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Custom Calgary Zoo Elephant Crossing Exhibit Ganesh 108"

Custom Calgary Zoo Elephant Crossing Exhibit Ganesh 108"
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Materials: Hand Carved & Polished Indian Black Granite

Total Height Including Base: 9 feet or 108 inches

Weight: 5 tons or 10000 pounds

Item # calg

  • Description
  • About Ganesh
  • Care

  • In 2006 the Calgary Zoo commissioned a large Ganesh sculpture to go in front of a new exhibit the zoo was planning; Elephant Crossings.  The statue was to be 9 feet tall and go in front of the Elephant Crossings building.  The Ganesh statue took 1 year to carve and then another month to ship to Calgary.  It arrived just in time for the opening day of the Elephant Crossings exhibit.  The pictures are taken in front of the Elephant Crossings building.

    The Elephant crossings exhibit tripled the outdoor area for the Calgary zoo's four Asian elephants, the most famous of which is Kamala who is a painter on top of being an elephant.

    Attention to detail is given to every aspect of this fine figure.  His face is particularly attractive.  His long, bulbous trunk, two short tusks show and smooth smiling face display the character of Ganesh; carefree and loving.  His eyes are particularly human in appearance.  Like the entire piece, they are carved with care and ability.

    You can always pick Ganesh out of a crowd; besides his elephant head, Ganesh typically is endowed with a handsome potbelly. In this case his belly is perfect for giving a hug.  His rotund midsection is the summit for his curvaceous hips.  The hips lead directly into a beautifully carved skirt, which he wears with the grandeur and ease of a King.  The details of the folds of the skirt are striking.  The rough style of carving directly contrasts the polish and smoothness of his large belly and upper body.

    The entire piece is a lesson in proportion.  Everything from the beautiful head, bulbous trunk, uplifted arm, slight chest, potbelly, huge thighs and chubby feet fit together without any imperfections.  The back of the figure is particularly striking.  All which makes the piece a masterpiece in the front is duplicated in the backside.  Ganesh's head adorned with a turban overflowing with little tufts of hair onto his back just give the piece humanity.  The flap of his ear delicately resting on his shoulder makes you second guess if the piece is really made out of stone or not.  The backside gives you a great angle to see his chubby fingers.  Particular detail is given to the fabric on the waistline as well as the skirt leading between the massive figure's meaty thighs.  Now imagine the playful and beautiful Ganesh in your backyard.  That would be enough to bring a smile to anyone's face.

    This dancing Ganesh statue has been sold. However, you can custom order another. The price is $25000. A down payment of $12000 is required to start the project. We will send pictures of the carving process to you.  After completion and you have seen pictures and are satisfied we require full payment and the large Ganesh sculpture will be shipped to you.  Ganesh will take approximately 10-12 months to carve.  Please call us (760) 994-4455 or email us info@lotussculpture.com with any questions.  A beautiful Ganesh like this is worth waiting for!

    About Indian Black Granite:      Indian black granite is a wonderful stone. It is capable of a variety of finishes which can give it a variety of different color possibilities. It is possible to see 4-5 different colors on a single piece depending on the degree of polish or roughness of the stone. Indian black granite is among the best granite in the world sought after by artists globally. Unlike inferior quality granite, Indian granite is extremely dense and without impurities that plague other stones. The density of granite makes a granite sculpture perfect for any garden because it can be left outside in extreme heat and extreme cold for years without care.

  • "In heaven Lord Ganesh will establish the predominance of gods, on earth that of people, in the nether world that of serpents and anti-gods" ~A Hymn from Sri Bhagavat-Tathva~

    The chubby, gentle, wise, elephant-headed Ganesh, or Ganesha, is one of Hinduisms most popular deities. He is the remover of obstacles, the deity whom worshippers first acknowledge when they visit a temple. He is also patron of letters and of learning; he is the legendary scribe who, using his broken tusk, which he often holds, wrote down parts of the Mahabharata epic. Ganesh is usually depicted colored red; he is pot bellied, has one tusk broken, and has four arms that may hold a pasam, a goad, and a pot of rice or sweetmeats. The sweet meats are held in a type of bowl known as a laddus. His appetite for these sweets is legendary and offerings of them are often left at his shrine.
    Statues of Ganesh can be found in most Indian towns. His image is placed where new houses are to be built; he is honored at the start of a journey or business venture, and poets traditionally invoke him at the start of a book.
    A pasam is a triple twine weapon. Each of the three twines represents, arrogance and conceit, Maya - the illusory nature of the real world, ignorance. In Hindu ideology weapons are a viewed as symbolic tools to destroy the ego rather than to cause any type of bloodshed. Goads (or elephant prods) are typically used to direct elephants. Goads are symbolic of how one should steer the soul away from the ignorance and illusions of this earthly world just as a mahout would steer an elephant away from any treacherous path.
    Ganesh's characteristic pot belly is usually bound with a cobra. The cobra is an animal usually associated with Shiva, a reminder that Ganesh is his son. Ganesh is usually shown in sculpture accompanied by or riding a rat. Since rats are seen as being capable of gnawing their way through most things, the rat symbolizes Ganesh's ability to destroy every obstacle. Ganesh's name literally means "Lord of Gana." Ganesh was entrusted by Shiva with the leadership of the ganas, Shiva's dwarfish, rowdy retinue, in compensation for the loss of his human head.
    How Ganesh came to have the head of an elephant is explained in various stories. One account of his birth is that Parvati formed him from the rubbings of her body so that he might stand guard at the door while she bathed. When Siva approached, unaware this was his son, he was enraged at being kept away from his wife and proceeded to lop off the head of Ganesh. To ease Parvati's grief, Shiva promised to cut off the head of the first living thing he saw and attach it to the body. That creature was an elephant. Ganesh was thus restored to life and rewarded for his courage by being made lord of new beginnings and guardian of entrances. A prayer to Ganesh is invariably accompanied by smashing a coconut, symbolic of smashing the undesirable forces inherent in one self.

    "If you take home a stone and worship it in full faith,
    over a course of time you are bound to see the image of Ganesh."


    Click here to learn more about Ganesh

  • Wash the piece with soap and water to prevent dirt build up.