Project Title: Hidden Sea
Recipient Organization: Tenants and Owners Development Corporation
Lead Artist: Ned Kahn
Genre and Date Awarded: Visual Arts, November 1998
Completed: January 2000

In late 1999, artist Ned Kahn collaborated with the staff of the Tenants and Owners Development Corporation (TODCO) and the residents of their housing projects to create a public artwork for the exterior wall of Ceatrice Polite apartment build

ing at Fourth and Clementina Streets. The apartment is in the Yerba Buena redevelopment area of San Francisco's South of Market District, a part of the city that has changed significantly over the last ten years.

A pre-existing Clementina Commons advisory group, which had been working with TODCO for four years in developing plans for new senior housing and landscape renovation being developed near Ceatrice Polite Apartments, served as a community advisory group and worked with the artist in design of the project. Over the course of six months, its members discussed and reviewed the project design and the core group continued to meet when the project was completed.

Ned Kahn's public artworks encourage people to observe and interact with natural processes. Upon talking with the advisory group, his concept for this project became to create a piece that captures the feeling of watching a field of tall grass blowing in the wind. Both Kahn and John Elberling, Executive Vice President of TODCO, felt that the residents would benefit from being offered a glimpse into a natural phenomenon, a bit of calm and beauty in the context of their increasingly dense and bustling urban landscape.

The artwork, "Hidden Sea" consists of 6,000 small aluminum "leaves" mounted in an aluminum framework and hinged to move freely in the wind. The individual leaves measure three inches by three inches and are held by low friction bearings. The entire 40-foot tall by 25-foot wide artwork reveals the shape of the wind and creates the intended impression of waves in a field of metallic grass. The mirror-like surfaces of the aluminum leaves reflect light from different parts of the sky and the surrounding buildings.

"Hidden Sea" was fabricated by Ace Precision Machine in Santa Rosa and assembled in Ned Kahn's studio. Benji Young and Michael Ehrlich of Young Rigging in San Francisco installed the artwork at the beginning of the year 2000.

Ned Kahn writes of the context for this project:

For the last 15 years, I have created public artworks that use wind, water, fog and other natural processes as their primary medium. Many of these artworks were intended to reveal a hidden or unnoticed force in the site such as the air currents or the ambient light from the sky. The design of a number of these projects was based on an aspect of the natural history or geology of the region that was not commonly known. My artworks often function as small-scale "observatories" in that they frame and enhance our perception of natural phenomena and create places that encourage contemplation.

TODCO is a South of Market non-profit community-based housing developer that seeks to build community both among the residents of its service-enriched housing as well as in the surrounding neighborhood. In 1971, TODCO was incorporated by neighborhood residents fighting the Redevelopment Agency's "slum clearance" program for the future Yerba Buena Center. It initially concentrated on building affordable housing in the Yerba Buena section of the South of Market neighborhood. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, TODCO spearheaded the establishment of the Sixth Street Earthquake Recovery Redevelopment Area, and now builds housing the Sixth Street corridor as well. TODCO's award-winning, service-enriched housing focuses on a range of populations: earthquake displaces, very low income single adults, disabled persons, families, and seniors. For more information, see www.todco.org.

Ned Khan

Recent Public Art Commissions

• Children's Garden, Huntington Botanical Gardens, Pasadena, California (2004)
• Wind Portal, BART Station (with MBT Associates), San Francisco, California (2002)
• Cloud Watching Chairs, Chabot Observatory (with Fisher/Freedman Architects), Oakland, California (1998)
• Boundary Conditions, NOAA Environmental Research Lab, Boulder, Colorado (1998)
• Wave Train, Baypointe Light Rail Station (with SBA Architects), San Jose, California (1998)
• Slice of Wind , Engineering Building, University of Colorado, Boulder (1996)
• Encircled Stream , Founders Court (with Atelier Landscape), Seattle Center, Seattle, Washington (1995)
• Wavespout - Breathing Sea (with Sasaki & Associates), Ventura Pier, Ventura, California (1993)
• Greenhouse Project , San Francisco County Jail (with Cathrine Snead), San Bruno, California (1991)

Selected Exhibitions

• Center for the Arts, Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco, California (1996)
• M.H. de Young Museum, San Francisco, California (1995)
• California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California (1994)
• National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado (1994)
• La Cité Des Arts, Montreal, Canada (1992)
• Questacon, Canberra, Australia (1992)
• Mole Antonelliana, Torino, Italy (1992)
• North Carolina Museum, Durham, North Carolina (1992)
• Rotunda Gallery, Canary Wharf, London, England (1992)
• MultiMediale 2, Center for Art, Karlsruhe, Germany (1991)
• World Financial Center, Battery Park City, New York, New York (1990)
• Technorama, Winterthur, Switzerland (1999)
• Artpark (Niagara River), Lewiston, New York (1989)
• Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California (1989)
• Saibu Museum of Art, Fukuoka, Japan (1989)
• San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco, California (1988)
• Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. (1988)
• New Langton Arts Gallery, San Francisco, California (1987)
• Parc De La Villette, Paris, France (1987)
• IBM Gallery of Art and Science, New York, New York (1985)

Awards

• MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2004)
• Sculpture Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts (1994)
• California Arts Council Fellowship (1994)
• Bernard Osher Cultural Award (1992)
• Sculpture Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts (1991)

Performances

• "Stories from the Nerve Bible" tour, collaboration with Laurie Anderson (1994)

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