publications. ... There is something radically wrong here. I'm telling you it breaks my heart."

In a memo to his board dated Nov. 21, Mr. Carden recommended the tower project be dropped and the $200,000 be used to cover the overspent $160,000, which includes a bad pour of concrete.

"I have a park to build," Mr. Carden told the audience. He said numerous requests to Ms. Ewing to supply the department with additional information went unanswered.

"A lot of that information was provided," countered Steve Schuckman, superintendent of planning and design.

Mr. Schuckman explained the department needed engineering drawings and was unwilling to release any of the $200,000. He asked Ms. Ewing to come up with the services or the money.

Ms. Ewing had raised $80,800 before the meeting. When John Hutton, who described himself as an average citizen, stood up and pledged $55,000 more, the crowd broke out in applause.

"She has found the dollars," Mr. Schuckman said. "The engineering plans can be drawn up in the next 90 days."

Mr. Carden contends the approval of the tower was "conceptual, meaning that both entities should come back to the staff and give the staff the information so we could finalize and come up with whether it is feasible to do the project."

Rebecca Seeman, a member of the art selection committee, said, "There was never any mention of a contingency, especially not because of something as mundane as concrete."

E-mail mbauer@enquirer.com