May 26, 2010 - Over the past two weeks, visiting Korean artist Byoung-Tak Mun has been creating a sculpture in the art department's patio at CSUB. The internationally known sculptor has bent and welded about half a ton of rebar into a spiraling dragon tail as the final installment of his Nine Dragons series of sculptures, which inhabit different countries around the world. This is the only one in the United States.

The sculpture will be installed in the pond on the west side of campus at approximately 1 p.m. Friday, May 28. A local company is donating a crane and crew to lift the more-than-25-foot dragon tail onto concrete footings in the pond. Art department staff and students - who have been watching and helping the artist throughout the process - will be on-hand, as well as the artist himself and a translator.

When installed, the sculpture will give the perception a dragon is buried in the pond with only its tail showing. Even though water has significance when it comes to dragons in Korean mythology (it is said dragons first live in water, then take flight when mature), the pond was not Mun's first choice. However, campus leaders chose the pond for safety reasons - so no one could climb on the sculpture, and it wouldn't fall on people in case of an earthquake.

The irony is, Mun's inspiration for his sculpture series came from the Village of Nine Dragons, which he visited as a youth in Korea. Today, that village sits under water, forgotten, having been flooded when a dam was built.

"Human beings built the dam, but it made nature destroy (their village)," Mun said through translation by Korean exchange student Eunhyo Cho. "People do something against nature and they forget what nature did for us."

In Korea, dragons are symbols of nature and the wrath of nature. Mun's dragons are "furious about what man is doing to the earth, and burying their heads into the earth," said Joyce Kohl, Interim Director of the CSUB Art Department.

On Wednesday, art department technicians Dan Slayton and Horse Robinson used a forklift to move the sculpture from the art department patio out to the pond, where students are helping the artist add branches to the rebar frame. The branches were donated by the City of Bakersfield's Green Waste Facility.

Mun was chosen out of a pool of applicants as this year's Visiting Sculptor at CSUB. The program is funded by a Pelletier grant. For more information about the Visiting Sculptor program, please call Joyce Kohl at 661-654-3095