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How We Create Your Bronze Statue from Start to Finish

Utah’s ‘Grizzly’ image takes shape By Rebecca Walsh From The Associated Press

Using a wooden dowel, we painstakingly textured the 800 pounds of soft cream-colored clay to look like coarse tufts of hair. West Valley City leaders, on their first field trip to see the statue, couldn’t help themselves: the just had to touch the bear, too.

“It’s so lifelike,” murmured Mayor Gearld Wright, stroking the clay.
The clay model for West Valley City’s first piece of public art rendered its official patrons giddy. Councilman Russ Brooks tried to figure out if the bear was a male or female, then decided there was too much clay hair to tell. And Councilman Leland DeLange wedged his head under one upraised clay paw in a simulated horrible ursine strangulation while City Manager John Patterson snapped pictures from every angle.

A final, bronze version of the sculpture – known for now as “The Grizzly Statue” – will grace the foyer of the city’s 10,500-seat Olympic Hockey Arena when it opens in September 1997 for the Utah Grizzlies hockey season.

In its current home in the garage of a body shop tucked away on a Provo side street, the 9-foot grizzly looks rather out of place, surrounded as it is by car parts and religious statuary.

For more than 10 years, we have been squeezing clay onto a plywood and foam frame. They will smooth the bear, piece by piece. A mold will be made in a month. In six to eight months, the bear will be cast in bronze at a foundry. When complete, the statue will weigh 1,300 pounds.

Compared to other public art pieces, such as those in front of the Delta Center and in Gallivan Utah Center Plaza in downtown Salt Lake City, the grizzly at $64,000 is relatively modest in price. “Asteroid Landing Softly,” the abstract sandstone and chrome sculpture at the Gallivan Center, cost $200,000. The three metallic figures at the Delta Center’s entrance were $90,000.

“This is the awesome, aggressive, intimidating bear,” he said, scratching his curly brown beard. “I’ve never really seen a formidable bear in attack mode. But this is my image of it.”

Molds are being prepared from a 14-inch model. The city will sell plaster and bronze replicas to wildlife and sports enthusiasts for $250 to $1,000 to defray the cost of the monster original.