How seeing (and playing on) The Awakening sculpture changed the life of a Hong Kong restaurant and wine shop operator
- Camille Glass, co-founder and co-owner of Side Note Hospitality Group, used to play on the giant metal sculpture at a playground in a Washington park
- As she grew up, the American realised the giant figure seemingly trapped in the ground was a symbol of struggle, first her own, then her nation’s
Monumental 22-metre work The Awakening (1980), by American sculptor John Seward Johnson II, depicts a giant apparently trapped in the ground, struggling to escape. Formerly installed at Hains Point, in Washington’s East Potomac Park, it was moved to nearby National Harbor, Maryland, in 2008.
Camille Glass, co-founder and co-owner of Side Note Hospitality Group, which operates restaurants Brut!, Pondi and Fat Chad’s, and wine shop Crushed, in the Hong Kong neighbourhood of Sai Ying Pun tells Richard Lord how it changed her life.
I saw it at Hains Point, in Washington. I used to play on it as a kid. I was young – about six to nine years old. I lived right on the edge of Washington, DC for most of my childhood. I remember it was quite a long trip to see it – or at least it felt that way when I was that age.
When I was smaller, I’d play inside the face of the giant quite a lot, because that was what was accessible. When I was older, friends and I would try to run up the arm and get on top of the fingertips, but obviously we never could.
Thinking back, it was a very cool place for a kid to hang out. What a wild thing to do as a child, to interact with something like that. I’m very grateful to my mother for taking me there.
At Hains Point, right next to it, there was a huge playground with really cool stuff like jungle gyms, but we had no interest in it; we just wanted to play on the giant.