Oakland turns to a blacksmith for art at Lake Merritt.
Public art at Oakland’s Lake Merritt uses timeworn techniques
The Gardens at Lake Merritt open at 8:30 a.m. and close before the sun sets, a marvel at either time when its new iron entry gates are at work.
Forged and hammered on an anvil by Alameda blacksmith Shawn Lovell, the swinging piece of art is 16 feet wide and 13 feet tall and weighs a ton. When Lovell lifts the latch and pushes the two handles — one in the shape of a pitchfork and the other a shovel — she has to put her weight into it just to get it to move. It is not automatic, and there is no motor. Modernity would not fit the motif.
“I use traditional blacksmithing techniques and joinery that would have been familiar before the age of electricity,” says Lovell, who has the coalcovered hands and chipped fingernails to prove it. “This type of hinge system is ancient.”
While not an official titled piece of art, Lovell calls it “Park Gates for the Gardens at Lake Merritt.” The $86,000 commission by the city of Oakland, under its public art ordinance, was awarded to Lovell after a regional competition that drew 71 applicants.
The call was simply to design a set of gates as functional public art. It was Lovell’s idea to elevate the function by adding a fixed archway, which would serve as a standalone sculpture like Sather Gate at UC Berkeley. The inspiration to add wording on the arch came about when Lovell was constantly being asked, “Where and what are the Gardens at Lake Merritt?”
“It’s a fantastic garden, but nobody knows it is here,” she says. “So I wanted to put the name of the garden above the gates to give it the feel of an old park entrance.”
The effect is that of a crown, accented by 79 tree leaves, each of which started out as a bar of steel that was fired in her coal forge until red hot. Then Lovell had about a minute to pound and shape it on the anvil before it went cold and had to be heated again, over and over until she had an individual leaf.
“It’s the same process as shoeing a horse,” she says.
No two leaves are alike, and the detail merits close study, which is hard at a height of 13 feet. So Lovell has placed additional branches and tendrils and leaves at eye level in the vertical bars of the gates. Granite stones on the crossbar represent Earth, with roots continuing downward.
Everything had to be done twice because the project specified that a second entryway be cut into the fence surrounding the 7acre botanical gardens within Lakeside Park. The front gate, near the entrance to Children’s Fairyland, replaces a crude cyclone gate that was held shut by a chain and padlock. The identical back gate allows access from the Lake Merritt promenade, behind the boathouse.
An added benefit to having two sets of gates and two archways is that the sun catches each at a different time of day. The front gate can look black at the same moment the back gate shines golden and shimmering.
Lovell won the commission to build the gates in 2010 and was ready to heat up her forge. But the project was delayed as the surrounding park was improved, including a new 10foot fence. During the wait Lovell, who is 56 and has a bachelor of fine arts degree in sculpture from California College of Arts and Crafts, started designing forged kitchen utensils and fireplace tools, which are sold at the Gardener, an artisan retailer in Berkeley.
Famed chef and Chez Panisse owner Alice Waters bought a few of Lovell’s ladles. Then her daughter, Fanny Singer, contacted Lovell to design a longhandled ladle to sell through Permanent Collections, Singer’s line of “objects based on historical and contemporary originals.”
“The spoons Shawn developed for us are exquisitely beautiful, and the quality of her craftsmanship is evident in every piece,” Singer says.
Designed like a 17th century tool, Alice’s Egg Spoon proved so popular that Lovell ended up forging 500 of them. She’d just pulled the last spoon out of the fire when the gates commission was finally greenlighted three years ago.
An opening ceremony was scheduled for March 19, but then the coronavirus canceled all large public gatherings.
“It’s been a long road,” she says, adding that she stopped tracking her hours on that project when they passed 500. “But the gates are here now.”