Best of Rhode Island 2009 Editors' Picks

Of all Bessin's bronze sculptures, his birds particularly make emotions soar. Too airy and filled with movement to be eternally still, the world-renowned sculptor's larger-than-life herons, egrets and ospreys tend to make headlines. His extraordinary forty-foot "The Great Blue Heron" set off a wave of controversy in the nineties, while "Morning Call," his fantastic osprey at Greenport Harbor in Long Island, famously perches on beams salvaged from the World Trade Center. Headlines or none, his birds always give flight to the imagination.