Bird’s-eye view: Avian sculptures land in Laguna in ‘An Attempted Murder’
Birds of a feather stick together.
Whether you take it in the literal sense or stretch that meaning to some extent, there is much of that adage at play in the artistry in front of Laguna Beach City Hall.
A pair of bronze crows — each approximately 6 feet tall and 1,000 pounds — have been on the building’s lawn for about a week. The sculptures will remain there into September as part of the city’s temporary public art program.
Jack Champion, the creative who brought the birds to town, grew up with crows. His grandmother kept a crow as a pet, and he has been known to feed them himself.
“I’ve got a little group of them that would follow me around,” Champion said. “I feed them, and they would follow my truck home. They recognize my truck, follow me up the hill. I’ve fed crows everywhere I’ve gone. I lived in Marin for 25 years before, and that’s where I started feeding crows. In Oakland, I had crows there that I fed. They’re easy to befriend, and once you gain their trust, they recognize you.”
Between an affection for crows and an interest in art, Champion, now 71, is merging pieces of his past with a full career in the rearview mirror.
For roughly a decade, Champion has been a regular contributor to the artistic works at Burning Man. It was there that he introduced an installation in 2016 known as “Murder,” which featured five large resin crows.
A group of at least three crows is referred to as a murder, Champion explained, giving rise to the title of “An Attempted Murder” for the current work on display in Laguna Beach.
The bronze birds, which are covered in a black patina, will become available at the end of their stay. Champion said he will sell them for $300,000 for the pair, and he will not separate them.
“[Laguna Beach] seems like a nice place down there, that community,” Champion said. “I’d really like it to stay there permanently. That’s my ambition, is to have a permanent home for them. If I had my preferences, I’d rather have it in public view so that people can enjoy it, but I’m not opposed to selling it to a private collector.”
Champion attended art school for a year out of high school, but the life of a starving artist wasn’t one he could embrace. It led him to a career in construction.
Afterward, a new chapter unfolded, one still with tools but also creative freedom.
“During construction, it taught me a lot of things about assembling things, making things work,” Champion said. “I created furniture and stuff when I was in construction, but after I retired, which is about 14 years ago now, I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do what I set out to do. Now, I can. I’ve got a pension coming. I can do what I want now.’ I started doing art, and I started going to Burning Man.”
Champion introduced oversized elephant sculptures to Burning Man in 2022. The 30-foot elephants were referred to collectively as “Homage au Dalí,” an attempt to recreate the 1948 painting “Los Elefantes” by Salvador Dalí.
The desert provides a “perfect landscape” to have the mundane stand out, Champion added.
“The desert landscape, … it looks almost identical to what Salvador Dalí was painting in that picture, so it just fit there,” Champion said. “I tried to bring out aspects of the painting into my project. You could see in the distance in the painting there’s like a Greek temple that’s way far off in the distance. I made a Greek temple there that housed the generator that powered the lights.
“I also made a giant picture frame to enclose it, to see how many people would pick up on that, that they were in this painting and they could impose themselves in it by stepping into the painting.”
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.
