Tom Otterness
Shockers, 2019
Cor-Ten steel and hay
Museum Purchase with funds from Amy and Robert Bressman, Julie and Marc Platt, Adam and Ellen Beren and their families in memory of their mother, Joan S. Beren.
Tom Otterness’ Shockers is a tribute by a native Wichitan to the early chapter of WSU’s history that has inspired the school’s mascot and nickname. At the beginning of the 20th century, students at what was then Fairmount College worked during the summers shocking wheat – i.e., stacking it during harvesting – in nearby fields. This eventually led to the use of Wheatshockers and then the shortened version, Shockers, as the designation for the school’s athletic teams and student body more generally.
With Shockers, Otterness has created a scene in his characteristically simplified, cartoonish style of two such men, taking a break to rest and survey the results of their labor. One stands with a bale, the other with a scythe. Their bodies made of prairie hay, they seem to identify completely with their work. At eighteen feet tall, they also appear to be giants out of an origin myth. And even though they don’t have faces, their poses suggest a sense of camaraderie and deep satisfaction at what they are beholding — feelings that the original “shockers” from over a century ago would surely share if they could see the beautiful campus that grew out of the seed of Fairmount College.