CULTUREWATCH Sculptor's big bird suffers setback BY IAN DONNIS

From the start, the saga of Newport sculptor Roberto Julio Bessin’s big bird — a majestic 40-foot heron found objectionable by some residents in the plush Long Island town of Southold — has been more than a little absurd. So it seems somehow fitting that the judge who wrote a recent decision against the sculpture prefaced his opinion with a Buddhist poem, noting somewhat ominously, "[Those] who have not lived a holy life . . . bleed like decrepit herons in a pond where the fish had died."

Opponents of Bessin’s heron sculpture have contended that the artwork, at least for zoning purposes, was basically the same as a radio tower and was therefore in need of a building permit (see "Height of absurdity," News, August 31, 2001). Bessin, a Venezuelan native who moved with his family to Newport in the mid-’90s, battled back, contending that the case could set a disturbing precedent in which art and expression are treated like a building.

After a series of court battles, Judge Howard Berler of the Suffolk County (New York) Supreme Court, ruled in May, Bessin says, that his big bird "was not a customary structure and within Southold zoning code, accessory uses include any customary structures or uses which are customarily incidental to the principal use." However, the whimsical judge also suggested that an amiable solution might be "hatched." Berler suggested the town might buy property for the placement of the heron monument, if Jim Miller, who had bought the sculpture from Bessin, makes a donation. With sufficient dialogue, the judge wrote, the sculpture could be situated in such a way as to "benefit humanity for eternity."

Bessin, 47, who was inspired to make the gigantic heron after having once seen an egret bathed in an ethereal light in San Francisco Bay, was pleased by the judge’s aesthetic appreciation for the work. Nonetheless, he believes Miller will be asked to remove the monument from his property in Southold, an affluent town on the northeast tip of Long Island. "I hear from a lot of sailors and fisherman who go by it," the sculptor says. "They use it as a reference point."

Bessin, who works from a North Kingstown studio, recently returned from Japan, where a resort commissioned him to build a 25-foot goshawk on a 21-ton stone at the base of Mount Fuji. Backed by donations, he also made a 40-foot osprey in Greenport, Long Island, last year that incorporated 14 tons of twisted steel from the wreckage of New York’s World Trade Center. But despite the affirmation for his naturalistic work, the sculptor remains concerned by the message sent by the judge’s ruling in the heron case.

"It makes all of my work more difficult, the business of doing my work, because people have to think of what the building codes could be construed as," Bessin says. "I’m thinking of doing underwater sculptures, so they would have negative height. I’m thinking positively. Something in Florida would be really beautiful for divers."