Boys Town Home Campus - Boys Town, NE

"O! My Spiky O!" by artist Liz Vercruysse is located near the Boys Town Visitors Center. Click here to visit Boys Town.

O! What a Site

Boys Town visitors will notice a new addition to the landscape... one that gets right to the point.

"O! My Spiky O!" by Herman, Neb., artist Liz Vercruysse, is part of Omaha's O! Public Art Project, sponsored by Alegent Health. The creation located near the Boys Town Visitors Center, a big red "O" and exclamation point with spikes protruding from their sides, is one of 22 "O!"s throughout Omaha featuring an artist's interpretation of the city's signature logo.

"Boys Town was on top of our list to have an 'O!'," said Molly Skold, Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce's O! Campaign Director. "It means so much because of Boys Town's history, and what the organization means to Omaha and to kids."

The project began in September when a committee comprised of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and the O! campaign representatives, area art professionals and creative community leaders invited artists to submit designs. Of the 50 well-established artists invited, 22 were selected.

"We only invited the cream of the crop," said Skold. "We just asked the artists to display the O! based on their art."

"I was thrilled to be selected and looked forward to the challenge," said Vercruysse, who also took part in Omaha's J. Doe public art project in 2001. "I make spiky stuff, but had never worked with this form of media before." She was given a 7-foot-tall foam and urethane oval and exclamation point.

Vercruysse's design includes more than 600 spikes made from snow cones filled with foam, three coats of bright red paint and four coats of epoxy. She said she was happy to learn the O! she designed would appear at Boys Town and thought the kids would like seeing all the spikes.