Arts & Culture
Kenny Farrell and the making of a 50-year-old UC Santa Cruz steel icon
In 1974, Vietnam veteran and art student Kenny Farrell created a bold steel sculpture that became an enduring symbol of UC Santa Cruz. Fifty years later, his untitled structure still stands in the Porter meadow—iconic, untamed, and uniquely Santa Cruz.
Kenny Farrell stands beside his sculpture in the Porter meadow, 50 years after its installation. (Photo by Carolyn Lagattuta)
In 1974, as the U.S. military withdrew from Vietnam, Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign office, and David Bowie’s Rebel, Rebel filled the airwaves, UC Santa Cruz was unpacking crates of art supplies and equipment for its new art studio. The campus, just nine years old, had an experimental attitude, reflected in a new steel sculpture that rose like a wave in the meadow between Porter College and the ocean.
The sculpture’s artist Kenny Farrell (Porter ‘75, art) had served two one-year tours in Vietnam with the U.S. Army before transferring to UC Santa Cruz in 1972 from Pasadena City College, where he had enrolled after his release from active duty. As Farrell grew out his hair and shed the skin of military service, an art teacher suggested he check out the new university in Santa Cruz, known for its symbiotic vibe and mellow redwoods. As Farrell wrote in his handwritten admissions application, UC Santa Cruz seemed like the perfect kind of “unrestricted environment to stimulate his full potential as an artist.”
UC Santa Cruz was the only school Farrell applied to, and his application packet included a unique kind of portfolio—a helmet covered with doodles he’d drawn while recovering from front-line wounds in Vietnam, a time when he first felt a strong pull toward art. After being discharged from the hospital, his company commander assigned him the role of company artist, where, in addition to working as a combat medic, he created posters and decorations for soldiers recovering in the hospital.
Once he moved into Porter College, then known as College Five, Farrell kept his black boots instead of trading them in for favored Birkenstocks and spent most of his nights sleeping on tables in the art studio. At 24, he was older than most students, and he laughed about his attitude at the time, saying, “I had something to prove and also felt I didn’t need to prove anything to anybody. I knew the kind of art I wanted to make, and I made it.”
“I knew the kind of art I wanted to make, and I made it.”
kenny farrell
Late one night in his senior year (1973-74), while bonding with fellow art students and listening to jazz, Farrell sketched what would become his iconic sculpture, later nicknamed the Flying IUD, the Squiggle, and the Wave. The sketch had a fluidity, a lightness, as if it was born from one certain stroke—a slice of infinite motion.
In the morning, he rolled over, picked up the sketch, and felt an immediate determination to bring it to life. Drawn toward outdoor sculpture, Farrell decided to go big, pulling together a few hundred dollars to begin constructing the 20-foot-long, three-foot-wide skeleton from cold-rolled steel in the Performing Arts sculpture studio. When he ran out of money, his professors, H. Hardeman Hanson and Fred A. Hunnicutt, encouraged him to apply for the privately funded College Five Arts Council Grant, calling his piece the most ambitious abstract work created in the sculpture department.
A few friends helped him complete his successful grant application. “The deal was, they’d get to name it, and I’d get the money to finish the sculpture,” said Farrell. Without a clear consensus, and with Farrell focused on making a statement in steel, the sculpture remained untitled—untethered from a prescribed meaning and open to interpretation.
With the additional $500 from the grant, Farrell covered the sculpture’s frame in Corten steel, an alloy that naturally develops a rusted patina over time. As a nod to a favorite Bay Area icon, he painted it Golden Gate Bridge orange—officially known as international orange. When he couldn’t source the exact color from the city of San Francisco or another supplier, Farrell mixed the paint himself.
Public art has a unique ability to dissolve the boundaries of traditional galleries, allowing viewers to stumble upon it in unexpected moments of discovery. Now that the sculpture was complete, it needed a home. Farrell offered to donate it to Porter College, where he was presented with three potential outdoor locations. But none felt right—each was too tucked away, framed by the high walls of buildings or trees.
So Farrell got creative. He built a plastic helium balloon in the shape of the sculpture and floated it from spot to spot to test locations. On a sunny day, with a crystal-clear view of the ocean, he discovered the perfect—unapproved—spot on top of a slight mound in the middle of the college’s meadows. Framed against the openness of ocean and sky, Farrell envisioned the heavy steel floating weightlessly, in dramatic contrast.
When it came time to mark the spot with a stake for construction crews, a school administrator started driving the stake into one of the approved locations. But the weather was on Farrell’s side; as the clouds parted, it began to rain. The administrator ran for cover, and Farrell seized the opportunity to move the stake to the top of the meadow mound.
The next day, when construction crews arrived to prepare the space, Farrell’s stomach was in knots. But once the foundation was poured, the location was final. By the time anyone noticed the change in location, it was too late.
“I was a renegade,” Farrell said. “I knew the sketch needed to become something real, and the sculpture needed to be placed where it belonged. It had to be there for me to complete what I set out to do. It was the right spot—the only spot.”
“The sketch needed to become something real, and the sculpture needed to be placed where it belonged.”
KENNY FARRELL
After its installation, the sculpture immediately drew people to it, asking them to look up and pause in the frequency of the present moment. It became a favorite subject for students’ photos and artwork and a site of collective memory, where each new generation created its own stories and traditions.
Students felt compelled to physically interact with it—climbing, hanging, writing, painting, and leaving their marks in countless ways. These interactions caused varying levels of damage through the years. The piece was regularly repaired, and eventually, once it became clear that students wouldn’t—and shouldn’t—be discouraged from climbing on it, the entire sculpture was reconstructed and reinforced with stainless steel.
Over the decades, the sculpture became an iconic symbol not only for Porter College and the university, but for the city of Santa Cruz. The piece attracts tourists and has appeared on t-shirts, advertisements, posters, business cards, walking guides, newspapers, paintings, personal tattoos, and, it’s rumored, in a Japanese Mercedes-Benz commercial.
While the sculpture’s legacy grew, Farrell’s identity as the artist was almost lost. The plaque identifying him as the artist was stolen shortly after installation, and his identity faded into mystery. In 1986, the UC Santa Cruz Friends of the Arts issued a public call for anyone who could identify the sculptor. Two people came forward, and Farrell was invited to a reception where a new plaque bearing his name was installed—one that remains there today.
Farrell went on to work in the music industry as a successful tour manager, but continued to make art and received steady inquiries about his self-described magnum opus. Friends and family—he has a daughter and two grandchildren—regularly send him newspaper clippings and photos of the artwork featured in various publications.
“This sculpture is my legacy. It will be on t-shirts and postcards long after I’m gone and will have countless nicknames I’ll never hear. It’s my hope that students continue to make it part of their experience.”
kenny farrell
Over the years, Farrell has created other public sculptures, including installations at Santa Cruz High School and Reed College, and his work appears in private collections internationally. Now settled back in the Santa Cruz area, he has opened a studio, where he crafts furniture sculptures with unexpected rhythms, weights, and functions, hoping to inspire physical interaction and a sense of wonder.
For Farrell, Santa Cruz—with its striking natural landscape, edgy charm, and tight community of outsiders, artists, and rebels—is a magical place. “This sculpture is my legacy,” he said. “It will be on t-shirts and postcards long after I’m gone and will have countless nicknames I’ll never hear. It’s my hope that students continue to make it part of their experience. To create such an iconic symbol for a university and city I love is an incredible honor.”