ARCHITECTURE
This powerful new public art installation in Palo Alto that revives a long-lost motif of California culture; an everyday object rendered fancifully large.
This image grows out of a deep-rooted vision of California as a place of myth. It has inspired movies and architecture, music and sculpture. It may be a fiction, but it has had tangible manifestations in the real world.
It’s a theme that has lain dormant in recent years, however, as modernism worshiped structure over culture, function over fantasy. This new sculpture awakens that theme magnificently.
A hundred years ago Californians sent postcards of SUV-sized oranges perched on railroad flatcars to their relatives back east. They were the product of trick photography, of course, but in the days before digital touch-ups, people were likely to be amazed by the apparent proof of the myth become real.
Giant objects ring true
And in the 1920’s and 1930’s California’s roadsides sprouted giant lemons, oranges and pumpkins, enormous derby hats, bulldogs and root beer barrels. These novelties were witty and eye-catching, but they were more than architectural one-liners. They tapped into a sense of what Californians believed —or wanted to believe — about their homeland. Despite obvious exaggeration, these giant objects had a ring of truth about them.
California was a region of astonishing fertility. Sights of Yosemite, the sequoia groves and the clear depths of Tahoe stretched credulity. Vast orange groves stood in the shadow of snow-capped mountains. Those postcards stretched the truth, but not much — just enough to make a point, and to articulate the emerging sense of what California was all about.
This gentle new sculpture on California Avenue, the lat-
The sculpture is not simply ornamental, raised on a pedestal to be viewed; it is also an environment to be inhabited.
est
sculpture sponsored by the ongoing Palo Alto Public Art Program, continues
that tradition. Beautifully designed and executed by Reed Madden Designs
of Oakland, it reawakens a glimpse of the bucolic innocence of California,
but coupled with a 21st century twist: It uses solar panels,
hidden within each flower, to illuminate the sculpture at night, giving
the installation the name “Sun Flowers.”
One the whole, the quality of Palo Alto’s public art rises above
San Jose’s. “Sun Flowers” adds an additional urban dimension.
This is useful art. The flowers serve as canopies over built-in sidewalk
tables, and the entire piece is set in an earthen-concrete structure that
rises organically out of the ground to form a long bench. Etched with
the lines of dried earth and surrounded by native grasses, it creates
a boldly unusual landscape for a commercial sidewalk.
The familiar made new
This installation takes the familiar and transforms it. A common table
and chair has the usual lines: a straight pole for the canopy, a perfect
circle for the tabletop. But instead of leaving the usual alone, this
design borrows from the lines of nature to reshape these urban fixtures.
The pole that holds aloft the petals is not a straight metal pipe, but
takes the gentle, lazy line of a poppy stem, curving and twisting slightly.
With the transforming insight of art, the orange petals of the state flower
are not on-
ly
enlarged to mythic size, but rendered in a golden bronze. And they begin
to play with our own perceptions. Walking beneath these flowers, you wonder
for a moment if the poppy grew or you shrank. The value of representational
art — art that is recognizable as something, in contrast to abstract
art — is its balance of the real and the unreal. This is not really
a field of poppies; it is an imitation of the poppy’s shape, but
in materials and scale that no one could mistake for a real poppy. Yet
by simulating a poppy’s shape it evokes the associations with the
flower, seen throughout the state in carpets of orange gold. The art conjures
up a wealth of images and recollections that add to the enjoyment of the
piece.
Not just ornamental
Other art in Palo Alto’s program offers interesting forms and subjects,
but by tapping into both a public consciousness of California as a state
of mind and an awareness of the very practical role of street furniture,
“Sun Flowers” rises above the others as public art, perfectly
designed for its purpose and place. It is not simply ornamental, raised
on a pedestal to be viewed; it is also an environment to be inhabited.
A myth is a figment of imagination, but it still can express real hopes
and dreams. It is the role of architecture not only to shelter our bodies
but also to manifest those hopes and dreams. It can have the humor (and
echoes of history) in the giant orange of Mark’s Hot Dog stand (soon
to reopen at its new Capitol Expressway site). Or it can exhibit the sophisticated
artifice of Claes Oldenburg’s “Cupid’s Stand”
on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, or the placid, subtle movements
of these bronze flowers. All serve the public by widening the variety
of sources and images of the landscape we inhabit.
Alan Hess writes about architecture twice a month in Arts & Entertainment.
Contact him at HYPERLINK "mailto:alhess@aol.com" alhess@aol.com
or at the Mercury News, 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, Calif. 95190.