Bare-breasted Eve creates uproar
Texas case parallels one in Michigan June 7, 2005
BY CHRISTY ARBOSCELLO
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Artists on other ends of the country, inspired by the same masterpiece, dipped their paintbrushes in hot water when they created a topless biblical first woman.
It's a tale of how two unrelated murals dabbled into strikingly similar controversies.
Artworks painted on outside gallery walls in Michigan and Texas contained a bare-chested Eve and transpired into court affairs after city officials deemed them inappropriate.
The cases are pending as the American Civil Liberties Union argues that the cities violated the artists' First Amendment rights by censoring the pieces.
In metro Detroit, Ed (Gonzo) Stross awaits word after appealing a district court judge's order that he serve jail time for his variation of Michelangelo's "Creation of Man" on his Roseville art studio and home.
In the small town of Pilot Point, Texas, the federal lawsuit Wes Miller filed over a revision of the Sistine Chapel masterpiece that artist Justine Wollaston brushed on his gallery remains at a standstill.
Stross and Miller were ordered to cover the breasts.
"I just thought: 'Wow, what an odd, amazing amount of similarities.' " Miller said Friday, comparing the dispute he's in with the Detroit-area one.
Stross said: "It's a popular piece. You study the masters and you duplicate it." But the commonality between the two "really is something," he said.
The Roseville City Council declared that the depiction of Eve and the word "LOVE" inscribed on the mural violated a variance to a sign ordinance.
"I just think that compliance to the ordinance is all that we asked for," Mayor Pro Tem Harold Haugh said Monday.
Roseville District Judge Marco Santia ordered Stross to serve 30 days in jail and two years of probation and to pay a $500 fine. Stross is free on bond.
Back in Texas, in 2003, Wollaston created an 80-foot-long and 14-foot-high mural outside Miller's gallery. Miller said local officials warned him it violated a penal code of displaying harmful materials to minors.
"I didn't want a charge of pornography against me, whether it was true or not," Miller said, explaining why he complied with the censorship.
No court date has been set for either case.
Poster Comment:
- Mammoth mammories violate penal code.