Oh dear Lord. We hurt her feelings:
The artist who misspelled the names of famous people in world history on a large ceramic mosaic outside Livermore's new library can spell one word with ease: N-O. That's Maria Alquilar's new position on fixing the typos.
She had planned to fly to California and put the missing "n" back in Einstein and remove the extra "a" in Michelangelo, among other fixes. But after receiving a barrage of what she called "vile hate mail," Alquilar said Livermore is off her travel itinerary and there'll be no changes by her artistic hand.
"No, I will not return to Livermore for any reason," Alquilar, of Miami, told The Associated Press in an e-mail. "There seems to be so much hatred within certain people. They continuously look for a scapegoat. I guess I am the sacrificial goat."
Why am I not surprised that, in addition to her inflated self-esteem and self-assessment of artistic talent, she is good at playing the victim hand as well? And by "victim," I mean not just of the town, but of the ineffable artistic impulse as well:
When asked whether she chose the words and names for the work or whether the city provided her with a list, Alquilar took an artistic stance in response.
"The art chose the words," she said.
Hear that, naysayers? Einstein's image told her to misspell his name. The muse of Michaelangelo insisted that spelling was irrelevant. Ignorance is now excusable if one is in the throes of artistic fever, which should please the nation's touchy-feely "educators" no end.