This collaboration with Mixed Media artist, Inna Zatulovsky is part of our ongoing “Alchemy” experimentation of how viewers’ understandings of a composition changes as they approach a piece based on manipulation of composition, light, textures, materials and reflectivity. The journey of this artwork was a long and novel one for both Inna and myself.
The first stage was my urbanscape photo of a famous Brutalist Fountain Sculpture on the Embarcadero by Armand Vaillancourt. Through my photosculpture process, in the concrete blocks of the fountain, I discovered a wonderful mountainscape abstraction that takes me to the wonder of backpacking in the nearby canyons and mountains that ring the bay area and their starry night skies.
Inna Zatulovsky began with my mountainscape and lead us to the interiors of our psyches. As we worked on the composition, though sharing similar compositional sensibilities, we were operating with different understandings of the story contained in the iterations and so we kept our titles to ourselves until its first public unveiling at 2026 Silicon Valley Open Studios (SVOS). The final title, “Journey Inwards (Folie á Deux),” is a combination of our understandings.
This fountain was installed in 1971, when the city was still ringed by an overhead highway and served as a lunchtime fixture for many an office worker and then for skateboarders. After the big earthquake of 1989, that portion of the hiway was removed and now the S.F. Arts Commission has determined this public artwork should be removed (aka “deaccessioning”). Populating the area around it are the latest fad of pickleball courts. This sculpture made of 101 concrete blocks is 40 feet high and weighs 710 tons, which one might think after 54 years would be pretty permanent.
If you would like to read up on it please see wonderful article by Brian Boucher in Art World from 8/26/25. Click here for link: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/san-francisco-controversial-embarcadero-fountain-2655974
