Jun 152018
Christopher Park
5210 Diamond Height Boulevard
Diamond Heights
These whimsical tile plagues are by Peter Vandenberge and reside inside, what is now, the nursery school in the Christopher Park Rec Center Building.
Born in 1935 in The Hague, Vandenberg grew up in Jakarta. “I was obsessed with making things out of clay,” “I was like Pigpen,” the Peanuts character. “My mother and father were always telling me to get out of the mud.”
In 1942 the Japanese invaded Indonesia and placed the expatriate population into POW camps, “The whole goddamn thing was a nightmare,” he recalls. “There was not enough food, there were no sanitary conditions, and people were bashed around; they were dying like flies.” When the war ended in 1945 and Shell Oil evacuated the family to Australia in the wake of Sukarno’s revolt against the Dutch, “we were just about dead; we looked like those guys in Somalia.”
After a year in Australia and a few years in post-war Holland, VandenBerg’s father moved to California, and Peter, then 19, followed. Twice over the next several years, he returned to Europe where he visited Giacometti and Joan Miró. The impressions made on him by both artists were long-lasting, and as a result, he’s continued, throughout his career, to employ the color palettes and gestures of artists who he admires.
Vandenberge received his B.A. from California State University in Sacramento and his M.A. from UC Davis while working as Robert Arneson’s first graduate student assistant. He taught at California State University in both San Francisco and Sacramento from 1966 until retiring. He currently lives in Sacramento.
*
*
*
*
* These pieces were commissioned by the SFAC in 1971. Unfortunately, the value of these is most likely unknown to the people that work in the building, as there is some damage to them, and when I was there, a considerable amount of items were simply stacked up against them.
