Artifact from a Coal Mine

SOMA
Third and Townsend

Mark Stevens -2007

“Artifact From a Coal Mine,” although the individual pieces have working names of: the ghost, gingerbread man, fire, whale tail and circle

Weighing well over 10,000 pounds, these pieces were affixed as public art to the outside of a contemporary brick and concrete condominium building at 177 Townsend at Third Street. Three of the pieces are four stories tall.

According to a 10.28.07 SF Gate article by Julian Guthrie:
“They evoke a lost world and the uncertainty of climate change,” said artist Mark Stevens.” The pieces – shaped as flames, a ghost, a gingerbread man, a whale skeleton, and a series of small circles inside a larger one – are characters in an allegory. It’s about fueling our future by consuming our present. The ghost represents us. Fire is the fuel that powers. The rings inside the big circle represent the various ages of man, starting with the Stone Age. This is all of human achievement. I should have thought this through better. I think that we, meaning humanity, put ourselves in a situation where we think something will save us. The little character that looks like a gingerbread man represents our faith in redemption.”

Stevens, who grew up in Rochester, N.Y., dropped out of high school at age 16 to work as an artist. He bought his first welding gun the same year. His favorite childhood pastime was scrounging in junkyards at night to find scraps of metal and other discarded detritus.

His mother told him he could remain at home rent-free as long as he had a show or paying project lined up. He taught himself through trial and error, and by studying artists he admired – notably renowned sculptors Mark di Suvero and Richard Serra.

“I just always liked the feeling of cutting steel,” he said, rubbing his callused, gray-hued palms together. “Cutting steel gives you a real sense of power. It’s like you’re claiming space. It sounds greedy and selfish. But that’s how I see it: You build something, you claim space.”

The steel originated at a company in Alaska, and arrived at his Seattle studio in 20-by-6-foot sheets. It is grade 304L, he said, which is the same kind of metal used in silverware.

“It won’t rust,”