Shifting Topographies – BART ART

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I’m obsessed with the Shifting Topographies public art installation at the 17th Street Gateway in Oakland.

Several months ago, my favorite hidden BART entrance to the 19th St. station suddenly closed. A few months later, the tiny Gateway alley that bridges Broadway and Telegraph reopened featuring a swirling 3-dimensional sculpture that nearly covered one entire wall. What a great idea to integrate art into this cozy public space of the Uptown neighborhood that has become known as Oakland’s Arts & Cultural District.

I first came to know this little BART gateway when I would pop over to downtown Oakland from S.F. to meet East Bay friends and listen to great music at Van Kleef’s intimate-kitschy bar. But Café Van Kleef is no longer the only game in town. Now only steps away from the new Shifting Topographies BART Art are tons of nightlife options like the Fox Theater, Make Westing Bar, Diving Dog brew pub, Bar Dogwood and its new sister Darlings Elixirs, Woods Bar & Brewery, Duende, The Punchdown, Flora Restaurant with its sister bar Fauna, and Xolo taqueria. And something new and inventive springs up regularly, as the once ghost town of Uptown increasingly fills in.

Shifting Topographies captures the soul of Uptown’s changing and vibrant nightlife. Though the initial peek at the rippling sculpture was compelling – especially with its dynamically programmed nightly lightshow – it was clearly unfinished. Scaffolding and plywood still covered a good part of the alley and left me wondering, what’s still to come?

Shifting Topographies was launched via a competitive bidding process that resulted from the city of Oakland’s commitment to public art. Over the years, the city has set up various sources for funding. First in through its 1989 city ordinance that requires 1.5% of capital improvement spending to be dedicated to public art. More recently, a 2014 ordinance requires that private development contribute to public art projects .5% of its residential projects and 1% of commercial projects. Developers can either add to the city’s budget or create the public art themselves.

The winning designer for this BART aley was Dan Corson, a Seattle-based artist with many edgy public art installations to his credit, much of it in the western U.S. A cross between theater, technology, and sculpture. This particular funding came from redevelopment funds related to Luminous Oakland, a project that seeks to improve lighting in the city. And this originally dark little alley was ripe for transformation. Luminous Oakland is also responsible for other downtown art projects such as The Great Wall (First Friday video projections) and the now gone sculpture Art Park, which was always intended to be temporary.

After a couple of months of cliff-hanger, this past February the 17th Street Gateway BART entrance suddenly closed again. Apparently, the next phase of the Shifting Topographies installation had commenced.

There had been many unforeseen delays in completing the project, including in the finishing touch of its walls of laminated safety glass that had taken longer than expected to fabricate.

My irritation at having so many 19th St. BART entrances closed at once dissipated when the Gateway reopened a few weeks ago to reveal the finished Shifting Topographies installation.

One evening as I rode up the BART escalator toward the sculpture’s flashing lights, I was unexpectedly greeted by the finished piece – appropriately coinciding with First Fridays’ / Art Murmur.

Corson drew his inspiration for Shifting Topographies broadly from the Bay Area landscape, from the Oakland Hills to the waves of the Bay. The dense hard foam covered in hard coat and color-shifting paint that contributes to the shifting nature of artwork, depending on the time of day. The colors reflect the landscape as well as BART signature blue color. The installation also features safety glass walls of highly reflective navy-blue covered in silvery waves that continue the Shifting Topographies’ motif. The glass serves a practical purpose as well to creatively hide the emergency ventilation system. The mirror-like walls provide an illusion of space in the compact alley, and literally reflect the neighborhood and people around it.

But also appealing about the finished Gateway is that Shifting Topographies is integrated with the alley’s vintage wall of red brick, deftly bringing together old and new Oakland.

I’m back to my regular commuter routine of using the Gateway entrance, and I get a little lift as a come and go from BART. At night, Shifting Topographies’ dramatic lights in blue, green, white, and purple create theater in the alley. Yet when I head to work in the morning, the sunlight creates a whole different experience in how the natural light plays over the sculpture’s undulating curves.

And this is why I find Shifting Topographies so mesmerizing – the installation is so brilliantly conceived that there is always something different to see in it. Not only with the changing light, but changes through perspective as I move in the alley, making the piece interactive.

Check out the Video to see the art in motion.

Oakland is full of great street art with striking sculpture and secreted murals, and Shifting Topographies is a stunning addition. The city also took the opportunity to refurbish the alley and add improved lighting that makes the Gateway safer to traverse. I hope that the City of Oakland actively maintains its investment in Shifting Topographies and doesn’t let it fall into the same decline as the now defunct Uptown Art Park sculpture garden. Not everyone respects art.