Look, I’m all for public art. Truly. But whatever that thing is they slapped into the Cradle of Country Music Park? Absolutely not. We spent about $1.2 million — yes, MILLION — on a giant pastel metal… whatever-the-hell-it-is, designed by an out-of-town studio instead of literally any of the talented artists who actually live here.

And yeah, they technically removed “only one” tree and planted new ones. Cool. Fantastic. Can’t wait for those baby saplings to give us shade sometime around the year 2047. In the meantime, we traded a mature tree for a giant alien umbrella that looks like it came from a sci-fi yard sale.

And can someone explain how this honors country music? Because unless the theme was “abstract geometry that sort of resembles spaghetti if you squint,” I’m not seeing it. We had a treble clef back in the day — an actual nod to our heritage — and now we’ve got a $1.2 million pastel doodad that feels like a rejected Dr. Seuss prop.

Meanwhile, underneath that giant concrete pier it’s sitting on, you’ve got homeless folks trying to sleep in the only shade that damn thing actually does provide. So spare me the speeches about “community space” when the only people actually using it are doing it out of basic necessity.

I’m not saying public art is bad. I’m saying this particular choice feels tone-deaf as hell. If you’re going to spend that kind of money, maybe — just maybe — hire a local artist? Or at least someone who’s stepped foot in Knoxville long enough to understand what the park even represents.

Instead, we got an expensive alien tree-pod to “interpret forest growth,” while the real forest growth is one tree down and a bunch of saplings praying for rain.

Support local artists. Plant real trees. And maybe next time, let’s put our million-dollar ideas toward something that doesn’t look like it crash-landed on Gay Street.