Artist stuck with 68,000 blue bear replicas

DENVER – University of Denver art professor Lawrence Argent has 68,000 miniature replicas of the 40-foot blue bear that stares into the Colorado Convention Center.

"I'm a big fan of this bear," said Al Lewis of the Dow Jones Wires on 9NEWS Sunday Morning. "It's been underappreciated ever since it was erected in 2005."

Lewis, who wrote about Argent's situation in his most recent column, has an affinity for the the big, lurking creature.

"This is a bear staring down a convention center. A convention center is a symbol of economic progress, economic development," said Lewis. "And a bear, of course, is a symbol of economic destruction. And the yin and yang of this is just fabulous."

Argent created the original bear. Lewis says Argent was hoping to capitalize on it during the Democratic National Convention, but when sponsorship deal fell through, he was stuck with 68,000 of them.

Lewis says Argent now plans on selling them in a variety of ways. To learn more about this story, watch the video to the right, or visit Lewis' column in the Denver Post.