Design students customize plastic flamingos

DECATUR, Ill. -- Ever wondered what Sonny and Cher would look like as flamingos?

You can see them at Richland Community College, along with a host of other characters, real and imaginary.

The project is part of Gil Rocha's design class and a whimsical way to bring out the creativity in his students -- all of whom he refers to as "kids," though all are adults and some are his elders.

He told his class to take pink flamingo yard ornaments and give them personality, and the class rose to the occasion. No two are alike.

"It's because (the artists) are all so different," said Jennifer Kohls, who created Cher. Classmate Ryan Merrow is responsible for Sonny.

Flamingo yard ornaments, Rocha said with a grin, were once considered the height of good taste and a way to show off how much class you had. Now, they're tacky but fun, and they have an assured place in American pop culture history, right alongside hula hoops and Coca-Cola.

"I told the kids that, just for fun and to nurture creativity -- that's what I think is the most important thing for an artist to have -- just use this thing here that people have looked at as tacky and corny," Rocha said.

No disguises for flamingos

The only rule was the "kids" couldn't disguise their flamingos so well that people wouldn't see that they were flamingos, Rocha said.

Brad Boettger said he wanted his flamingo to be too offensive to display in the Richland Learning Resource Center with the others.

"It was going to be worse," he said. "I figured if it was that gory, that graphic, they couldn't display it. That's kind of the goal with all my art, really."

He didn't get his wish. His flamingo -- no longer pink but in shades of black and gray, with a wide open, bloody mouth -- is right alongside the more cheerful hula-dancer flamingo created by classmate Molly Lauer.

Across the room you can find Troy Maddox's guitar flamingo plugged into an amplifier, along with Cody Davis' dreadlock-wearing flamingo representing Soulfly guitarist Max Cavalera.There was a Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf pair, and a soccer mom. "American Pie" by Stephanie Augustine is a salute to American unity.