Six Meat Buffet Education Series: Creative Spelling 101

Miami-area illiterate artist Maria Alquilar was commissioned by the city of Livermore, California to create a mural for the city's new public library. The problem, however, was that she misspelled the names of 11 famous historical and literary figures.

Among the misspelled names: Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo and Einstein. You don't have to actually be Einstein to know how to spell his name.

The delicious irony in this story is that the mural is in front of a new library - where, you would assume, literacy is considered important and the correct spelling of words is (or at least used to be) encouraged.

The artist, however, was offended that anyone would dare interrupt her artistic vision with spelling corrections.

"The importance of this work is that it is supposed to unite people," Alquilar said. "They are denigrating my work and the purpose of this work."

Alquilar said it took her quite a bit of her own time and money to create and install the work, and that it sat idle at her Santa Cruz studio for two years until the city cleared the way for its installation.

There were plenty of people around during the installation who could and should have seen the missing and misplaced letters, she said.

"Even though I was on my hands and knees laying the installation out, I didn't see it," she said.

The mistakes wouldn't even register with a true artisan, Alquilar said.

"The people that are into humanities, and are into Blake's concept of enlightenment, they are not looking at the words," she said. "In their mind the words register correctly."

So, just like the NEA's campaign to destroy the public schools has resulted in "creative spelling" at various locations around the country, we should ignore Alquilar's misspellings in the interest of "bringing people together." I guess that should be changed to "bringing illiterate people together".

After the errors were brought to light, Alquilar refused to correct them, bolstering her refusal with claims of "vicious hate mail" sent to her in the wake of her errors.

She has softened her stance (thanks to an extra $6,000 the city has agreed to pay her - plus expenses) and will now travel to Livermore to correct her spelling errors.

Hopefully the correction will happen soon, so that Livermore kids will only be victim to creative spelling lessons in their government school classes instead of on the library steps.

FYI: Rob at Say Anything has been on this story since it broke.