Artwork – Alameda Point Environmental Report

The natural world is a living art gallery. To appreciate the often intricate colorations that evolved in many cases over millions of years requires slowing down, way down, and stopping. It may even require the aid of a magnifying glass or a camera lens. Sometimes it just means being aware at certain times of the year when flowers bloom.

One of the most fascinating, common, but little appreciated, life forms are lichens, shown here in five images. With the naked eye, the details in the “Lichen Galaxy” image, for example, go unnoticed. Yet, there on the blue rock ‘sky’ of the shoreline boulder are yellow, orange, cream, and mushroom-colored lichens.

During August, an art sculpture was placed in the street median at the so-called gateway location, another in the Seaplane Lagoon waterfront park.

These two projects satisfy the city’s public art requirement in the development deal for Site A, which stipulated that the developer spend $300,000 on public art. The budget for the gateway artwork was $100,000, and $200,000 for the waterfront park project.

In order to select its artists, the developer, Alameda Point Partners, conducted a Request for Qualifications process for the two sites at Alameda Point. The process generated 172 submissions, which were reviewed by an evaluation panel of six Alameda community members, design professionals, and stakeholders. The panel then selected seven finalists to create proposals, offering an honorarium of $1,500 to each finalist. After reviewing the proposals, the panel conducted one round of follow-up questions before making their selections.