UC Irvine’s campus houses many different buildings, including libraries, instructional buildings, restaurants and dorms. While students walk to their classes, the hidden gems of the campus are easily overlooked and underappreciated.
Sculptures and artwork from varying artists and benefactors pepper UCI’s campus. The oldest statue on campus is the Peter the Anteater figure located in front of the Bren Events Center.
The statue is a $50,000 gift from the class of 1987 and designed by artist Billy Fitzgerald. Peter the Anteater remains a key landmark on campus after its official reveal on Jan. 14, 1988.
Nancy and Phil Doran donated UCI’s next oldest set of statues to the Science Library’s Mesquite Garden Plaza in 2005. Twelve statues settle in a lane that leads to the Science Library and each figure depicted is somehow trapped by marble, either being crushed by two marble slabs or tethered to the stone.
After Doran and her husband moved to Tuscany, Italy from their home in Newport Beach, she created the 12 sculptures out of the marble that Michelangelo carved from. The statues took a brief tour of five Italian museums before ultimately ending up in UCI’s Science Library.
Doran discovered that the Italian Braille Society funded trips for those with sight disabilities and hosted an excursion for braille students to visit her statue series on UCI’s campus.
One of the most popular sculptures on campus is the Jao Family Garden series located just beneath the Humanities Bridge in Aldrich Park. Real estate developer Frank Jao donated these four sculptures to the campus after he and his wife fled Vietnam and moved to America, where he developed his company Bridgecreek Development.
The first statue is Li Bai holding a cup, gazing pensively toward the sky.
The plaque in front of him reads: “Often called the ‘poet immortal,’ he was regarded as an eccentric, since he rejected social status, power, and money and was known for his unbridled and bohemian behavior.”
The second statue is of Magu wearing a flowy dress and holding plants in her hand.
Her plaque reads: “According to the legend, ‘Magu Presenting Longevity,’ she lived tens of thousands of years, achieving longevity by picking divine herbs from a verdant forest and brewing wine with them.”
The third statue is Qu Yuan, who stands straight and serious.
His plaque reads: “Regarded as the earliest patriotic poet in China, Qu Yuan is remembered for his deep concern for his state and protests against his corruption of his times.”
The final statue is Lao Zi, who is seated with one hand resting on his knee.
His plaque reads: “[His book] became both a foundational text of the later Daoist tradition and a deeply influential call to the natural and simple life which gave solace to the scholar-officials when they were caught up in their political, cultural, and social duties.”
A more modern art piece is the Maya Lin Water Table, which is located in the middle of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. The table is a part of a bigger piece called “The Drawing Room (Garden of Deception),” which was given to the campus in 2005.
Maya Lin is a famous artist who created countless projects, including the design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.
On the Maya Lin Studio architecture page, Lin described her work and where she drew inspiration from when working on the water table.
“I wanted this project to reflect the character and personality of the School of the Arts,” Lin wrote. “As I thought about what an arts campus is fundamentally about, I began to imagine this place as a garden of perception, whose main center, The Drawing Room, is a water table, with the water percolating up from a simple line drawing.”
A final and notable statue, called “Form No. 2,” is hidden in the Laurel Wilkening Rose Garden. The statue’s creator, former UCI graduate student Brian Pellar, had plans to create a series of statues — “Form No. 2” was the second statue of four.
In his artist’s statement, he described his creation’s positioning.
“‘Form No. 2,’ a finished life-size bronze at UC Irvine, is the same figure crouching down, his muscular body ironically weighed down by the soft cloth that partially covers him,” Pellar wrote. “The end of the cloth, curled around the head, slightly falls away, being a hint of his determination to rise.”
UCI statues and their histories remain accessible for students and visitors to explore. Pictures of the sculptures can also be found on photographer Ian Parker’s website.
Renee Deramerian is a Features Intern for the spring 2025 quarter. She can be reached at rderamer@uci.edu.
Edited by Alyssa Villagonzalo and Xinyu Zhang