An artist’s bust of a breast-baring First Lady Michelle Obama, her hair shaped into a wavy crown adorned with a stone-encrusted Afro pick, is set to debut this fall in New York.
Leo Kesting Gallery in Manhattan, where the sculpture will be displayed from Oct. 1 – 10, in its press release, says, “First Lady Michelle Obama receives an ‘Inaugural Ball’ makeover for providing a makeover to the face of the US. The sexy, bare-shouldered style-enhancement highlights Obama’s ethnicity to create a new fashion template for the 21st Century first lady.”
Called “Michelle Obama’s Makeover for America,” the bust also depicts Obama with an American flag engraved into her chest, large hoop earrings hanging above it.
“The goal is to create a look for Michelle Obama that eliminates excessive comparisons to Jackie Kennedy,” Edwards has said, “like supermodel Tyra Banks’s photos in Harper’s Bazaar, or the puzzling comment from CBS’s Byron Pitts that recommended ‘less Jackee, more Jackie O.’”
The bust is the latest installment of sculptor Daniel Edwards’s “Inspire America” series. The Indiana-born provocateur is also known for his bust of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and life-sized statue of pop singer Britney Spears nude, giving birth on her hands and knees atop a bearskin rug. Among his less controversial works are sculptures of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy for the Landmark for Peace Memorial in Indianapolis.
