Baby appears on boat in Sausalito

LAKEVILLE — What stands 14 feet tall, took three years to make, and is lying on its back in a boat near Sausalito, Calif.?A giant sculpture of a baby, created by David Hardy, a graduate of Salisbury Central School (1983) and The Hotchkiss School (1987).Hardy, who now teaches at New York University and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., made the giant baby in the late 1990s, when he was working as a property and set builder in the movie business.He said the sculpture was made of odds and ends of fiberglass, styrofoam and “stuff I salvaged from sets.”Hardy was operating as a sort of guerrilla artist at the time. He created many pieces, including a number of large cement baby heads “that looked like they were emerging from the ground.”He left these pieces in parks, and, notably, in front of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).Hardy explained that he “was testing routes to an art career.” He was not represented by an agent, and had difficulty getting recognized. So he started making pieces and leaving them places.The heads left in the less-frequented locations remained, but the one he dropped off at MoMA was gone within a few hours.When Hardy moved back east, he stored a lot of stuff. A giant baby was left with a friend, Wendell Jones, who had helped build it.And that was the last Hardy heard of it. Until recently.Hardy’s mother, Molly, who with Gerry Hardy runs the Hardy day lily operation in Amesville, said that on a recent visit to California she got a message that the baby sculpture had reappeared —and was lying on its back in a boat in the harbor at Sausalito, a town across the bay from San Francisco.The Hardys tracked it down and in fact ate at a restaurant that had a view of the baby.“Only one waiter had noticed it,” Molly Hardy said. “There was a seagull living on its head.”The moored boat swings around, affording the onlooker different views.David Hardy has no idea how the giant baby came to be adorning the Sausalito harbor.“I’m enjoying the mystery,” he said.