From June 21, the streets of Cody, Wyoming will become a gathering place for grizzly bears, but travellers need not be alarmed; as these bears are harmless fibreglass replicas set out for your delight as part of the 2008 Festival of Grizzly Sculpture.
From conception to final touch of colour, these animals are unique painted sculptures, their themes drawing on such diverse sources as popular culture, traditional Western art, Indian folk art, and environmental and ecological movements.
Following a private artists/sponsors reception, from 3:00 to 4:00 the public will be treated to the first “Gathering of Grizzlies,†an opportunity to see the work of twenty-eight Montana and Wyoming artists. Later, the bears will migrate to their summer habitats in Cody and Powell. Then, on 4 October 2008, the grizzlies will be re-gathered and auctioned in a benefit for the youth sections of the Park County library system.
The works are marked by beauty of form, by lush, vivid colour, and by strong graphic compositions, the artists embracing various artistic mediums and styles ranging from Western to early modernism to conceptual art. The germ of the idea began with sculptor Jeff Rudolph’s maquette of a seated grizzly. During the summer of 2007, he transformed the model into a five-foot sculpture in which art and life mingle in the iconic form of a relaxed grizzly, long claws a reminder that this is the most dangerous animal on the American continent. Jeff’s work, which is both playful and haunting, was then reproduced, becoming a body of twenty-five fibreglass replicas.
Both small and large bears will be high-profile attractions in Cody and Powell during the summer and will migrate around Park County to give everyone a chance to enjoy them. The small bears will be displayed in the participating banks, the large grizzlies on the pavements.
FemaleFirst - Ruth Harrison