There are two of these bears, one at each of the bridges that lead to the town of
"Los Osos" in California. They are there because of Sylvia Smith, who decided
that a town with such a name should have a proper bear at each of its entrances.
I had originally wanted to have them be simple cast concrete, but the casting
came back quite badly, and I had to do a great deal of patching, and then painted
them to cover the patches. Not the favorite way to do a sculpture. Later, when one
of the bears was vandalized, a local concrete expert recast it so perfectly, that
I could of left it unpainted. When I asked the assembled kids and grown ups whether
they wanted it left plain, or painted, they all cried out "Paint it like the other one!"
so that's what we did. My original idea for the bear was that it be friendly, not menacing
but certainly not cute either. The bears that the town was named after terrorized the
local Chumash people, and they were apparently happy to have the Spanish
soldiers get rid of the whole population. The non-native people were quite good at
decimating entire populations of native animals, and in many cases, people.

Paintings, Sculpture and all contents of this site
Copyright © 2004 Paula Zima.
All Rights Reserved