Before I show you all my Utah sketches, I’m fast forwarding to this month, which was the 30th anniversary of the installation of the Eggheads by UC Davis professor and renowned sculptor, Robert Arneson, who dies in 1992. The campus has been having special celebrations in honor of Arneson and his beloved Eggheads, which are a series of egg-shaped sculptures all over campus. I’ve drawn the Eggheads before of course, but over the past few weeks I decided to draw all of them again, starting with “Yin and Yang” (above) which is outside Turner Wright Hall, a pair of eggs having a bit of an argument. One of the big parts of the Egghead celebration was a special event at the Manetti Shrem to which I was invited, where Robert Arneson’s widow Sandy Shannonhouse (a renowned artist herself) gave a short talk, and Robert Arneson’s son was there, and the Chancellor Gary May, the L&S Dean Estella Atekwana, and above I sketched the Manetti Shrem’s director Rachel Teagle talking about Arenson’s legacy and his famous Eggheads.

Above, this Egghead is called ‘Stargazer‘. It’s over behind North Hall near Dutton, staring up at the sky. It was installed in May 1994.

Back to the Manetti Shrem event, I sketched people talking, including an MFA Creative Writing candidate Trevor Bashaw who had written a poem dedicated to the Eggheads, I tried to write some down while I sketched. I was sketching in the fountain pen that I had used while sketching people talking in Riverside; for some reason it wasn’t quite coming out so easily, perhaps it was because I was standing (I hold my book in a funny way when I stand) as opposed to sitting at a desk, usually I would use a different type of pen for this sort of thing. Still it was fun enough and I still love that brown ink. The food at the the event was quite nice, I had a nice bowl of ice cream and a glass of wine. I did speak to a few people, some I knew, and the folks who invited me gave me a nice bag of Egghead related goodies. I also bought some big stickers at the little pop-up Egghead shop.

Above is “Bookhead“, I think the earliest installed Egghead, which is located outside of Shields Library. It’s a slightly different colour, being ever so slightly blue around the edges, and the tradition is that students rub or kiss Bookhead for good luck when taking their exams. I haven’t looked at those particular statistics but I am going to guess it has made marginally less difference than actually going into the library to study. This is a fun one though. I think if Arneson had lived he may well have created a new Egghead just staring at a phone.

This one is another fan favourite Egghead, an upside down laughing face with an ominous eye on the back, staring upwards at Mrak Hall. It’s called “Eye on Mrak/Fatal Laff“, an older sketch I did of it recently appeared in Sactown Magazine. In fact I think I even did a sketch of this back in 2005 on that very first sketchcrawl.

Here’s the last sketch from the event at the Manetti Shrem. There was an interesting video being played on loop so I sketched people watching it and mingling. There were media people there and a photographer going round. I was not feeling too well due to those seasonal allergies so I was starting to flag a little, but I had a look around the Deborah Butterfield exhibit “PS These Are Not Horses” which was pretty amazing. I had planned to walk over to the public events celebrating the Eggheads over at shields Library and the MU, which would culminate in the ‘Lighting of the Eggheads’, but my tiredness totally beat me and so I just went home to bed. It was a fun event though and I’m glad I went. You can see the video they played on UC Davis YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/aPmQf-oqnFU?si=UYA2uudwhmbDmzWT. It’s really interesting, and you’ll probably recognize some of the places from my sketches.

The last ones I did were a couple of days ago, on the other side of Mrak Hall outside King Hall. They are two Eggheads called “See No Evil/Hear No Evil“. I do remember they were in a slightly different spot when I first came, outside King Hall, but they were moved into the current spot when King Hall’s new wing was built. I drew all that from the Arboretum years ago, I’ve been here for ages. Anyway, I wanted to draw a few angles of this, so I stood behind one and drew looking out at the other (above), before sitting down right in front of it to capture its bizarre expression. I liked that one, but the sun was shining down on me, and suddenly a big group of schoolkids on an outing arrived and started rolling down the little hillocks the Eggheads are located on, so I got up and went over to the shade, where I grabbed a quick pic of the other Egghead before going back to the office (I actually added the paint while I was in a Zoom presentation, while also taking notes about summer courses). It’s fun drawing small quick sketches.

And so these are Arneson’s Eggheads, happy thirty (or so) years. You can find a tour of the Eggheads at https://www.ucdavis.edu/campus-life/arts-culture/eggheads-tour, and read “The lasting legacy of Arneson’s Eggheads” to find out more about them and about Arneson. Big characters on our campus these, and look! I managed to get through a whole blog post without making a single egg-based pun.