From Surly Brewery to St. Paul College, Target Field to Vertical Endeavors, Can Can Wonderland and until recently, the Kenwood Elementary School, Zoran Mojsilov has made his mark on the Twin Cities and beyond with his giant stone figures.
Many neighbors were alarmed on the morning of July 16 to see the familiar rock form in the jaws of a moving crane, leaving the intersection of Penn Avenue and Franklin Avenue after 14 years.
“I’m not happy because we would sit on the rock and it was fun,” June Small said.
Her sister Lucy added, “I feel sad because when I was little I used to use it as a slide.”
The reason behind the rock’s abrupt departure was far from sinister. Mojsilov explained that since he already paid $3,000 for a crane to pick up a different work that morning, it was more cost-efficient to grab the Kenwood piece too. If residents can raise the money to buy the rock sculpture — approximately $30,000 — it will be returned to its spot outside the school.
Although the neighborhood may simply know it as “the big rock,” its official name is Grandma’s Mountain, or “Babdukina planina,” in Serbian. The granite figure was an homage to Mojsilov’s grandmother, the curves in honor of the mountain peaks in her village; she died six months after he completed the sculpture.
The 8.5-foot-tall sculpture found its place in the Smalls’ and other children’s climbing adventures after Mojsilov began showing his work with the Bockley Gallery on 21st Street. It was first stationed outside a library in Chicago, but when they decided not to purchase the piece, he brought it back to Minneapolis, hoping to put it with the others in the gallery. However, the crane couldn’t maneuver the electric lines, so they compromised to leave it on the strip of grass near the Kenwood school and park instead.
The sad truth, in Mojsilov’s eyes, is that people don’t seem to care until his work is gone.
“I know the kids love it, and I understand all these things, but somebody has to pay for the mortgage and this [studio] space,” he said. The rock’s stay in Kenwood came with added fees, as he paid insurance in case a child was injured while playing.
His work is still featured prominently elsewhere in the neighborhood, at the gallery and in Stone Poem Rain Garden — a 2015 collaboration between Mojsilov and Louise Erdrich featured next to the school and across the street from Birchbark Books.
Unless residents can harness the finances to buy Grandma’s Mountain, it will remain in Mojsilov’s outdoor gallery, nicknamed “Zoran’s Corner,” at 77 13th Avenue NE.
By Sonia Kharbanda, age 18
