The Emeryville mudflat sculptures were a series of
found object structures along the
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.
San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...
shoreline of
Emeryville, California
Emeryville is a city located in northwest Alameda County, California, in the United States. It lies in a corridor between the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, with a border on the shore of San Francisco Bay. The resident population was 12,905 as o ...
, largely constructed from discarded materials found on-site such as
driftwood
__NOTOC__
Driftwood is wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea, lake, or river by the action of winds, tides or waves.
In some waterfront areas, driftwood is a major nuisance. However, the driftwood provides shelter and fo ...
. The mudflat sculptures were first erected in 1962 and received national attention by 1964; through the 1960s and 70s, anonymous, usually amateur artists would construct sculptures visible to traffic at the eastern end of the
Bay Bridge. With the creation of the
Emeryville Crescent State Marine Reserve in 1985 and increased attention to ecosystem preservation, the last mudflat sculptures were removed in 1997.
Setting
![IMAG2929-emeryville (cropped)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/IMAG2929-emeryville_%28cropped%29.jpg)
The Emeryville mudflats are officially known as the Emeryville Crescent, lying west of the
Eastshore Freeway
Interstate 80 (I-80) is a transcontinental Interstate Highway in the United States, stretching from San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey. The segment of I-80 in California runs east from San Francisco across the San Franciscoâ ...
(I-80), south of the Emeryville Peninsula, and north of the Bay Bridge toll plaza mole. They are bisected by the mouth of
Temescal Creek. The Emeryville Crescent is a northern coastal
salt marsh
A salt marsh or saltmarsh, also known as a coastal salt marsh or a tidal marsh, is a coastal ecosystem in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and open saltwater or brackish water that is regularly flooded by the tides. It is dominated ...
which supports
cordgrass
''Spartina'' is a taxon of plants in the grass family, frequently found in coastal salt marshes. Its species are commonly known as cordgrass or cord-grass, and are native to the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean in western and southern Europe, north ...
,
pickleweed Pickleweed is a common name used for two unrelated genera of flowering plants:
*'' Batis'', family Bataceae
*''Salicornia
''Salicornia'' is a genus of succulent, halophytic (salt tolerant) flowering plants in the family Amaranthaceae that gro ...
,
eelgrass Eelgrass is a common name for several plants and may refer to:
* ''Zostera'', marine eelgrass
* ''Vallisneria
''Vallisneria'' (named in honor of Antonio Vallisneri) is a genus of freshwater aquatic plant, commonly called eelgrass, tape grass o ...
, and
saltgrass; the endangered
Ridgway's rail
Ridgway's rail (''Rallus obsoletus'') is a near-threatened species of bird. It is found principally in California's San Francisco Bay to southern Baja California. A member of the rail family, Rallidae, it is a chicken-sized bird that rarely flie ...
is known to reside in the Crescent.
During the early 20th century, debris from
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.
San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...
would frequently wash ashore at the mudflats, and industries based in Emeryville would often dump trash at the mudflats as well.
[ Approximately of the site are uplands (not inundated with tidal action), and are tidelands or submerged. The uplands were created by filling existing marshlands with rubble from building demolition, steel mill slag, industrial waste, sand, and clay to a depth ranging from . Fill activities at the site were completed by the mid-1960s.]
History
The genesis for the mudflat sculptures was an art class led by Professor Everett Turner at the California College of Arts and Crafts
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the mo ...
(CCAC) in 1960; as a collective project, the students built a large sculpture on nearby Bay Farm Island
Bay Farm Island is a district of the city of Alameda, California, though it is separated from the rest of the city on Alameda Island by an estuary of San Leandro Bay. Its ZIP code is 94502. The location was originally an island in San Francisco Ba ...
that summer.[ The students may have been inspired by ]Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany.
Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, constructivism, surrealism, poetry, sound, pain ...
, whose ''Merz'' art (shortened from the German term for commerce, ''Kommerz'') used leftover materials. The Bay Farm Island project was documented in photographs by Penny Dhaemers; when the photographs were shown at the Oakland campus of CCAC, they inspired student John McCracken to build his own sculptures in 1962 on the Emeryville mudflats.[ The mudflats had been used for duck hunting, and Anne Herbert speculated the first mudflat sculptures may have been inspired by ]hunting blind
A hunting blind (US), hide or machan is a concealment device or shelter for hunters or gamekeepers, designed to reduce the chance of detection by animals. There are different types of blinds for different situations, such as deer blinds and d ...
s.
In general, the sculptures were created by anonymous artists, characterized by their impermanence, and intended to be seen by freeway drivers.[ From the start, new sculptures were built from parts taken off older sculptures, leading to a constant cycle of building and rebuilding called "editing".][ Typically there were approximately 50 sculptures on the site at any given time, ranging in height up to . ]SFSU
San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...
art professor Alex Nicoloff called the collection "sculptural 'graffiti and characterized them as a revival of the Dada movement
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...
.
High school student Wayne Saxton built his first sculptures at Emeryville in 1964;[ these gained national attention, with ''Time'' dubbing the art "derelict sculpture" in August. By 1965, multiple sculptures were being built by mostly amateur artists with no formal training.]
A sculpture was built by August 1969 to commemorate the moon landing. Other sculptures offered commentary on contemporary political issues, including the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
("End War"/"Fuck War", early 1970s),[ the ]Salvadoran Civil War
The Salvadoran Civil War ( es, guerra civil de El Salvador) was a twelve year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martà National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or ...
(1981), and United States funding wars in Central America (1987). An urban scarecrow competition was held for the 1985 San Francisco County Fair; the winner was to be moved to the Emeryville mudflats.
Robert Sommer
Robert Sommer (April 26, 1929February 27, 2021) was an internationally known Environmental Psychologist and held the position of Distinguished Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of California, Davis. declared the Emeryville mudflats were "the finest public sculpture gallery on the West Coast" in 1975. In 1977, the California Arts Council
The California Arts Council is a state agency based in Sacramento, United States. Its eight council members are appointed by the Governor and the state Legislature. The agency's mission is to advance California through arts, culture and creativi ...
awarded a $4,393 grant to Richard Reynolds to purchase film for a documentary on the mudflat sculptures, which was published in 1980.
Site development
Meanwhile, the city of Emeryville had adopted a General Plan in 1966, calling for a significant expansion of Emeryville west of I-80 into San Francisco Bay on the Emeryville Peninsula, to be constructed on of new fill along an extension of Powell Street; the "Tidelands" area created in western Emeryville would include waterways, lagoons, parks, new office spaces, and high density residential developments to attract businesses and residences. Development of the Emeryville Peninsula had been grandfathered by the city, whose planning commission had adopted the General Plan and approved permits just days before the McAteer-Petris Act of 1965 passed, creating the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) to review construction projects that would reclaim land from the Bay.
However, further development of the Emeryville Peninsula was halted by BCDC.[ In the early 1970s, the General Plan was revised to allow the ]Santa Fe Railroad
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and S ...
to develop of bayfront land north of the Emeryville Peninsula; in exchange, the Emeryville Crescent would be turned over to the city as open space. Santa Fe planned to bypass BCDC review by constructing on stilts rather than fill, but this loophole was not accepted by BCDC.
In May 1985, Santa Fe proposed to build two 18-story towers on new fill at the Crescent in exchange for turning over to the public.[ At the first hearing to determine the scope of the environmental impact report/statement in August 1986, the deputy director of BCDC suggested the commission would not support Santa Fe's proposal. Despite a petition with more than half the residents of Emeryville opposing the development, the City Council took no action to bar development on the Crescent.][
]
Decline
The Watergate Apartments were completed on the Emeryville Peninsula in 1971, and the high-rise Pacific Park Plaza just east of the Peninsula was completed in 1984, doubling the population of Emeryville. The influx of new residents and growing environmental awareness contributed to the decline of the mudflat sculptures through the 1980s. At this time, the city of Emeryville was aware of the mudflat sculptures and, along with BCDC, began to plan trails to afford better access to the site for artists, but the Golden Gate Audubon Society raised objections to those plans in 1978 and commissioned the Bodega Bay Institute to perform an environmental assessment of the Crescent. The report called the Crescent the "single most diverse wildlife habitat in the Bay" and identified significant impacts from continuing to allow human access to the site.[ In March 1980, Sylvia McLaughlin made the first presentation to the California State Parks Commission, proposing that a state park be created along the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, from the Emeryville Crescent to the ]Hoffman Marsh Hoffman Marsh is a wetlands on San Francisco Bay in Richmond, California. The marsh has been protected within Eastshore State Park, and adjacent to Point Isabel Regional Shoreline. The marsh is an important nesting ground for wildfowl and stoppin ...
.[
By 1987, the snarl of driftwood was home to rats and feral cats, who were preying on the numerous species of shorebirds native to the Crescent.] Other factors in the decline cited include the reconstruction of the freeway after the Loma Prieta earthquake
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on California's Central Coast on October 17 at local time. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of t ...
of 1989, which reduced the visibility of the mudflats from traffic; vandalism and destruction of existing sculptures without reconstruction; the prevailing conservative political culture under the Reagan administration; and the creation of McLaughlin Eastshore State Park
McLaughlin Eastshore State Park is a state park and wildlife refuge along the San Francisco Bay shoreline of the East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), East Bay between the cities of Richmond, California, Richmond, Albany, California, Albany, Berkel ...
, encompassing the mudflats. The Crescent was sold to the state in 1994 for $3.2 million.[
The last mudflat sculptures were hauled off the site in 1997. The site's owner, ]Catellus Development Corporation
Catellus Development Corporation is an Oakland, California based real estate developer founded in 1984 to be the real estate division of Santa Fe Pacific Corporation, as part of the Santa Fe–Southern Pacific merger. It was spun off into its own ...
, remediated the site's industrial contamination, and turned it over to the California Department of Parks and Recreation
The California Department of Parks and Recreation, more commonly known as California State Parks, manages the California state parks system. The system administers 279 separate park units on 1.4 million acres (570,000 hectares), with over 280 ...
, where it joined Eastshore State Park, which is managed by the East Bay Regional Park District
The East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) is a special district operating in Alameda County and Contra Costa County, California, within the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay Area. It maintains and operates a system of regional parks which ...
.
In media and inspirations
The mudflat sculptures are visited by the eponymous characters in one scene of the contemporaneous film ''Harold and Maude
''Harold and Maude'' is a 1971 American romantic black comedy–drama film directed by Hal Ashby and released by Paramount Pictures. It incorporates elements of dark humor and existentialist drama. The plot follows the exploits of Harold Chasen ...
'' (1971), which was photographed in and around the Bay Area.
Kevin Evans, an early participant in the Burning Man
Burning Man is an event focused on community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance held annually in the western United States. The name of the event comes from its culminating ceremony: the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, referred ...
art festival, cited the mudflat sculptures as an inspiration for moving the festival to the Black Rock Desert
__NOTOC__
The Black Rock Desert is a semi-arid region (in the Great Basin shrub steppe eco-region) of lava beds and playa, or alkali flats, situated in the Black Rock Desert–High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, a si ...
: "... setting art on the desert reminded me of these sculptures in the mudflats of Emeryville that I admired as a kid."
The Emeryville mudflat sculptures inspired a similar set of structures that were erected from the early 1970s to 1986 near Humboldt Bay
Humboldt Bay is a natural bay and a multi-basin, bar-built coastal lagoon located on the rugged North Coast of California, entirely within Humboldt County, United States. It is the largest protected body of water on the West Coast between Sa ...
, approximately north of San Francisco. The Humboldt Bay sculptures tended to be longer-lived than the Emeryville sculptures due to superior materials. Similar contemporary found art shoreline galleries went up around the San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
, including the toll bridge plaza of the San Mateo–Hayward Bridge
The San Mateo–Hayward Bridge (commonly called the San Mateo Bridge) is a bridge crossing the American state of California's San Francisco Bay, linking the San Francisco Peninsula with the East Bay. The bridge's western end is in Foster City, ...
, the Bayshore Freeway
The Bayshore Freeway is a part of U.S. Route 101 (US 101) in the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. It runs along the west shore of the San Francisco Bay, connecting San Jose with San Francisco. Within the city of San Fran ...
interchange in Larkspur, in Redwood City
Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a po ...
, at the Albany Bulb
The Albany Bulb (also simply known as The Bulb) is a former landfill largely owned by the City of Albany, in California. The Bulb is the west end of a landfill peninsula jutting west from the east shore of San Francisco Bay. The term "Bulb" ...
, and in Rodeo
Rodeo () is a competitive equestrian sport that arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain and Mexico, expanding throughout the Americas and to other nations. It was originally based on the skills required of the working va ...
.
In 2018, Ned Kahn
Ned Kahn is an environmental artist and sculptor, known in particular for museum exhibits he has built for the Exploratorium in San Francisco. His works usually intend to capture an invisible aspect of nature and make it visible.
Early life
Kahn ...
and Pete Beeman were selected as finalists for artworks at the Emeryville Marina; like the earlier mudflat sculptures, the installations are intended to be visible from the eastern approach to the Bay Bridge. Kahn's proposal, entitled ''Wind Jetty'', was approved by the City Council in September 2018. However, the permit application for Kahn's sculpture was rejected by BCDC on September 30, 2019, and Beeman indicated he was still interested in the commission, which he has tentatively titled ''Emeryville Serpent'' after a similar mudflat sculpture. The Emeryville Public Art Committee unanimously voted to not consider Beeman's proposal on February 13, 2020.
Sculptors
Although the sculptures were generally uncredited, contemporary and current coverage and interviews have identified several sculptors who worked in the Emeryville mudflats:
* Sylvia Bennett
* Carol Bove
Carol Bove (born 1971) is an American artist based in New York City. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
Early life and education
Born in 1971 in Geneva, Switzerland to American parents, Bove (pronounced bo-VAY) was raised in Berkeley, California, ...
* Ron and Mary Bradden, ''Scarecrow in a Pumpkin Patch''[
* Colette Denton][
* Scott Donahue
* Dan Fontes, ''Lunar Lander''
* Tyler Hoare, ''Red Baron'' and ''Snoopy'']
* Bob Kaminsky (and others), ''Summer Solstice Totem Pole''[
* Garry Knox][
* John McCracken][
* Charlie Milgrim
* Doug Minkler]
* Tony Puccio, ''Mudflat Express''[
* Wayne Saxton][
* Walt Zucker][
]
References
External links
*
*
*
Short films and clips
*
* (1981)
* from ''Harold and Maude
''Harold and Maude'' is a 1971 American romantic black comedy–drama film directed by Hal Ashby and released by Paramount Pictures. It incorporates elements of dark humor and existentialist drama. The plot follows the exploits of Harold Chasen ...
'' (1971)
* from ''Harold and Maude
''Harold and Maude'' is a 1971 American romantic black comedy–drama film directed by Hal Ashby and released by Paramount Pictures. It incorporates elements of dark humor and existentialist drama. The plot follows the exploits of Harold Chasen ...
'' (1971)
Books
*
*
Online galleries
*
*
*
*
{{Emeryville, California
Emeryville, California
Found object
Outdoor sculptures in California