Robert "Bob" Larkin Chollar Sculpture

Crafted on a Whim, Head Becomes Artist's Oldest Public Work

The face sculpture at Evergreen Rotary Park, which Orcas Island sculptor Robert "Bob" Larkin Chollar said he crafted in 1969 with a pile of dumped asphalt.

BREMERTON -- A homegrown kid who says he left a permanent mark on the shores of Bremerton is trying to create another permanent mark on the world.

Robert "Bob" Larkin Chollar thinks it was in 1969. He was about 19 when he and a friend were passing time along the beach near what is now Evergreen-Rotary Park.

It was between high school and the day he would extend his thumb to head south.

A truck from a nearby cement company stopped by the park and dumped a load of asphalt on the beach.

An artistic type, Chollar said he got the notion.

"I think I'll make a big head out of that," he recalls.

It took about two hours, he said, and the ingredients in the asphalt eventually caused his fingers to tingle. Some rocks remained in his burnt fingertips for a couple of weeks. The head, about the size of a large potato sack, remains.

The head and its face do not stand out among the other piles of dried concrete and can easily be missed. It rests just outside an opening in a wood fence that lines the park's main parking lot.

Once spotted, though, it carries a strange resemblance to that rumored face on Mars.

Chollar, who grew up on Rocky Point and now lives on Orcas Island, was a couple years away from a vision that he is still trying to fulfill.

He got the artistic bug as a kid after seeing the movie "Jason and the Argonauts," during which a large, bronze statue comes to life. He saw that statue and decided he could craft something like it.

He sculpted and painted through his years at West High School. Chollar was suspended from West for reasons he did not disclose. He already had enough credits to graduate, so he stayed away. He took the time to chase after a girlfriend who had moved away to California, landing in San Francisco where he spent five weeks experiencing the 60s.

Chollar came back to Bremerton and worked with an art instructor at Olympic College for a while, but he eventually decided to head south for some sun.

He stuck his thumb out on Kitsap Way and got a ride for part of his journey that would end in Arizona.

Relaxed in the car, he settled in and in an instant began having a vision of a piece of art he said will be his life's work.

"All of the sudden it just popped into my mind," he said. "I've never had an experience like that since."

In the years since, he has done plenty of sculptures and paintings, mostly on private commissions and one installation in San Francisco's Presidio area. Occasionally he would tire of the sales aspect in art. For a couple of years he ran a paving crew. During another time off from art he helped a friend build a house, he said.

The Bremerton-bred artist delayed making the piece he had in the vision, because for years he did not think he had the skill to craft some of the details.

Chollar said the piece is still vivid in his mind today and he describes it on his website, beginning with earth being represented in the form of a bowl.

"I saw in the center a large column of people flowing up in the air forming a God-like Being holding his arms out in profound beneficent offering. Life-giving water flows through his fingers to two lakes below. This central column took my attention at first, but then I zoomed back to see the whole of life that was happening in this bowl containing desert, forest and plains," he wrote.

Now Chollar believes it is time to make the vision tangible. The work, which he said would probably take years to complete and would stand between 20 and 40 feet high, would be too costly to do without a commission, so he has begun to send out feelers to the likes of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The fountain could be his life's work, but as long as the head remains, it will be Chollar's oldest public art piece.

That makes him laugh a bit, given how impulsive and light-hearted the head work was to begin with. Despite the work's casual beginning, Chollar said at least one other person has tried to take credit for it.

In fact, there is little, if any, documented proof that Chollar did it. And it's not as if he invests a lot of energy defending his ownership.

"It was more amusing than anything. The whole thing was a joke to begin with," he said. "I barely take credit for it."