Public art defines a sense of place by incorporating original works of art into public spaces. Being public, the art is free and accessible to everyone. Today, public art can take a wide range of forms, sizes, and scales—and can be temporary or permanent. Public art can include murals, sculpture, memorials, integrated architectural or landscape architectural work, community art, digital new media, and even performances and festivals! Whatever the form, public art instills meaning—a greater sense of identity and understandings of where we live, work, and visit—creating memorable experiences for all. Accessible for everyone, it provides a bridge between the past, present and the near future. It is the mirror image of its community, an intersection between discipline and ideas.
Here are some favorite public art displays in San Pedro:
This 40-foot blue fin tuna sculpture was unveiled near Utro’s Cafe in 2012 after nearly five years in the making. The public art piece on San Pedro’s developing waterfront was created by artist Carl Cheng and pays homage to San Pedro’s long and colorful history as a commercial fishing hub and is lighted at night using solar energy.
Inside the see-through stainless steel wire mesh sculpture resembling a fishing net are dozens of castings of old tools and other objects collected from San Pedro families.
Ghost Fish 107 – the artist came up with the concept in January 2007 – serves as the centerpiece of a new 1.5-acre waterfront plaza near the fishing slip. Created by the Port of Los Angeles, it is the latest segment of the waterfront redesign. Other features in the new plaza include hand-crafted teak benches and seating platforms designed by San Pedro artist Harold Greene.
Putting a contemporary twist on a historic and romantic seafaring craft, Dion’s larger-than-life “Ship in a Bottle” art work incorporates an eight foot scale model of a container ship inside a 12-foot clear glass bottle. Sitting on a grassy mound in the midst of the Cabrillo Way Marina, the ship rests on a bed of crushed glass, and both the bottle and container ship appear to be floating out over the waters of the Port’s outer harbor.
From the Artist:
The art of crafting miniature ships in bottles was a favorite pastime of sailors, who have been important participants in the Port’s long history and culture. My “Ship in a Bottle” is a contemporary concept to unify the aesthetic of contemporary public art with that of vernacular, nautical craft-work and to respectfully acknowledge the central role played by the Port of Los Angeles and the city of San Pedro as the gateway of international commerce in the United States.
Created by nationally renowned artist, Doug Hollis, this environmental art installation at the Cruise Ship Promenade features a wind ensemble of sculptures that move and create sounds with the ocean breezes. The large-scale kinetic installation can be thought of as environmental indicator amplifying the sensory awareness of the environment.
Ceramic Tile Benches
Cruise Ship Promenade – by seven regional artists
Seven regional artists created an array of ceramic tile benches that reflect the local interests, mood, multiculturalism and waterfront character of the San Pedro area. This outdoor public art installation lines the upper Promenade’s concrete benches near the Telltales Wind Ensemble.
A gift from San Pedro’s sister city of Ischia, Italy, the five-foot-tall sculpture by Italian artist Francesco Perilli was designed to represent the power of mankind to unite the world. Serving as a symbol of peace between the two nations, the sculpture stands by the choreographed Fanfare Water Fountains on San Pedro’s waterfront promenade.
Catalina Swimmers
Harbor and 5th – Painted by Julie Bender, Public Art, Unexpected Pedro 2
From the Artist:
In 1927 the owner of Catalina Island, William Wrigley, was intrigued with the fame a swimmer received when he swam the English Channel. Wrigley decided to offer a purse of $40,000 to anyone who finished first in a race across the Catalina Channel. Ever since then, swimmers from all over the world began coming to San Pedro to achieve the goal of swimming the Channel.
This summer (2015) there will be at least 50 attempts at the crossing. Crossings involve the swimmer with her crew, 2 observers from the Catalina Channel Swimming Federation, and the captain and crew of a navigation vessel. To avoid the typically blustery afternoon winds, they depart in the evening from a dock at 22nd Street Landing. They arrive at Catalina around 11PM. The swimmer jumps into the water to swim to shore so the official watch can start. The swim is between 20 and 26 miles depending on the start and end points.
Wrigley’s race was in January, from Avalon to Point Vicente, a distance of 22 miles. The temperature of the water in January is normally between 51 and 56 degrees. That is one mile longer than the English Channel and approximately the same temperature. Today the normal swim is from Doctors Cove to the Terranea Resort, about 20 miles, and is swum in the summer months when the water is traditionally a warmer 68 to 73 degrees. The average time is 13 hours.
I know about this community of ocean swimmers because one of them is my daughter, Monica. She swam in 2012 at the age of 17. I believe she is the only swimmer from San Pedro so far.
Reality Rewritten
Harbor and 5th – Painted by Miriam Jackson, Public Art, Unexpected Pedro 2
From the Artist:
I intend to challenge the viewer’s perceived reality by reflecting reality in a new way.
The landscapes visible from the box at 5th and Harbor had the most district views for me. The USS Iowa has an interesting shape for an artist and the foreboding flat grey of the ship provoked me to paint it in bright happy colors.
The containers and cranes look so small from across the water. I zoomed in to show the massive microcosm and superimposed everything in between to create the composition you see.
I hope to imply emotion, without speaking, and to alter perception. The world can change from perception alone. I hope to provide an additional form for appreciating the surrounding environment.
The abstract designs represent the unseen, the unnoticed and the infinite.
2014: Gargantuan Duckies from Sea and Space!
Harbor and 7th – Painted by Monte Thrasher, Public Art, Unexpected Pedro 2
From the Artist:
In 2014 two strange and enormous objects paraded into our attention: In San Pedro the world’s largest bathtub duck, a huge inflated sculpture, floated into our harbor and docked next to our great gray battleship, The Iowa.
While hundreds of millions of miles out in space, the Rosetta probe went into orbit around the strangest world in our solar system, comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Shaped, more or less, like a bathtub duck!
Each duck wraps around a corner of the box; the yellow one will be on the most visible street side, the dark duck on the sidewalk side. The ducks are depicted as counterparts and friends, one a kind of ship and the other a kind of spaceship.
San Pedro also has a number of large murals scattered around town. Check them out on our South Bay Mural page.
Telltales Wind Ensemble
Multicultural Man
