Bookhead

Davis, California

In the early 1990s UC Davis art professor Robert Arneson installed seven different Egghead sculptures around campus. Made of enameled ceramic -- Arneson was known as the "Father of the Ceramic Funk Art Movement" -- the large Eggheads were site-specific, and the perennial favorite among them has always been the one outside of the university library: Bookhead. It was unveiled in October 1991. Arneson died a year later.

As with all of the Eggheads, Bookhead is essentially a big egg with human ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. Bookhead lays face-down, its nose literally in a big, open book, its eyes wide. Students rub Bookhead for luck before exams, and can relate to what they see as a familiar act of scholarly exhaustion: pressing your forehead to an open book, hoping that its contents somehow transfer into your brain.