URBANA – One super-big Lincoln head could be in Urbana's future.

Champaign County Board member Ralph Langenheim, an Urbana Democrat, is promoting a proposed Frank Gallo sculpture for the plaza in front of the Champaign County Courthouse.

Twenty-one feet tall, it would resemble one of the mysterious Easter Island sculptures, only with a stovepipe hat. Rubbing his nose might be a stretch.

Langenheim notes that of all the artists who have passed through Champaign-Urbana or the University of Illinois, only Gallo and Lorado Taft have international reputations.

He acknowledges that when he shows a picture that Gallo has Photoshopped from a Lincoln head he donated to Urbana High School, the usual reaction is shock.

"Every county courthouse in Illinois has a statue in the stylized Lincoln cliche style," Langenheim said. "This would not be one of those. It would attract some pretty strong feelings."

The county board member said people should think in terms of the famed Chicago Picasso sculpture, which was reviled upon its unveiling but now serves a symbol of how Chicago thinks differently.

"This is capable of becoming an iconic thing that would make this community known," Langenheim said.

"I think it would draw attention to Urbana in a way I would rather not draw attention to Urbana," countered Steve Beckett, a fellow Urbana Democrat on the county board.

Beckett, former judge Harold Jensen and UI Professor Bruce Hannon have been leaders in restoring and adding to the courthouse, which is on the same spot as an earlier courthouse where Lincoln practiced law.

Beckett has seen the photo and doesn't think it will fly.

"Public art is one of most difficult issues communities face," he said. "Art is so subjective. What we've been thinking about is how and why Lincoln was in Urbana, as a politician, as a lawyer, as a friend, and this doesn't seem to do it."

Gallo is delighted by strong reactions like Beckett's.

"I want to engage the people who live here, guys like Steve Beckett, and make them confront how they feel about Lincoln, maybe give me some input," the sculptor said.

The head looks enormous in the photo that Gallo produced; it's meant to.

"I wanted to capture the Mount Rushmore feeling: generous, large, significant," he said.

"With the addition of the stovepipe hat, it's even more so."

The sculpture wouldn't look too much like the photo, he said. The face will be younger and beardless, to reflect Lincoln's time here, and the hat would be different. There would be some sort of platform.

Gallo also likes a certain cartoonish aspect he finds in certain Matthew Brady photographs of the Great Emancipator.

Lincoln had a number of different looks, he said, "not just the one you see at every county courthouse."

He thinks the courthouse is the perfect setting.

"Every time I drive by and look at this empty plaza, I see this giant head.

"And let's put a hat on him," Gallo said.