Matthew Milliken writes on the Bull City Rising blog of a huge piece of sculpture being planned for installation somewhere in Durham. There is one thing I like about this particular project, if the info is correct: The artist has no designs on taxpayer money to fund his project.

Which is good, because, frankly, I don’t care much for it. I like much of the colossal sculpture are I see in our larger cities. I’m usually a easy sell. But this one, as depicted on the Bull City Rising blog, looks like a bloody sandspur surrounded by chrome that has been formed in a tornado. But maybe that’s just me.

The artist, John Wendelbo, plans to begin fund raising to get the $800,000 he needs for the project, and he plans to tap mostly individuals and eschew the deep-pocket donor who might try to change his vision. He also, as I said, apparently is not interested in going to the Durham City Council with hat in hand to get taxpayer funds to augment his fund raising.

“If I can get ten, twenty, thirty, forty thousand people to say yes to this by donating a couple of dollars … then that’s the sort of yes vote that validates the project,” he said. “And that’s much more powerful than having, say, a group of eight people on a [public art] commission saying we’ll choose this or we’ll choose that. It’s more democratic.”

That’s a refreshingly free-market approach to art. If people don’t like it, they won’t donate, if they do, they will. Simple as that. As he says, very democratic.

I wish him good luck. I just hope that thing doesn’t end up on my neighborhood.