Computer analyst makes Seattle butt of jokes

A COMPUTER analyst who worked for an insurance outfit hatched a cunning plan to make Seattle the butt of jokes after his death.

Stu Smailes left the fair town of Seattle a million dollars if, amongst other things, it erected a statue of a life-sized naked man in a fountain.

No one is really sure what Smailes was up to. Seattle has no nude art in its outdoor collection and anyway the analyst was not really into art anyway.

His lawyers had no idea how the computer analyst managed to scrape up a million dollars to plan his wizard wheeze either.

When Smailes died, the Mayor's Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs accepted the gift and headed it off to the Seattle Art Museum. A spokeman for the Mayor said that throughout the whole thing, it was dimly aware that somehow they were taking part in a post-mortem joke.

In the end they commissioned a New York Artist Louise Bourgeois to make a 15-foot high stainless steel fountain. A life-sized naked man and his son will face each other.

However in a cunning display of modesty the pair will be obscured from each other by a cloak of falling water that, at hourly intervals, will shift to reveal each figure at the ringing of a bell.

Not sure if it was what Smailes had in mind, but at least we are talking about him even though he is dead.

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