I was asked by my new friends from Kentucky what this sculpture meant. Like any good piece of art, it means some things, but anything at the same time, depending on you and how you experience it. On an as objective level as possible, it is red. A bold red cube surrounded by the black and grey and white buildings of the neighborhood. It is NOT a cube really, as it is extended on its horizontal axis making it soar upwards. It is poised on one of its corners, almost impossibly, somehow standing among all the solidly-footed skyscrapers around it. It is pierced through with a cylindrical hole.
I think of it as a big heart downtown. Something to remind us we are human, and imperfect, and bright, and driven to the impossible, and inspired to reach upwards and out of ourselves. We could fall at any moment, as the buildings in front of it, in fact, did in 2001. And although the heart is pierced, the hole, even in our frailty, still pulls our eye to our accomplishment above, to the sky.
