Portfolio > Collapsing History, Colliding Landscapes

fort mason, collapsing, landscape, colliding, history, site-specifc, installation, blueprint, herbst pavilion
"Collapsing History, Colliding Landscapes" (foreground) and "Complete Feedback Loop: Research and Experimentation" (background on wall)
Wood, steel, bay mud, natural patina of seaweed and rust from bay exposure. (sculpture) Acrylic paint, screen prints on paper, masonry twine, single channel video. (wall)
20'H x 17'W x 14"D (sculpture) 6'H x 9'W (wall)
2015

This piece explores the collision of natural and manmade landscapes in a single object suspended by its history. The steel structure is a scale model of the Herbst Pavilion (the site of the installation) that was dropped into the San Francisco Bay for eight and a half weeks. Once it was pulled out it was suspended in the pavilion by a crane built from wood and covered in bay mud. This crane is roughly the same scale as a functioning boom crane once installed in the Herbst Pavilion during its time as a port of embarkation. The piece was installed with the intent to displace the same amount of space and recreate a sightline in the pavilion from its past.
The wall installation was developed as a way of synthesizing research. The blueprint was hand painted onto the wall, each print eludes to the inspiration for a part of the sculptural installation, and the video offers a hint of the journey the steel sculpture took to arrive at the pavilion. The addition of the masonry twine gives the viewer a chance to connect each element on the wall, while following the path of conceptualization that was taken to arrive at the final sculptural installation.