Prototype for "Still Here," a collaboration among Elise Brewster, Susan Schwartzenberg, Robin Grossinger and the San Francisco Estuary Institute. Image based on a photograph by Carleton Watkins (1861), courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Project Title: “The BayBoards Project”
Recipient Organization: San Francisco Estuary Institute
Lead Artist: Elise Brewster
Genre and Date Awarded: Visual Arts, June 2002
To Be Presented: Winter 2004

Through an innovative partnership between art and science, this project intends to “make visible the strange and hidden physical history of three Bay Area landscapes -- a background drama of almost unimaginable change and yet equally-surprising continuity that literally shapes our daily experience.” Artists Elise Brewster and Susan Schwartzenberg are collaborating with scientist Robin Grossinger and the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) to illuminate the Bay Area’s landscape history using carefully-chosen complexes of commercial outdoor signage (“The BayBoards”), a library exhibit, museum forum, and web site.

The project emerges from research into the region's ecological history conducted over the past decade by Grossinger, Brewster, Josh Collins, Chuck Striplen, and other SFEI investigators, in collaboration with many local historians, archivists, and environmental scientists. An essential component of this work has been the role of artist and researcher Elise Brewster in synthesizing historical documents into compelling maps. Inspired by this scientific content, Brewster developed an artistic practice of creating three-dimensional “Reclaimed Views” of local settings—the origin of the BayBoards Project.

The project addresses the difficult challenge of accurately "seeing through time" given uncertain, subjective, and incomplete historical documents, as well as our preconceived views of the past. Thus the team uses a range of tools from both art and science, including computer-based mapping, hand-based drawing, intercalibration of sources, and repeat and contemporary photography by Schwartzenberg.

The “BayBoards” will construct a series of vantage points through both space and time, connecting the signs’ locations to their immediate environments. The team intends the images—placed in San Francisco, Oakland, and Albany—to establish penetrating glimpses into a dynamic landscape not immediately apparent to casual viewers, yet relevant to present-day concerns. Exhibits on each side of the Bay—at the Lawrence Hall of Science (www.lhs.berkeley.edu) and the SF Public Library (sfpl.lib.ca.us)—will allow viewers to access materials collected during the process of coming to terms with each site. The research, stories, and logistical information for the project will be presented through a web site: www.stillhere.org.

The collaborators chose the billboard as their primary medium because “no other graphic medium so dominates the edge of the Bay.” Many of the region’s major freeways are built on bay fill—former marshes, mudflats, and beaches—and many surprisingly natural habitats thrive alongside the freeways where they are commonly overlooked. The BayBoards draw attention to the past and present of these changing landscapes, inviting the public
to see through the layers of history to the subtle endurance and potential of the Bay Area landscape.

SFEI, (www.sfei.org), is a nonprofit environmental science research institute, based in Oakland, California. It was established to serve as a central, public-interest resource center for the scientific understanding necessary to protect and restore the Bay Area. SFEI’s Historical Ecology Project (www.sfei.org/HEP), developed by Grossinger, Collins, and Brewster, has gained national and international attention for its innovative synthesis of thousands of historical documents into compelling maps of the pre-European landscape. Some of these were featured in “Back to the Bay,” a 2001 exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

BAYBOARDS TEAM:

Elise Brewster’s work combines environmental sculpture, visual art, and landscape architecture. In 1997-98 she received the Rome Prize from the Academy of Rome, where she studied the ancient Roman Gardens and built “Opus,” a carved stone sculpture. She has accomplished numerous public landscape projects in Italy and the United States, including most recently “Pews” at the Mead Art Museum of Amherst College and “A Room with a View”, Port of Oakland. Her drawings have been featured in a range of publications such as From Eco-cities to Living Machines, 1994 and “Portfolio/ Gardens Lost”: Landscape Journal Magazine, 2000.
www.brewsterdesignarts.com

As a landscape ecologist and historian, Robin Grossinger investigates the transformation of coastal California landscapes since European contact. He directs the Bay Area Historical Ecology Project at the San Francisco Estuary Institute (www.sfei.org), guiding efforts to understand changes to wetlands, creeks, and terrestrial habitats throughout the region. In addition to technical publications, Mr. Grossinger presents these findings through diverse types of mapping, “reoccupations” of historical documents, and graphic stories. His visual art with the art/science team Stillhere has been featured in Bay Nature, The Mississippi Review Online, and at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, while SFEI maps of landscape changes have appeared in publications such as McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (2003), the ESRI Map Book (Vol. 15), San Francisco Chronicle, and The Living Landscape: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning (Steiner, F., McGraw-Hill, 2000).
http://www.sfei.org/sfei_staff.htm

Susan Schwartzenberg is a visual artist who incorporates multiple sources to visually represent the intersection between history and personal memory. Her work takes many forms—installations, books, public art, and curated exhibitions. Recent book projects include Hollow City, The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism, with author Rebecca Solnit (Verso, 2001); and Cento: A Market Street Journal, for the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Market Street Art in Transit program (1995-96). In 1998-2000 Schwartzenberg developed the Rosie the Riveter Memorial in Richmond, California with landscape architect Cheryl Barton. Her recent awards include a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University in 1998-99, the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship 2001, and is currently completing a project with the Seattle Art Commission. She is a senior artist at the S.F. Exploratorium.

Story in the San Francisco Chronicle by Adair Lara.