Lucille Ball’s hometown of Celoron, NY is welcoming a brand new bronze statue of the actress on Saturday, Aug. 6 and sculptor Carolyn Palmer is anxiously anticipating how her statue will be received.
Advertisement
The statue will take the home of “Scary Lucy” in Lucille Ball Memorial Park.
Artist Carolyn Palmer was selected and spent nine months studying Ball, by watching re-runs of “I Love Lucy”. The current plan is to relocate “Scary Lucy” to a different part of Lucille Ball Memorial Park. They watched as the tarp was removed from the statue made by sculptor Carolyn Palmer. Palmer was commissioned to do the statue after the public objected to the previous statue of the late actress on aesthetic reasons, often referring to it as “Scary Lucy”.
Locals dubbed the six-foot tall bronze sculpture “Scary Lucy”. The statue is standing on a replica of Lucille Ball’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star. It depicts Lucille Ball wearing her iconic polka dot dress, shows her smiling a big smile, and at one of her most lovely moments.
Last week, “Scary Lucy” was reinstalled on a nearby platform, but she drew nearly no attention on Saturday.
As for the sculpture itself, Palmer deserves a great deal of credit for living up to the enormous pressure of the occasion.
When asked what nickname she would choose for her statue, Palmer stopped and considered her answer carefully.
The bronze figure elicited comparisons to a “Walking Dead” zombie, Conway Twitty, the snake from “Beetlejuice”, actor Steve Buscemi and other unflattering comparisons, and inspired a a Facebook campaign called “We Love Lucy!” Her last sculpture was of Pope Francis and she enjoyed going from a “rather serious” sculpture to a playful one. “Get Rid of this Statue”.
While some hurt feelings linger in Celoron and Jamestown about the “Scary Lucy” controversy, the outcome is inarguably positive.
Advertisement
Out of the unusual, unpredictable and sometimes vicious world of social media and viral curiosity, a handsome new sculpture has emerged to keep company with one of the more memorable mistakes in American art.
