BART Art: Sea Legs
Chances are if you ride BART in or around the city you’ve passed by and glanced at this sculpture. It’s at the northwest end of Embarcadero station, between the platform stairwell and the northern wall. As venues for sculpture go, it’s lousy. There’s nowhere in the station you can stand to see the whole thing properly: from the BART platform it’s obscured by the Muni platform above and by the stairwell until you’re ten feet away. From the station level it’s visible only at a sharp angle. From the street escalators you can see a bit more but must do so through the murk and grime of a service closet while having pan flutes, single-string sitars or banjo played at you. The piece is called Legs, incidentally. It was done by a textile and rope sculptor named Barbara Shawcroft, who’s now a professor of design at UC Davis. So far as I was able to tell, she’s still working in rope and textiles, and teaches materials courses to art students.
The main thing people notice about Legs is that it’s filthy. It shows no signs of having been cleaned since its installation in the late seventies, and I have to wonder if BART took maintenance into account when they commissioned the thing. Probably the single most common word I overhear people using about it is “disgusting,” with “dirty” coming a close second. The lighting does Legs no favors either. It’s got quite a range of warm colors in its construction, but it’s lit mainly by an intense blue mercury-vapor lamp overhead, which makes it look even closer to black than the accumulated dirt already does. The other day I actually noticed that there’s a theater-style floodlight installed to illuminate the thing — which has never worked in my memory.
I’m still unsure how I feel about this piece. I want to like it, because I like textile arts, I like sculpture, and I like art in public spaces generally. In a more open space with warmer, softer light it might be quite handsome. Unfortunately, everything about the context where Legs is displayed makes it hard to see more in it than a bunch of dirty ropes hanging from the wall.
Once in a while, during low tide, some backpressure in the tunnel will pick up some tidal air from that building out on the pier above the tube, and things will smell like wharves and old salty rope. Then it almost seems right, for a moment.
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IIRC, the rope sculpture was cleaned *once.* The accumulated grime, including dust, rail and brake particles made it a difficult effort. In fact, like a pair of jeans, it shrunk. The cleaning was halted for fear of further damage. It’s also a haven for the station rats.
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i’ve spent a lot of time looking at “legs” while waiting for trains, and it is truly, truly filthy. i’d be curious to know their long-term plans for it since the cleaning didn’t work out. it never crossed my mind that it might be a big rat nest, but that makes perfect sense. are they just going to let it get so disgusting that it becomes a public health hazard, or what?
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I’ve seen the top few feet twice a day for the past year, but never gave it much thought or realized it actually extended all the way down to the BART platform. Today I used the back set of stairs and happened to look over to see what it was. At first I thought it was a relic, maybe a huge chunk of rope that was somehow used in the original Bay Bridge construction…or maybe to moor Noah’s ark. Now I see it’s a work of art. Either way it’s still creeping me out. Seems like an odd location for such a piece – maybe in a larger, more open and well-lit place it would look good. As is it’s kind of a spooky leviathan lurking in the depths.
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Basel Reply:
September 4th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Take a look at the opposite end of the station.
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In the early 1970′s Barbara Shawcroft was my textile/sculpture teacher at B.U. She was a wonderful teacher — inspiring, daring and respected in her field and by her students and peers. She had installations in Japan and throughout Europe, including the Lausanne Biennale. It is a shame that this piece has not been cared for.
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I always look at this filthy, shaggy monstrosity and wonder whether it has a practical function, like as a flood barrier that gets lowered into the BART tracks if the bay were to ever find its way into the trans-bay tube… now that I’ve discovered that this is not its purpose, a) I hope there’s some other emergency flood barrier in place, and b) this nasty thing has gotta go… no disrespect to its creator; I’m sure there was a time when it was an attractive addition to Embarcadero Station, but all good things come to an end, and I agree that it must soon become a health issue for passengers… maybe this spacious wall of the station can be adorned with something new, bright and beautiful… a mural or mosaic? Something more cheery for people like me, drudging to work up the escalator each morning… and something requiring less maintenance??
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