BANGOR, Maine — A Bangor artist’s conceptual proposal for a statue of Babe the Blue Ox received unanimous support Tuesday from the city’s Art in Public Places panel, a subcommittee of the Commission on Cultural Development.
The matter next will go before the City Council’s Business and Economic Development Committee and, if it receives support at that level, could go before the City Council in September or October.
If created, the Babe statue would be a companion to the 31-foot-tall Paul Bunyan statue that has towered over Main Street since 1959. The ox statue was part of the original plan of artist J. Normand Martin but has yet to be completed, the artist’s son Jay Martin Jr. said during Tuesday’s meeting.
During Tuesday’s meeting, subcommittee members had an opportunity to develop a sense of what the Babe statue would look like next to Paul Bunyan and how it would look from a variety of vantage points.
The 3-D computer modeling was done by Rob Frank of Bangor-based WBRC Architects Engineers.
The scale model presented during Tuesday’s meeting did not have the genitalia that appeared in an initial mockup shown to city officials earlier this year.
Cultural commission member Mary Budd said she sensed the artist had some regret about that.
“Well, there are two ends to him,” Martin said. He later said, however, that the ox’s genitals could become a nuisance.
“That’s an invitation to young wise guys,” he said, adding that he might have been among them when he was younger.
His son said that he had consulted with the Maine Draft Horse and Ox Association, which confirmed that bulls indeed were castrated in the 19th century, when American folklore hero Paul Bunyan and his trusty companion, Babe, would have lived.
If all goes to plan, the Babe the Blue Ox statue will be unveiled on July 4, 2016.
Martin, the original designer of Bunyan, first presented the idea to the commission in February, accompanied by former City Councilor Gerry Palmer. The two sought a $1,000 individual artist grant to create the clay model.
They later amended their grant application to $550. The commission would only consider recommending the City Council appropriate $160 for materials, but that motion failed in a 4-4 vote.
After that decision, supporters formed an ad hoc group called Build Babe in Bangor and approached the City Council’s Government Operations Committee, seeking the council’s blessing on the project so they could begin fundraising for the full-size statue.
While some councilors pushed for an endorsement, the committee eventually referred the issue back to the cultural commission for further review.
City code requires that the commission review proposals for public art or monuments, though it gives the council sole authority to adopt, reject or revise the recommendation from the commission.