148 Mission Hill Middle School Students designed and created these mosaics after researching agricultural products of Santa Cruz. This project was primarily funded by a successful kickstarter campaign, which 89 individuals and businesses donated to.
Gift to the City
Astronomy & Tides
The stainless steel wave elements reference the dramatic backwash (when the incoming wave meets the outgoing wave) that occurs just off the Woodrow cliffs beyond where the sculpture is sited. Ellipses and circles plotted and cut as negatives in the wave forms represent bodies in the night sky. The geometric element is a nod to early computer-aided tide model projections. The table on which the sculpture sits is California Craftsman, fabricated in steel.
A gift to the City from the artist, David Kimball Anderson, Astronomy & Tides was installed thanks to assistance from the Parks Department and Keith Henderson (Santa Cruz Sunrise Rotary).
Our City, Our Town
Collateral Damage
“I am a sculptor who believes art is not merely a reflection of the world in which you live, but rather it is the sensitizer and the educator to the world. I see that as a responsibility of artists. But I think a lot of artists today don’t see it that way. There is too much emphasis, I believe, on decoration and not enough on meaning.”
- EA Chase, from an interview in Anvil Magazine, 1995
In the Tides of Time
This site-specific sculpture consists of four shell forms or “seed boats” and a round form. These five elements are arranged around a stone arch gateway, aligned with the opening of the Monterey Bay to the greater Pacific Ocean. On the inside walls of the arch, a poem by the artist is inscribed in both English and Spanish. The work was begun in a quarry in Ireland and completed in the artist’s studio in Santa Cruz.
Changing of the Guard
Angelo Grova works primarily as a sculptor in bronze, steel, and stone with numerous commissions and public art pieces. In his words, “Changing of the Guard is concerned with changing political views in a democracy and encompasses the idea of an ever-evolving political system. Each individual entering a participatory democracy brings with them new ideas and direction and the potential for change. The piece appears to be moving and changing on its base as it is viewed from various perspectives.”
Tom Scribner
Union Organizer, newspaper editor and musical saw player, Thomas J Scribner was a Santa Cruz folk hero. His trademark suspenders, derby hat and checkered shirt are memorialized in this life-size statue. The annual International Musical Saw Association Festival kick-off is sited here.
Hypercube
The inspiration for this sculpture stems from research into minimal surface structures, formed by surface tension between the edges of forms. If you make a cube out of wire and dip it into a soap solution the soap film forms a ‘Hypercube,’ a cube with a hint of another dimension: a second cube inside the first is visible by seeing through to the other side.
