Denver's Big Blue Bear gets vandalized

Erie’s isn’t the only green mess in the news

Denver's Big Blue Bear gets vandalized
Denver’s Big Blue Bear (40 ft. tall) was anointed with green paint Saturday night, in some vandal’s idea of fun. (Photo: John Leyba/The Denver Post)

My last post was about green goop in Lake Erie. Now there’s a different kind of green goop in downtown Denver. Vandals poured green paint over our famous Big Blue Bear sculpture, titled “I See What You Mean,” that peers into the windows of the Colorado Convention Center.

Apparently the person or persons responsible got on the roof of the convention center above the bear and poured the paint from there. It will probably be Wednesday before the weather clears enough for workers to clean the sculpture.

Officials say it is uncommon for our public art to be defaced.

For more on Denver’s beloved bear, and a photo taken on a better day, see “Lions, tigers, and bears.

5 thoughts on “Erie’s isn’t the only green mess in the news

    1. I love that bear. Not sure how the vandals got the paint up there, though; in the photo in the old post, it looks like the roof overhangs him. Anyway, officials are saying it’s latex paint, so shouldn’t be too hard to remove.

  1. I love that bear! Fools!
    (Don’t appreciate what you’ve got until it’s gone – they had to remove mosaic benched and shut fountains along part of our downtown rail line because vandals kept prying pieces out…they brought the artist back multiple times for repairs before giving up)

    1. The bear was pressure washed today. 6 pm news showed a guy up on a cherry picker with a hose, making good progress.

      What a shame your downtown project had to be abandoned because of vandals. Thoughtless destruction, especially when it’s repeated like that, infuriates me. And how very sad for the artist, to see his work constantly vandalized and ultimately abandoned/removed.

... and that's my two cents