Imagine spending a sunny summer day under a cloudless blue sky, walking your dog along the river that cuts through your urban neighborhood. As you linger along the grassy banks, you notice something sticking out of the mud that looks out of place and unfamiliar – not a stick, or a rock, or an exposed section of a tire, but something else. What if that "something else" you might easily dismiss as common is actually quite an extraordinary find that dates back to the Ice Age?
Imagine discovering signs of prehistoric life in your own neighborhood...
That is exactly what happened in July, 2005, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Roger Castillo, a San Jose truck mechanic, was walking his dog along a levee next to the Guadalupe River when he spotted something peculiar in the sandy clay of the riverbank. It was the protruding tusk of a mammoth that, 14,000 years ago, roamed the Bay Area during the late Pleistocene. Later, it was determined to be the fossilized remains of a juvenile Columbian mammoth, a species related to the modern day elephant.
In this time and age, when our day-to-day experience is closer to that of ringing cellphones, supermarkets, social networks, highways and high-rises, most of us cannot even imagine that the surfaces we now walk upon were, long ago, the same pathways traversed by prehistoric mammoths, lions, tigers, wolves, and humans – us. But they were.
And that is what the artwork Portal explores.
Commissioned by Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose with collaborative support from the San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs, Portal is a public artwork by artist JD Beltran that reflects upon the deep past, the collapse of time, and how we visualize time through art. It was inspired by the discovery of “Lupe,” the juvenile Columbian mammoth (named after the Guadalupe River), who is now the subject of Mammoth Discovery!, a major exhibition at Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose which opened in June. Portal will be featured as an evening projection through December, 2011, on the twelve-story AT&T building at the intersection of Almaden Boulevard and East San Fernando Street in downtown San Jose, and in various other locations throughout the city.
About The Artwork Images:
The sun is about 4.5 billion years old now. It is about 300 degrees hotter and 6% greater in radius than when it was first born. Its temperature, luminosity and radius will continue to increase at about the same rate for another 5 billion years. In the upper left corner of this image, you can see an eruption on the sun's surface that was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on February 24, 2011.
The first sundials are thought to have been created in Egypt around 1500 BC, or 3,500 years ago. The sundial is the oldest known device for the measurement of time and the most ancient of scientific instruments.
Formerly the United Clock Company, the Western Clock Company was founded in 1887 and introduced its first portable travel alarm clock in 1938. The company also invented the “drowse” alarm in 1959, now known as the snooze button.
A digital clock uses a numeric display to indicate the time, whereas an analog clock uses hands. Digital clocks use either a 24-hour notation with hours ranging from 00–23, or a 12-hour notation, with an AM/PM indicator (mostly the United States and Canada). The Sony Digimatic radio alarm clock, made in 1969, is one of the earliest digital clocks.
Apple Computer, Inc. released the first iIPhone in June, 2007. The industry for wrist and pocket watches has steadily declined, and market research has identified an increase in the use of electronic handheld devices that also tell time. In a 2006 survey, investment bank Piper Jaffray & Co. found that nearly two-thirds of teens never wear a watch, and only about one in ten wears one daily. This iPhone features an image of the iconic Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose building, as well as the time and date (10:00 a.m. and June 11, 2011) when the Museum's Mammoth Discovery! exhibit will open to its visiting public.
During the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, the basin now filled by the San Francisco Bay was an elongated valley with small hills like most coastal range valleys. Rivers of the Central Valley ran out to sea through a canyon that is now the Golden Gate. As the great ice sheets melted, sea level rose 300 feet (91 meters) over 4,000 years, and the valley filled with water from the Pacific, becoming a bay. The small hills became islands.
The Wright Brothers made their first successful test flights on December 17, 1903, garnering recognition for "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight." By 1905, the Wright Flyer III was capable of fully controllable, stable flight for substantial periods. The San Jose Municipal Airport first opened what is now known as Terminal C in 1965, and in 2001 the airport was renamed the Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport.
HIGHWAY 101
Route 101, or U.S. Highway 101, connects and serves as a passage for motor vehicles travelling through California, Oregon, and Washington, on the West Coast of the United States.The route is also known as El Camino Real (The Royal Road), approximating the old trail that linked the Spanish missions, pueblos, and presidios along the southern and central California coast. It merges at points with California Highway 1.
This cave painting of a mammoth is from the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in the Ardèche department of southern France. The site contains the earliest known cave paintings, made about 32,000 years ago, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life. Discovered in 1994, it is considered one of the most significant prehistoric art sites. In May, 2011, filmmaker Werner Herzog released “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” a three-dimensional film celebrating the cave drawings, now no longer accessible to the public.
This rock art drawing of a mammoth is from Libya, North Africa, and dates from 4000-6000 BC.
This eye is that of an Asian elephant, a modern relative of the Columbian mammoth. Columbian mammoths and Asian elephants descended from a common ancestor.
This eye is from a petroglyph figure carved on one of the walls of the Tomb of Ken-Amun, unearthed in Egypt and dating to the 19th Dynasty BC (1315-1201 BC). This burial site is the first ever uncovered in Lower Egypt from the Ramesside Period.
This eye is from the Golden Mask of King Tutankhamun from Egypt during the period around 1300 BC. When the boy king's tomb was discovered in 1922, his mummified body rested inside three nested golden coffins. The mask he wore is made of 24 pounds of solid gold, inlaid lapis lazuli, carnelian, quartz, turquoise, obsidian and colored glass. Tutankhamun assumed the throne before his tenth birthday and only lived about eighteen years.
This eye is from an Olmec Head, part of the Mayan Ruins in south-central Mexico, in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco. The Olmec were a Pre-Columbian civilization who flouished in the tropical lowlands during Mesoamerica's Formative Period, dating roughly from as early as 1500 BC to about 400 BC.
This eye is from the marble Statue of Emperor Gaius Caligula, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Caligula was the Roman Emperor from 37-41 AD. He has been described as noble and moderate during the first two years of his rule, but then supposedly turned to cruelty and extravagance, and became tyrannical. In early 41, Caligula was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy involving officers of the Praetorian Guard, as well as members of the Roman Senate and of the Imperial Court.
This eye is from the Seated Buddha Akshobhya, the Imperturbable Buddha of the East, from the 9th–10th century, which is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Although you only see his eye, in the statue he appears to touch the earth with his right hand, a gesture (bhumisparshamudra) most frequently associated with Shakyamuni, the Historic Buddha. It alludes to Shakyamuni's victory over the evil demon Mara (who sought to disturb his meditation and therefore, his enlightenment). The same gesture is also associated with Akshobhya, one of the five great cosmic Buddhas central to the iconography of early Tibetan Buddhism.
This eye is from a mosaic created during the Byzantine Period, at the famous Hagia Sophia Church in Istanbul, Turkey. This 13th century Deësis Mosaic (also spelled Deisis), depicts Christ flanked by the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist. This mosaic dates from shortly after the Restoration of Constantinople (1261) and was probably commissioned to express gratitude for the victory of Michael VIII Palaeologus (1261-1282) which put an end to the Crusader occupation.
This eye is from "Portrait of a Young Man" by Italian Artist Sandro Botticelli, painted around 1480-1485, and is from the National Gallery in London, England. In this highly detailed portrait, the young man stands out sharply against a black background. His brown tunic matches his eyes and he wears a red hat known as a 'beretta.' Most portraits made in Florence and elsewhere in Italy were profile views. This one is unusual in its format, and the painting may have originally been larger.
This eye is from the "Mona Lisa" (also known as "La Gioconda" or "La Joconde"), a 16th century portrait by Italian painter and inventor Leonardo da Vinci during the Renaissance in Florence, Italy. The work is currently owned by the Government of France and displayed at the Musée du Louvre in Paris under the title "Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo." The painting is a half-length portrait and depicts a seated woman (thought to be Lisa del Giocondo) whose facial expression is frequently described as enigmatic. The image is so widely recognized, caricatured, and sought out by visitors to the Louvre that it is considered the most famous painting in the world.
This eye is from Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl With A Pearl Earring,” one of his master works from around 1665. Today the painting is kept in the Mauritshuis Gallery in the Hague, The Netherlands. It is sometimes referred to as "the Mona Lisa of the North" or "the Dutch Mona Lisa." Vermeer, one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age, was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings; only 34 paintings exist that are attributable to him.
This eye is from French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ "Portrait of Countess D'Haussonville." Ingres began his portrait of Louise d'Haussonville (1818–1882) in 1842, when he was sixty-two and the comtesse was twenty-four years of age. She had the distinction of being the great-granddaughter of Jacques Necker, who had served Louis XVI as director-general of finances, and the grand-daughter of Madame de Stael, in her day one of the most fascinating women in Europe. The countess was remarkable in her own right and authored, among others, a two-volume life of Byron and an unpublished autobiography noteworthy for its wit, candor and breadth of perception. The artist Ingres is known as one of the greatest portrait painters of all time.
This eye is the reverse image from one of Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh’s famous self-portraits, created in 1889. Vincent van Gogh painted over 30 self-portraits between the years 1886 and 1889. As he struggled to make a living as an artist, he became reliant on his brother Theo and the charity of others. With their generosity of money and supplies, Van Gogh continued working as an artist and thought of portrait painting as a practical application of his talent. Van Gogh did not see portrait painting as merely a means to an end; he believed that portrait painting would help him develop his skills as an artist.
This eye is from a photograph taken by photographer John Deakin of the famous British painter Francis Bacon. The first permanent photograph (later accidentally destroyed) was an image produced in 1826 by the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, using a process involving a pewter plate and bitumen. In a later partnership, Niépce and Louis Daguerre (in Paris) refined the existing silver process. In 1833, Niépce died of a stroke, leaving his notes to Daguerre. While he had no scientific background, he discovered that exposing the silver first to iodine vapour before exposure to light, and then to mercury fumes after the photograph was taken, could form a latent image. Bathing the plate in a salt bath then fixes the image. On January 7, 1839, Daguerre announced that he had invented a process using silver on a copper plate called the daguerreotype — the first commercially successful photographic process. The French government bought the patent and immediately made it public domain.
This eye is from a film starring the famous silent film actress Theda Bara, who made more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926. The first motion picture, a series of photographs capturing a running horse, was created by photographer Eadweard Muybridge in the 1870s. Muybridge used a series of large cameras featuring glass plates placed in a line, each one being triggered by a thread as the horse passed. Later a clockwork device was used. The images were copied in the form of silhouettes onto a disc and viewed in a machine called a Zoopraxiscope. This served as an intermediate stage in the development of motion pictures.
This series of eyes features a collection of photographs of eyes of people from all over the world.
This series of eyes features a collection of photographs of eyes of children in San Francisco, California. The eye pictured here is that of my son, Sebastien.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
Since the very beginning of my art practice, I have worked in a multiplicity of materials – painting, film, video, photography, text, sound, and more – exploring the concept of how specific materials possess their own individual language of meaning. I particularly like to investigate differences in materials – what does a painting of a subject say that a photograph, or even film of the same subject cannot? I am fascinated by the dialogue a specific material can generate with its audience. I am also particularly interested in the vehicle of public art. With much of my work I am trying to reach not only to the art-going audience, but the passerby on the street. A public installation of an artwork on a storefront window, or projected on a building, can be viewed by someone happening to walk by in the middle of the day or late at night, who can then interact with the piece – stop, watch, interact, contemplate. Public art installations have the power to engage a broad audience of the general public in a dialogue.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
JD Beltran’s conceptual work and interdisciplinary practice bridges the narrative and the abstract while investigating the manner in which materials convey stories. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally, including at the Walker Art Center, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The M.H. De Young Museum, San Francisco, California, The Kitchen Gallery, New York, the MIT Media Lab, the 01SJ New Media Biennials in San Jose, California (2006, 2008), ProArte in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Singapore Digital MediaFest, Cite Des Ondes Video Et Art Electronique in Montreal, Canada, Sesto Senso in Bologna, Italy, Festival VIDEOFORMES in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Ping Pong Gallery in Guanzhou, China, the Ingenuity Festival in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Biennale for Electronic Arts in Perth, Australia. She has been commissioned for public art projects in San Francisco, California, San Jose, California, Cleveland, Ohio, and St. Petersburg, Russia. Her San Jose public art project was recognized in 2009 as one of the most outstanding public art projects in the country by the Public Art Network, and her “Magic Story Table” project in San Francisco, a collaboration with Scott Minneman, was recognized as one of the top interactive designs for 2010 internationally by I.D. Magazine. She also was awarded a Lucas Fellowship and Montalvo Arts Center Residency in 2009, an Artadia grant in 1999, and residencies at both the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Boston Globe, as well as in Art In America, ArtNews, the New Art Examiner, and Art Papers.
She is faculty in the New Genres, Film, Design & Technology, Interdisciplinary Studies, Critical Studies, and Urban Studies Programs at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she also serves as Director of the school’s City Studio Program providing after-school arts education to underserved youth. She is also the Vice President of the San Francisco Arts Commission, and a Vice President and Board Member of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She lives and works in San Francisco, California.
More of JD Beltran’s artwork can be found at http://www.jdbeltran.com.
ABOUT THE PROJECT:
Portal, a film projection, and Journey, a related short film, were commissioned by Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose with collaborative support from the San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs. I express my deepest thanks and gratitude to Lisa Ellsworth and Autumn Young of Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose, and Barbara Goldstein and Lynn Rogers of the San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs for their generous support of this project.
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