For the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area Bridge Improvement Project, a patterned system of panels was used to alter the character of an existing highway bridge and to create a significant entry to the Baldwin Hills Nature Conservancy, 100 acres of one of the largest remaining open spaces in Los Angeles. The art which functionally renovates the bridge marks a significant entry to the Conservancy, accommodates pedestrian traffic over the bridge, and serves as an iconic presence for all those who pass under the bridge on La Cienega Boulevard.
The bridge panels are designed to reflect the ongoing landscape transformation at the Conservancy, as the tensions of recreation and oil production, in the highly disturbed landscape, are resolved and ecologies are restored. The open pattern of the panels is a conceptual mapping whose line work merges the broad patterns of disturbance caused by oil infrastructure on the site and the image of the skin of the small Western Fence Lizard, part of its original California coastal sedge ecology. This mapping collapses a small character from the landscape into the broad patterns of disturbance caused by oil extraction on the site.
