It comes from Friesland by trailer, is more than seven meters long, weighs more than 600 kilos and cost the municipality of Coevorden forty thousand euros: a work of art in the form of two giant ears of corn, made by artist Hans Jouta. The statue is expertly fixed in place and then alderman Erik Holties can ‘baptize’ it in an appropriate way, with a bag of flour.
And that sack of flour shatters as soon as it hits the ears of corsten steel. They are a few good nods to the past of the Molenbelt, where a corn mill used to be for centuries. Until it was demolished in 1940. Now, more than eighty years later, the mill is back in the form of a tiny steel mill on top of the statue. So seven meters in the air.
“I didn’t opt for a mill, but for the product that was processed by the mill,” artist Jouta explains his choice for the ears of wheat. “It is true that a small mill grows out of the wheat above it. I wanted to contrast that against the sky, which is why it is so high. That’s the idea behind it: you see the wheat at first and when you get closer, you see the mill .”
The material the statue is made of, corten steel, may still shine a bit in the rain. However, it does not retain its current silver-grey color. After a few months, the rust sets in and the ears of corn turn golden brown, slightly more the color of the wheat itself.
Alderman Holties (BBC2014) said when he took office that he would rather not have art and culture in his portfolio, but as an inner city alderman he now more or less has to believe in it: “I now want to return to those statements a bit and I mean that, because I think it’s a beautiful work of art that does justice to what once stood here.”
The artwork is yet another step in the center renewal that Coevorden is embarking on. The Molenbelt car park is almost finished, so when visitors are looking for a parking space, the windmill must be spotted in the air: “Otherwise it might have had to be even higher,” laughs the alderman.