When I was a kid there was an old magazine floating around our house that I kept rescuing from the trash because I was entralled with it. An article inside told about a marshy beach area that had become home to huge homemade sculptures. Many were erected in the dead of night so that they seemed to appear out of nowhere at dawn -- a driftwood train, a one-eyed creature made of weathered boards, or a dragon made of sticks.
It had been years since I thought about that magazine, but one night a local friend of mine posted a new online article about those sculptures on Facebook. I felt a rush of recognition and childlike wonder. Well, I'll be. That mysterious mudflat was in Emeryville, just down the road from where I've been living the last four years. I've driven past the now-empty spot many a time while running errands.
The current article, written by staff at the SFGate/San Francisco Chronicle, includes photos both past and present. Seeing the sculptures again was like running across a long lost band of friends. (Click HERE to see if they are familiar to you too.) The article explained that the sculptures somehow got started on a muddy edge of the San Francisco Bay along Interstate 80. They started popping up in the 1960s and lasted almost four decades before the land was cleaned up and the sculptures taken down. Although some loved the sculptures as much as I did, others thought the sculptures were an eyesore. Regardless, human activity in the area was destroying the habitat for wildlife.
What really got me excited is that I learned there are a few sculptures still in the area and created by one of the original mudflat artists. Eli and I hopped in the car and drove to the small public pier on the edge of the Emeryville section of the San Francisco Bay Trail. (For you local folks, that's near the Chevy's restaurant.) Eli was equally excited because the sculptures are of the Red Baron and his nemesis, "The Dancing Cooking Dog" (known to the rest of the world as Snoopy).
Unfortunately, I didn't think to check the tide schedule and we arrived when almost all the mud was covered. Still, there was a little bit of weedy beach to explore.
We looked for flotsam and jetsam that would make a good sculpture, but most of it was too big...
...Or too small.
We did, however, find the rubber face of a doll that had been in contact with tar. Somehow, knowing the history of this place, that doll piece was delightfully creepy. With a grin, I took a photo and left it right there. Maybe some artist will find it and turn it into something new.
I love found object sculptures. Kids are so great at that sort of noodling-around-creativity. Eli and I were better able to talk about making art after visiting the airplanes, so I'm glad we went. I was considering taking him to the nearby Albany Bulb park as I hear there are more found object sculptures there, but I know the area also has a bad reputation for illegal activity. Sigh. Safety first.
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