Sculptor Delivers His Message Through Ambulatory Reptile

COSTA MESA —  Ah yes, another workaday lunch hour in downtown Costa Mesa. Office workers scurry to and fro. The traffic snarls. A gigantic reptile with skin bearing scenes from Nazi death camps strolls through an idyllic sculpture garden.

Or is it some kind of towering, anti-war insect?

A prehistoric beast with a premonition of the future?

None of the above, or maybe all of the above.

The 15-foot-tall creature that loped about the California Scenario garden Friday, in a performance sponsored by the Laguna Art Museum, was “Snake,” an ambulatory sculpture by Stephen Glassman. He says it represents many things, some whimsical, some beautiful and some horrible.

Glassman, 33, who mounted stilts inside “Snake’s” skeletal frame to move it through the public square, says his animated sculptures can convey “funny folk-tale images” or represent “contemporary urban future fossils.”

Made from bamboo, fiberglass and cotton that billows in the breeze, “Snake” has a gentle, fragile beauty. But it also deals with extremes, and embodies horror: highly abstract images, painted in black on the serpent’s white cotton “skin,” depict Nazi concentration camp victims and other grisly scenes of war.

“The piece goes from extreme beauty to extreme horror,” says the artist, who is from Los Angeles. “War is a horrible thing and the inhumanity (of Nazi Germany) is a horrible thing.”

To most of the 50 or so gathered Friday at the tranquil square, however, it all seemed to mean wonder and a choice photo opportunity.

While some looked utterly perplexed, children squealed with glee as the movable beast gracefully traversed the plaza.

“He looks like a real dinosaur,” said 5-year-old Katherine Lawrence of Costa Mesa as she ran to follow “Snake.”

“It’s so weird,” said 4-year-old Angela Clark, happier to stay safe in her mother’s lap.

Molly Schneider, Katherine’s mother, said she had no clue that the sculpture made reference to Nazi Germany.

Observers seemed equally enthralled by Sarah Elgart, a modern dancer and choreographer from Los Angeles. Dressed in a red skirt and sweater, her face and bare legs painted blood-red, she did an agonized, stiff-legged walk near “Snake”--until Glassman shed the sculpture and, remaining on his stilts, clasped her hand.

The two walked off stiff-legged together, ending the 15-minute show to applause.

The artist (whose work is on view at the Laguna’s satellite museum in South Coast Plaza and in a group exhibit at the Junior Art Center in Hollywood) predicted before the presentation that it would leave a lasting impression:

“This will be as much about the (sculpture garden) as the piece I put in there. I think anyone who sees the show will not look at that place in the same way again.”

“Snake” and other sculptures and paintings by Stephen Glassman are on view through Jan. 7 at the Laguna Art Museum/South Coast Plaza, 3333 Bristol St., Costa Mesa. Hours today: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission: free. Information: (714) 662-3366.