The Awakening Sculpture

You might want to start reading this article from the bottom.  Not just because its boring to read text top-to-bottom, left-to-right every single time, but more to save you from unnecessary reading as there have been further developments as of February 20, 2008, in the placement of this statue.  And, yes, we all need saving from unnecessary reading.  It's the number three killer behind heart disease and terrestrial radio.
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June 1, 2007 — Washington D.C. is absolutely pimpled with monuments and statues, but you have never seen the most remarkable one in the area. No, I mean it, you really haven’t. Maybe because it’s lost in that aforementioned panoply. Maybe because it has no ties to American history whatsoever. Maybe because it’s a bit off the beaten (all right, abused) tourist track. Maybe because it was created by a guy whose artistic credibility extends only as far as being bored and rich. I’m going to say it again. You have not seen this statue. What? Oh, you watched that eyesore of a Sandra Bullock movie The Net? Well, okay, then, you have seen it. But geez, man, did you have to degrade yourself by admitting that just to make the point? You are the opposite of cool.

For those of you with higher film standards, the sculpture’s called The Awakening, and it’s currently entrenched at Hains Point, the tip of a small peninsula known as East Potomac Park somewhat near the Jefferson Memorial in D.C. I say currently because there have been rumors since 2001 or so that the sculpture would be relocated elsewhere for silly reasons that you can dig up on your own. As of early 2007, though, the sculpture is still there. Also, just to warn you, I’m having trouble knowing when to appropriately use the terms sculpture and statue in this article, so I will be switching randomly between the two throughout.

The Awakening is a 100-foot-long aluminum sculpture in five separate parts depicting an anguished bearded giant either being swallowed by the earth, emerging from it, or being trapped in it (that’s how you know it’s art…because it’s vague), all in such a way that it implies that the rest of the statue is underground. You can’t see his knee or foot in these pictures, mostly because I don’t have those kind of fetishes. You can find much more descriptive pictures of it elsewhere on the Internet. Here is where you’ll find me posing with it.

I found out about this work in a roundabout way. The sculpture was cast by J. Seward Johnson, Jr., of the cleanly coiffed Johnson & Johnson clan. He happened to own (without even really knowing it, I think) a tiny industry magazine for which I used to work. Johnson’s artistic work is generally uninspired, mostly life-size bronze casts of people doing various uninteresting things—you know, those silly things you sometimes see outside of libraries and municipal buildings—but I’ve little problem sifting through a lifetime of mediocre work just to see something like this piece.

According to the omniscient Internet, it was erected in 1980 for some sort of sculpture exhibition. It was only supposed to be a temporary display. That’s all the back story I’m going to give you. Look it up on Wikipedia and pray to your pagan gods that the information is accurate.

The Potomac River and Washington Channel backdrop The Awakening, and close on the opposite bank of the Potomac is Ronald Reagan Airport, so it’s a picturesque spot for the placement of a sculpture for a lot of reasons. It’s kind of a long walk from the Smithsonian stop on the orange line of the Metro, but still do-able. And by do-able I mean that I did it. It’s a lot of walking, but it’d be good for you. Your girlfriend might say she loves your “tummy,” but only because it reminds her of her father and it has the pleasant action of an oatmeal-filled rubber hot water bottle. You can also drive there, easily (relatively…it is in D.C. after all). Some parking spaces are located nearby, and you can always just park on the side of the road near the sculpture.

You’ll probably have to dodge a few kids who use it as a playground, even though there’s an actual playground within hop-scotching distance. Parents like to snap pictures of them sitting in the giant’s palm or sliding down his shin or emerging from his maw (yes, maw); however, it’s much less crowded than any other monument in D.C., by a factor, I’d say, of about a billion. I went on an early Saturday afternoon in 2003 or 2004, and only had to wait 20 minutes or so to have some solo time with the sculpture. You don’t need to know why I needed that.

The one aspect of the sculpture that I’d change if I were a bored health care product scion is to either grow or install grass around the various pieces of the statue to heighten the illusion of its partial burial instead of the mulch-type substance that surrounded the statue in an artificial circle when I visited, but that bare gripe disappears when it snows or floods for an even better effect. This entire paragraph is a sentence. Now it’s two. Geez.

There you go, the only article located on Sandra Bullock’s ’net that doesn’t use “agony” or “primal scream” in describing this statue.

Oh, and I read somewhere that cars have hit the statue once or twice. That makes me incredibly happy. Obviously not because I hate the statue, or even cars really. It just seems an awfully heroic move to me.

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UPDATE:  Well, everything you just read in this article is now wrong...that’s my update.  Actually, that bit of information is important enough that I probably should have posted this above the article.  It is an “up”-date, after all.  Anyway, today, February 20, 2008, I’m holding a copy of the Washington Post Metro section, whose centerpiece is a large picture of the gigantic foot of this state being dug up less than delicately by a pair of straining workmen.  Now, normally, I never read newspapers because I’m afraid that I’ll also start wearing ties and drinking coffee, but this copy was sent directly to me by God to update O.T.I.S.  Thanks, God.  You always will be my best source.  After years of rumors, The Awakening is finally being moved from its spot on Hains Point, in Washington, DC, where it has struggling valiantly to free itself from the earth for 27 years.  Soon, though, it will be visitable again just down Route 295 at the National Harbor project in Prince George’s County, Maryland.  I doubt the place will be as picturesque as Hains Point, but it definitely won’t be as remote. That plus the fact that the statue won’t have to face the competition of all the more famous DC monuments so directly anymore, might mean that The Awakening could start getting some of the attention it deserves.  Wait, I hate that.  I also hate that now I have to re-visit it at some point, and then re-write this article all over again.  Wait, maybe I love that.  Totally not watching The Net again, though.