The first Friday of November Art Walk will commemorate one of Boulder’s strangest history: El Dildo Bandito

The first Friday of November at Mighty Fudge Studios in NoBo Art District is BYOD: Bring your own dildo. 

In addition to customizing your penis at the spray painting station, you will also have the opportunity to hear the speaker commemorating one of Boulder's strangest history, the 20th anniversary of El Dildo Bandito. 

The event hosts Patrick Mallek of Mighty Fudge and Joel Haertling of Open Storage will first tell you that it is not correct to call the object at the center of this story a "dildo"-even considering the context, it is rash. They were made. These 21 penis ceramic sculptures are part of an exhibition titled "Art Victory Over Domestic Violence" at the Boulder Public Library, organized by the Boulder County Safe House as part of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Art is created by victims of domestic violence or their families. In addition to sculptures, there are special paintings (some with nude and graphic themes). 

The exhibition opened on October 19, 2001, just a month after the September 11 attack. For several weeks, no one seemed to care about the nearly two dozen ceramic penises hanging on the clothesline in the windows of the public library—— Until "the flag is flying". " 

In early November, Daily Camera learned that Marcalee Gralapp, the library director at the time, had rejected an employee's request to hang a 15-foot x 10-foot American flag in the main lobby of the library in early October. (Gralap canceled the approval to fly the flag. According to the memoirs of the incident, "Long live the waves," written by the employee Christopher J. Power who asked to fly the flag, but the details of the story are true. Wrote a book.)

"[The flag] may damage our objectivity," Grapp told the camera. "We let people of all faiths and cultures walk into this building, and we hope everyone feels at home."

Letters flooded into the camera, accusing Gralap of being unpatriotic. Soon after, the conservative talk radio learned the fact that the library considered it suitable for hanging penis sculptures rather than flags. It is difficult to determine who inserted the penis into the story, but Bowers wrote in his memoirs that he believed it was the Peter Boyles show in Denver. Maybe this is where Bob Rowan came up with the idea of ​​stealing dick. 

Rowan, a resident of Boulder, stole them during normal library hours in the morning, leaving the clothesline with his penis empty, leaving only a piece of paper: "El Dildo Bandito is here," it wrote. "God bless America."

The 49-year-old contractor stole these sculptures because, as he told Rocky Mountain News, “This is not art, this is rubbish. I hate the fact that they are hanging there, first, but the timing; do it now Such a thing is wrong. It should never belong to me to pay taxes."

Rowan's idea is certainly not alone. The call to "think about the kids" came from people like Cindy Crockett, a resident of Centennial, who wrote a letter to the Rocky Mountain News Service on November 15th:

"Imagine that on the day you report this kind of news, you teach a newspaper in a middle school classroom and provide each student with a copy of Rocky Mountain News. Or take a group of students to BPL for field trips. Or know that your high school students want Go there and do research."

The burden of having to talk to children-even those ages at which sex can occur-about sex, physical, and even violence is clearly beyond the capacity of many local parents. 

But back to Rowan. The police showed up at his home at about 1:30 am the next day after he stole the sculpture. It is said that Rowan cooperated to hand the sculpture to the police. He said that he planned to send them back to the senior artist named Suzanne Walker who was studying at CU University at the time, and he never intended to harm the art. In an interview with Bauer's memoirs, Walker said that many of the sculptures were broken and one was never returned. 

For Malek and Hartlin, this event symbolizes the power of art, and this commemorative event on Friday has nothing to do with politics.  

"I don't have any political horses in this game," Malek said while drinking rum and Coke at T/Aco recently. "I really don't care... But I want to be the artistic force of the community. Art, to me, is sacred. Everyone must find their own way on the beach, they will die for it, and art, For me, it’s that line. I will die for art. For me, art is more important than anything... I will not die for things like flags; if you want, that’s great. But this is not my business. So for me, art needs to have a say. Also, if [罗文] does not steal [sculpture], none of this will happen, right? Exhibitions go up and down, no one knows , Who cares, right? This is really ironic."

Haertling, who was employed by the library at the time of the incident, will carry the artifacts from the incident with him, as well as the colorful story of his witness position in the library in 2001. (He appeared with a manila paper in a one-inch-thick folder at T/Aco, filled with newspaper articles about theft, as well as Bauer's book and photos from the 2001 exhibition.)

Mallek and Haertling have known each other for 20 years because they independently produced disruptive art around Boulder. Mallek sees this event as a way to steer the North Boulder Arts District in a more provocative direction. 

"Joel and I also think it might be time for me and him to take charge of this damn art community, because no one else is doing it, right?" He asked rhetorically. "So if you can hang your sailboat drawing in the doctor's office, that would be great—great. But let's do some damn art here. Joel and I are trying to pick it up on the north side of town. It's up... We kind of want to plant our flag and say, guess what? You can let all your rich people move here, but in the meantime they will have to deal with some controversial nonsense. We Will take over North Boulder. Do you want to create an art district? Let's turn it into a damn art district. This is not an art fair, so let us really do some damn art."

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