COVINGTON, Ky. — Remember when ET phoned home? Well, one alien has decided to call Covington home.
"Clive" has been watching over residents and visitors in the Central Business District. And with freaky sounds, places to shop and things to see nearby, it's easy to understand why an extraterrestrial would want to hang out in Northern Kentucky.
"I had a bunch of coffee — and I'm kind of wound up anyway — and I was just sketching and coming up with ideas, and I just thought an alien would be fun," said Marc Phelps.
And suddenly, Clive — whose name was "meant as a placeholder initially" — was born.
Phelps said the city bought into his quirky idea and funded the project.
"I couldn't believe it," he said.
The two-story alien invasion started at Phelps' home and was eventually installed on the corner of 5th and Scott streets over the past few months.
"The whole gag on this thing is just the scale, right? It's massive," Phelps said.
Clive is made of foam, filled with fiberglass over the top. His eyes are carbon fiber.
"That’s actually the same carbon fiber that's used in military drones," Phelps said.
The installation costs about $50,000 and was funded by meetNKY, a Covington Quality of Place grant and other sources, Phelps said. It cost about $30,000 in engineering and $20,000 in material costs.
Phelps' labor, he said, was free. He estimated he put approximately 2,000 hours into the project over the course of the year.
"It just really kind of tied in perfectly to, you know, kind of that quirky spirit of Covington," said Amanda Johannemann, director of meetNKY's destination marketing and communications. "Not only are pieces of public art like this, you know, what we're doing to attract folks, but for those that are really here, this has definitely has a connection to the local community as well."
"If you come to visit, you're more than likely to consider this as a place you might want to live in," she said. "So our story is let's just do more and more of this to bring more visitors."
Vallie Congrove saw photos of Clive online Friday morning and had to stop by for a perfectly framed photo.
"That's ridiculous!! We got so excited," Congrove said.
It's art that's quite literally out of this world.
