MILES CITY — As you hit the highways on a road trip this summer, Montana has many sights to look for, from beautiful landscapes to wildlife.
Just outside of Miles City, keep your eyes peeled for the Creepy Crawler giant baby art installation, a 14-foot-tall, larger-than-life baby crawling after a rhino, a Velociraptor and a bison.
“The buffalo kind of makes sense, but the other ones are just like, what is going on?” said Miles City resident DeeAnn Sutter. “Very few people know that our (art) club had anything to do with it. But we had some money left over from the trip. And I think we ended up buying a giant bucket of screws that it took to put it together.”
Sutter is an art teacher at Custer County High School and for the last 30 years, she and her husband Chad have taken students in the art club to metropolitan areas on trips. About 10 years ago, they took a trip to San Francisco. During the trip, they went to John Cerney's studio.
“I actually grew up down in that area and was familiar with his larger artworks,” Chad Sutter said. “It's been there and it's a topic of discussion for everybody that drives by.”
Cerney’s whimsical work is now scattered along interstates all over the U.S. and he is on a mission to put one up in every state.
“Most of my work, granted some makes some kind of sense. Makes some kind of statement, nothing usually political. But this is one of the rare times where I knew this would make sense to nobody. And that's ok,” Cerney said. “I'm fine with you just driving down the road, going from point A to point B, seeing something like this and wondering, what the heck is that? Why is it there? Did someone pay for that? What's the message? That's fine with me.”
The Sutter's were key players in getting the Creepy Crawler giant baby to its location in 2015. The art piece can be found a little over 8 miles east of Miles City on the westbound side of I-94.
“My goal is to entertain people as they're driving,” Cerney said.
