Lawrence Argent, sculptor, dies at 60

DENVER ( AP) — Lawrence Argent, a sculptor known for whimsical, monumental works in public spaces, most notably a 40-foot blue bear that peers with seeming curiosity into a Denver convention center, died on Oct. 4 in Denver. He was 60. His former wife, Anne Argent, said the cause was cardiac arrest.

Argent’s creations — a giant panda and a jumbo rabbit among them — have popped up in cities around the globe, but perhaps none more famously than in Denver, where the colossal bear, titled “I See What You Mean,” stands on its hind legs, its paws and nose pressed against a steel-framed glass wall of the Colorado Convention Center.

Did the bear lumber down from the Rockies? What does it make of the human beings inside the building? Is it blue to reflect its mood, having been uprooted from his natural habitat?

Argent rarely provided answers. But as long as people stopped and wondered, he said, he felt his work was a success.

Lawrence Nigel Argent was born on Jan. 24, 1957, in Essex, England, and raised in Melbourne, Australia. His mother, the former Joyce Fawcett, was an accountant; his father, Kenneth, was an architect.

Argent studied art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and moved to the United States shortly after graduating in 1983. In 1986, he earned a master’s in fine arts from the Rinehart School of Sculpture in Baltimore.

He taught in Texas and California before accepting a teaching job at the University of Denver in 1993. This year, the school named him a professor emeritus.

Argent and Anne Cashman were married in 1991; they divorced in 2014. Their two children, Quinn and Camron, and a brother, Kevin, survive him.

Argent’s original plan was to become a doctor. But after working at a hospital for three years preparing operating rooms, he realized the setting was too restricting for his personality.