Bear art may awaken hibernating feelings

Bears are invading Spokane. That’s not bad news. Forty in all will be decorated and placed in various places around Spokane.

Local artists, guided by their artistic sense and a dash of whimsy, decorate the bears. At the end of the summer, these great conversation pieces, sponsored by local businesses, will be auctioned off to benefit Ronald McDonald House.

What a great idea! It’s modeled after last summer’s very popular artistic moose exhibits across Coeur d’Alene.

Many made the journey to Coeur d’Alene to be photographed with their favorite Bullwinkle-wannabe. To have these bears gracing our area will be a real treat.

Art is a very subjective thing. I couldn’t tell Van Gogh’s brush strokes from those of the paint pro down at Home Depot.

Just making it gleam in chrome is no measure of success to me, either, like the floating silver noodles in Riverfront Park.

But I know what resonates inside me – whether it is a thought-provoking play, a painting that grabs something inside me, or a song put to the perfect voice.

Growing up, I had the Toledo (Ohio) Art Museum to visit. Like any boy, I whisked through the paintings with barely a glance and zeroed in on every detail of the Egyptian mummies on display. Art seemed like a destination then, a place you went to, like to the ballpark to see the Toledo Mud Hens play.

To have these bears sitting around in the city makes art come alive for me. It makes much more sense to have 40 different examples of artistic expression as discussion points out among us than to do something like drape Riverfront Park in giant ribbon gates a la Central Park in New York.

If the first four bears I saw at River Park Square – especially “The Bear In My Closet” – are indicative of bears to come, this should be a fine exhibit. But if I may be so bold, if all of the 36 bears to come are not yet completed, I’d like to add a few suggestions.

One suggestion is to put the bears on wheels and move them everywhere around Spokane. The Spokane Transit Authority could sponsor “The Bear On the Bus” and tote it around on daily commutes.

Maybe randomly put a bear on downtown elevators, just for comedic effect.

Or paint one of the bears looking terrified while being antagonized by a swarm and title it “The Bees.”

Maybe a “Crosswalk Carnivore,” complete with the same wide-eyed, scared look that local citizens experience as they attempt to cross city streets.

To marry our love for animals with artistic endeavor, all for a charitable cause, is worthy of my kudos.

I’m sure those kudos for the artists and the sponsors, and the big brutes they present to us, will be echoed many times over the course of this summer.

For more information on the “Bear Necessities” fund-raiser, go to www.thebearnecessities.org.