Ben Trautman, “Crab,” motion activated sculpture inspired by a door locking
mechanism in an inaccessible part of the Artship.

Project Title: Sculpture and Accessibility
Recipient Organization: Artship Foundation
Lead Artist: Ben Trautman
Genre and Date Awarded: Visual Arts, June 2000
Opened: December 8, 2001

The original project idea was to create a kinetic art machine that would provide wheelchair accessibility to the primary public space on the main deck of the Artship. The dense landscape of the ship contains a system of mechanical winches, hoists, cranes, and hatches. Recognizing the elegance and intricacy of this industrial steelwork, the artist and organization sought to create a piece that mirrored some of their forms and solved the problem of small thresholds on the ship that were impossible to traverse. The artist writes, “Our vision at the beginning was to develop a mechanical sculpture that would lift wheelchairs over the tall thresholds of the Artship’s doorways. The machine would have established a visual language, an artistic approach that would guide further additions to the accessibility of the ship, attempting to show that accessible design could be more than practical and standardized.”

In conducting his research Trautman worked with Artship Foundation’s Universal Design Committee, which included engineer and inventor Ralf Hotchkiss, widely known for his work enabling in Third World and non-industrialized countries to create wheelchairs and accessibility devices for the disabled, as well as Barry Atwood, Principal of Accessible Environments, and Deborah Kaplan, Executive Director of The World Institute on Disability.

Trautman soon discovered that the original idea was fraught with difficulty. Any piece that might lift or otherwise transport a person in a wheelchair would have to be safety tested extensively to be viable and insurable. He lacked the necessary resources to invest in a functional product. The collaborators re-approached their goal by creating a series of sculptures at key accessibility points on the ship—sites of ramps and entrances—that would be addressed to wheelchair bound visitors as well as the general public. As envisioned, these works echoed the ship’s mechanical works, both fitting into and illuminating features of their environment. They included a bright red “mechanical crab” beneath a transparent ramp; an elegant “water crane” mounted on the side of the ship and series of clamping mechanisms that traced the accessible route through the ship, beginning with a windmill attached to the railing of the chair lift. Trautman writes, “We focused our energies on this pate so that it would become the most important and preferred route through he ship, not the one that was used only by people with disabilities.” While a significant shift in plan, the project successfully met its goal “to demonstrate the aesthetic and poetic potential” of a work addressing accessible design.

Lead artist Ben Trautman writes, “In architecture school, I developed a passion for mechanical sculpture. I invested a creative process using chipboard, wire, and glue that allowed me to develop and understand mechanisms both technically and aesthetically…. The process of making operational mechanisms and confronting technical problems was an important factor in shaping the work.” Upon graduation he applied many of these sculptural interests at a larger scale, while also practicing cabinetry, furniture and exhibit design. He notes, “The tension between utilitarian and pure art is central to my work.” At the project’s completion, he wrote, “For some time, I have been wrestling with the question of how to make my work more relevant to social and political issues…. The project with the Artship, I think, provides a good model for me to consider in the future. The collaboration, the conversations and disagreements, the context of solving a problem, is a way to allow my work to begin to peer out of its shell and consider the complicated world outside without becoming too much about what I want to say.”

The Artship Foundation is a nonprofit organization committed to creating programs in an environment where creativity, personal growth, and vocational skills can be nurtured, observed, and celebrated, and where the meaning and experience of community can be realized through art. It encourages artists working in all media to explore their cultural roots. In August 1999, the organization began restoring an historical navel vessel, the former T/S Golden Bear, as a cultural center. The Foundation’s collaboration with Ben Trautman was based in this distinctive architectural setting.

Ben Trautman

Ben Trautman has a Masters of Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley, and a BA in Social Theory with a minor in Sculpture from Harvard University. He was a Teaching Fellow in sculpture at Harvard and also has taught art and history to disadvantaged teenagers in Harlem. While developing his work in sculpture, he worked as a consulting artist with several design and architecture firms in the Bay Area and has done many private commissions in steel and mechanical work.

Current projects include a mechanical art installation in a café near the Civic Center in San Francisco. This work is a system of mobile, abstract leaves hanging from the ceiling. The leaves have steel “bones” holding translucent panels glowing with light from above. In a private residence in the same building he created a series of mechanical installations including a wall of counterweighted panels that will pivot up, out of the way, a rolling door that has a counterweight that is a transforming sculpture, and an articulated swing-arm table that is cantilevered off a structural column.

In collaboration with artist Owen Kennerly, he has designed and built a traveling exhibit structure for City College of San Francisco. This exhibit, based on the Colleges’ Diego Rivera Mural, was installed at the California State Building at the Civic Center in San Francisco. The structures to house the exhibit were built using both modern and traditional methods, welded stainless steel and hand-worked slats of bent wood. The structures were very light yet stable.

Ben Trautman has exhibited mechanical installations at New Langton Arts in San Francisco and at the Marin Headlands in Sausalito. He also has exhibited work at the Assembly Gallery in Berkeley, and has done a series of environmental installations in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Slobodan Dan Paich

Slobodan Dan Paich is Executive and Artistic Director of the Artship Foundation and Director of Art and Culture of the Society of the Founders of the International Peace University, Berlin, Germany. He has an MFA from the Royal College of Art, London, and a BA from the Academy of Fine Arts, Belgrade.

He has exhibited at the Institute for Contemporary Arts (London); the Serpentine Gallery (Hyde Park, London); the Angela Flowers Gallery (London); the Richard Dimarco Gallery (Edinburgh); Le Salon des Nations (Paris); the Venice Biennale; the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery’s “Exploration City Site,” venue and many other locations.

Competitions and Awards

• First place, exhibited competition, “Art into Landscape,” organized by the British Arts Council, the Sunday Times, and the Royal Institute of British Architects
• The British Arts Council Major Fellowship Award
• First Place in the international competition, “Ideas for Life Long Learning,” sponsored by UNESCO and the French Government
• First Place in a competition for a participatory installation, “Arbor Structure of Delight” for the Arts Day at the Marin County Fair
• Co-winner of the Regenerating American contests during the “Celebration of Innovation” in San Francisco
• The City of Oakland Creative Arts Fellowship Award
• The U.S. Congressional Award for work with the Artship Initiative.

OTHER COLLABORATORS

Ralf Hotchkiss

Ralf Hotchkiss is Distinguished Research Scientist and Technical Director of Whirlwind Wheelchair International at San Francisco State University, and is a consultant to wheelchair manufacturers in developing countries throughout the world. He has been a designer and inventor of wheeled mobility devices since the late 1950s, working booth with high and low levels of technology. He is co-author of several books on product safety, and author of Independence Through Mobility (also translated into Spanish), a manual for the design and manufacture of state-of-the-art, lightweight wheelchairs in developing countries. He holds regular classes both on the San Francisco State University campus and in other countries to train new groups to build and manufacture the Whirlwind Wheelchair.

Hotchkiss was named a Fellow by the MacArthur Foundation in 1989 and received the Henry B. Betts Award in 1994, the Chrysler Design Award in 1995, the Distinguished Alumni Award from San Francisco State University in 1996, the Achievers Against the Odds Award from San Francisco State University in 1997, and the Ed Roberts Leadership Award from the World Institute on Disability in 1998.