The first time we saw it was quite a trip. Late one winter night in early 1995, some friends and I were driving around having a "That 70's Show" kind of time, when we stumbled upon a field of concrete corn. We couldn't believe our eyes (or those ears), so we pulled over to take it all in. At first we giggled and then we were in awe at the installation of 109 eight food ears of corn. Why hadn't we heard about this? Where did this come from? Where the hell were we? (Lost, that's where.) They were all legitimate questions that we might have known the answers to if we hadn't all been in college, living outside of Columbus.
We dubbed it, ominously, "The Corn" but its real name was "Field of Corn" and it was a commission by the Dublin Arts Council by artist Malcolm Cochran. The idea was to create the sculpture in the very spot where Sam Frantz once planted the very first hybrid corn. He created "Corn Belt Dent Corn," a double cross hybrid, and so a field of concrete corn was erected in his honor after the Frantzs donated the land. Field of Corn is set on the fringe of an office park and the intersection of Frantz and Rings Road, and failed to be taken seriously by, well, almost anyone for many years. It's been painted, defaced by drunken teenagers, and jokingly called "Cornhenge" by locals, but the truth is everyone kind of loves it, if only for its complete and total randomness. And while it may be a monument the precursor of GMO corn, Field of Corn is more enduring and endearing than most art installations and certainly worth a detour.
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