Field of Giant Corn Cobs

As a native of Ohio, I'm no stranger to cornfields—in fact, I used to live on a street that had two of them, and nothing made me happier than wrapping my porch columns in dried cornstalks every Halloween. If you mix an intense love of roadside attractions with my cornfed, Ohio DNA you'd probably end up with something very similar to the field of giant corn cobs in Dublin, Ohio.

The 109 larger-than-life corncobs sprout from a field once farmed by Sam Frantz, inventor of hybrid corns. In 1994 the Dublin Arts Council commissioned artist Malcolm Cochran to create the field of concrete corn using three molds with different kernel patterns. I did notice the variation, and to the untrained eye it looks as if each cob is unique.

We were most surprised about where the field is located—smack dab in the middle of a bland industrial park, right next to a busy road and surrounded by the upper class suburbs of Columbus. While the setting was unexpected, the field of giant corn cobs has all the ingredients of a classic roadside attraction—an every day object that is dramatically scaled, accessible, strange and seemingly out of place, but with a connection to local history (however tenuous) that makes it all feel much more normal than a field of giant, concrete corn probably should.