Features: Public Art

Buildings give an area permanence, a frame, structure and stature. Landscaping fills out the body and adds clothing and style. Art does some of the same, but it also adds character, personality, intelligence, and soul. It reaches out, engages, confronts. It creates the ghosts and myths and memories of a place. A fascinating sculpture or creative use of water will often be what visitors take from a place, the talisman they use to recover that visit in their minds.

Green Glass Ship – Deep Gradient/Suspect Terrain
(Seasons of the Sea "Adrift")
Artist: John Roloff
According to artist John Roloff, this piece is "keyed into concepts of West Coast terrain-plate tectonics and the way our world is formed-as well as the relationship between sea and land." It is the18-foot high hull of a green glass ship, protruding into the air from a pool of ocean sediment and accompanied by portholes, which allow a hint of the activity in the Moscone Center, below. It is actually a greenhouse and It "homage to the process of deposition-the drifting of material from land to sea and infusion of sediment back to land. At the site, land is an illusion with the gardens above and the convention space below-a metaphor for the ocean, a different world, and the surface of the sea." Green Glass Ship is located in the East Garden.

"This glass ship is an art work that refers to the natural and geologic history of California. Sediment gathered from the ocean floor four miles off the coast of San Francisco was placed inside in 1993. This sediment contains diverse mineral and organic matter extracted from the landscape by the rivers that flow to the sea through the Golden Gate. The greenhouse environment of the ship interacts subtly with these materials producing ongoing natural cycles of growth, decay, and rebirth."
—John Roloff and Renny Pritikin

The piece was fabricated by NGA Industries and Wesco Industries, who partially contributed their services. John Roloff’s main approach in his work is the poetic and psychological, related to nature and the environment. With his early background in geology and studies in marine biology, his work is informed by natural and geological processes, along with the psychological/spiritual metaphors analogous to those processes. Rather than working exclusively in any one medium, Roloff undertakes an extensive research and conceptualization component, then utilizes a wide variety of media to develop a specifically site-related work.

  Shaking Man
  Artist: Terry Allen
The life-size bronze statue of a business executive greets visitors to Yerba Buena Gardens near the western edge of the terrace level of the Esplanade. Toting a brief case, the stature conveys a sense of motion as its hand is extended as if for a handshake.

A prolific and highly versatile artist, Terry Allen has worked since 1966 in a wide variety of media, including musical and theatrical performances, sculpture, painting, drawing and video, as well as installations which incorporate any and all of these media.

 Urge
 Artist: Chico MacMurtrie

 Rollover to see how Urge moves

This robotic sculpture that is half man and half woman is located in the Children’s Garden near Howard Street. If you sit on the bench in front of the globe (and weigh 130 lbs or more) you will trigger Urge to sit down also. If you try to stand up, Urge will follow suit. Urge combines technological and human traits, in the way it moves, gestures, and greets visitors.