Yerba Buena Center
San Francisco
Deep Gradient/Suspect Terrain(Seasons of the Sea ‘Adrift)
John Roloff
with NGA Industries and Wes-Co Industries
1993
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The accompanying plaque says:
This glass ship is an art work that refers to the natural and geological history of California. Sediment gathered from the ocean floor four miles off the coast of San Francisco was placed inside in 1993. This sediment contains diverse mineral and organic matter extracted from the landscape by the rivers that flow to the sea through the Golden Gate. The greenhouse environment of the ship interacts subtly with these materials producing ongoing natural cycles of growth, decay and rebirth.
John Roloff is a visual artist who works conceptually with site, process and natural systems. He is known primarily for his outdoor kiln/furnace projects done from the late 1970’s to the early 1990’s as well as other large-scale environmental and gallery installations investigating geologic and natural phenomena. Based on a background in science, his work engages poetic and site-specific relationships between material, concept and performance in the domains of geology, ecology, architecture, ceramics, industry and mining, metabolic systems and history. He studied geology at UC Davis, Davis, CA with Professor Eldridge Moores and others during the formative days of plate tectonics in the mid-1960’s. Subsequently, he studied art with Bob Arneson and William T. Wiley also at UC Davis in the late 1960’s. He is currently Chair of the Sculpture/Ceramics Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.
You can find the a history of Yerba Buena Gardens at Untapped Cities.