Love Your Bean (Edmonton)

Cosimo Cavallaro, Canada

Description

Title: Love Your Bean
Artist: Cosimo Cavallaro (b. 1961, Canada)
Medium: Fibreglass resin
Dimensions (H x W x D): 1.4 x 2.74 x 1.22 m (4 feet 6 inches x 9 feet x 4 feet) each
Weight: 320 kg (705 lbs) each
Location: near 118 Avenue and 92 Street in Edmonton, Alberta

Previously located in Charleson Park in Vancouver, the Love Your Bean sculptural artwork was a turning point for Cosimo Cavallaro. His earlier artworks were constructed from perishables, such as covering a room with melted cheese in Cheese Room and the use of chocolate as a sculptural medium in Chocolate Jesus. After many years of seeking beauty in destruction, he experienced a sudden shift in perspective: he realized that he had no more anger left to express.

“Love your bean” was a mantra that Cavallaro told himself while he worked on the highly polished fibreglass resin of Love Your Bean. To him, it meant “don’t give up.” The inspiration came from a deeper focus on the nature of love, shape and colour. According to Cavallaro, the bean is the truest shape to create, a shape that occurs naturally through process. Unlike a perfect circle that can be traced, a bean is an organic shape, one that cannot be easily duplicated and one that changes with each person that creates it. The whimsical and childish elements of Love Your Bean are increased with the bold and joyful presentation of colours. Upon reflecting on his earlier works, Cavallaro considers that it is fairly easy to demolish existing materials in pursuit of beauty, but it is much more “difficult to build the beauty that you search for in life.”

“The sculptures in Love Your Bean break the boundaries that exist between objects and humans. They compel one to touch them, crossing borders when you allow yourself to be led by your senses. Love Your Bean is a simple shape that is easily understood as a womb, a place of comfort where one seeks solace. Open borders is an acceptance of one’s self, allowing yourself to exist without judgement.” – Cosimo Cavallaro

“… the pop conceit of [Love Your Bean] deliberately super-sweet connotation allows them to transcend both their medium and the pop culture box, rising into whichever cortex of our brain houses the perfect combination of oral and visual desire. It’s enough to make your mouth, if not your eyes, water.” – MS, ArtScene

Watch this

Check Out the PBS Documentary

While Love Your Bean has been removed from its original site (Charleson Park in Vancouver), the Vancouver Biennale is seeking funding opportunities so that these sculptures may return to Metro Vancouver and be enjoyed as a Legacy Artwork.

About Arts on Ave Edmonton Society

Arts on the Ave is fully engaged with the city of Edmonton and dedicated to the community through the cultivation of positive urban renewal. The Love Your Bean sculpture is one of three artworks on loan from the Vancouver Biennale to Arts on the Ave as part of an effort to transform the Alberta Avenue neighbourhood into a community arts district. It is through culture-led urban regeneration initiatives and a strong vision of creative spaces and placemaking that these art-infused communities have begun to flourish and provide a safe, nurturing environment for artists to thrive.