Crosstown Loveletter

Kelly Ording

Oakland, California

SLATE Art Consulting was honored to be contracted by Signature Development Group in 2018 to curate and project manage the Public Art (percent-for-art) component of their new-construction hotel and apartment project at Broadway and 25th Street in Oakland, CA.

The team at BAR Architects & Interiors, who was responsible for the building design, had conceived of a seven-story tall glass fin system to mark the entrance. The vertical linear feature with a return at the top was intended as a nod to one of Oakland's most famous Art Deco architectural gems, the Paramount Theatre marquee.

On review of fabrication options and engineering requirements, it was determined that the glass would need to be architectural-grade, tempered and laminated. Today it is possible to digitally print a design on a glass surface using inks that have microscopic grains of glass in them. The printed sheet of glass is then fired in a kiln, causing the glass inks to melt and fuse to the sheet, before it is tempered and laminated for strength. It was therefore agreed that the glass fins could be adorned with an artist's design to create a public artwork.

SLATE began research to find the right artist for the project. The group at Signature had requested that we use a local artist if possible. SLATE proposed various options for consideration to the client, who ultimately invited Kelly Ording to develop a proposal. Kelly is an Oakland-based painter working primarily on paper, combining wet watercolor-like washes and stains with delicate geometric line-work that often echoes art deco and Japanese graphic design elements.

The artist prepared multiple designs in various color-ways. We explored the idea of spreading a single image over the 75 glass "tiles," rather than repeating a pattern. The final image combines stylized motifs of waterfalls and palm fans. And even though we knew it would never coalesce entirely (due to the spacing of the tiles on the building skeleton), certain portions of it do line up when viewed from different perspectives as one moves up or down the Broadway corridor.

The emerald green color was selected because it referenced a 1930s Art Deco trend in ceramic tile, which graces several of Oakland's downtown architectural landmarks, such as the I-Magnin building, which is a just few blocks down the street near the Paramount. The artistic tile work on the exterior of these buildings is a kind of public art from another era.

After the final design was selected, Kelly Ording re-created it in a larger scale, and sent it to a local company for digital capture, turning the file over to a graphics specialist to be color-profiled, vectorized, and scaled up to cover nearly 1000 square feet.

Once the first few files were ready, we began the process of print-testing. The process took time as we experimented with multiple fabricators, and adjustments were eventually made to both the digital files and the printer settings, to get the result the artist was looking for. We brought the samples outdoors to see how they would read in natural light, and even brought them to the top of a multi-story parking garage so we could see if the line-weight was heavy enough to view from the ground 50-60 feet away.

Finally in late 2021, the 75 glass tiles - some as large as 12 feet long, were fabricated, delivered, and hung on a custom-designed bracket system.

One of the great joys of this artwork is how dynamic it is. Depending on what angle you are viewing it from and what time of day it is, you will see different colors and patterns coming to the fore.

Public art projects require teams of individuals with specialized skills, especially if the piece is architecturally integrated. In addition to the Artist, this project required resources and expertise from the developer, architects, engineers, digital technicians, printers, glass and metal fabricators, the general contractor, installation subcontractors, and city officials. SLATE Art Consulting not only curates (guiding selection of artist and design) but provides project management services to connect the team, and manage scopes, contracts, project timelines, budgets, quality, and compliance with municipal requirements.