Bear
is finally here. And at 370,000 pounds and over 20 foot tall, it’s
hard to miss. The mega sculpture was christened Bear (surprise!)
when artist Tim Hawkinson cracked a bottle of champagne over one
of its gargantuan rocks on May 27.
Happily hunkered down in the center
of the new Academic Courtyard at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering, Bear joins 15 other
outdoor works of art in UCSD’s Stuart Collection. Mary Beebe,
the collection’s director, says she invited Hawkinson to think
about a proposal in early 2001. They brought the Bear proposal to
the Stuart Collection’s advisory committee in November 2001
and, as Beebe relates, they got very excited about  the project. Next
came the long search for rocks. Hawkinson finally found eight massive
boulders at the Pala Band of Mission Indians Reservation North of
San Diego (Bear’s torso alone, is 16 by 17 feet and weighs
in at more than 100 tons).
Hawkinson was described by New York’s Whitney Museum, during
his recent winter/spring exhibition, as “one of the most original
sculptors working in America today.” He is known for producing
art “at scales that vary from the monumental to the nearly
microscopic.” And newsflash: This one is definitely monumental.  “It’s the most challenging project we’ve done. Even finding
the boulders was difficult, and then the engineering was very complex,” says
Beebe. “It’s been a long time coming and I’m exhilarated.
Each of these works takes a different amount of time and take their
own direction as they develop.”
Bear now oversees, with imperious whimsy, three surrounding engineering
buildings: the California Institute for Telecommunications and
Information Technology (Calit2) and the Computer Science and
Engineering buildings,
both scheduled to be dedicated in fall 2005, and the Powell-Focht
Bioengineering Hall, which was opened in 2002. “It’s appropriate that this newest addition to the Stuart Collection
is in this space,” says Joan Jacobs, co-chair of the Friends
of the Stuart Collection Council. And she predicts the artwork will
resonate with students: “I think it will be adopted by students
as a new mascot.”
It was a sentiment echoed by Beebe: “It’s
going to be a truly memorable Bear to be enjoyed and pondered by
untold generations
to come.” And now the big question: What gender is Bear? He
or she?
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