New Ortega Library Fish Sculpture In Progress

Metal artist Kevin Cherry fabricates the steel substructures for our fish sculptures

With minor revisions, the San Francisco Arts Commission has finally approved our clay/wood models of fish sculptures for the new, Ortega Branch of the San Francisco Public Library, and we are rapidly proceeding with full scale fabrication. Using templates generated from sections of the models, we had discs cut from plate steel, and steel tubes bent to form the ’spines’ of the two fish sculptures. We’ve hired Sonoma-based metal artist Kevin Cherry of Steel Cherry to fabricate the welded steel substructure, which will be hot dip galvanized once the longitudinal stringers are in place, before we ’skin’ the skeleton with fiberglass mesh, impregnated with a cementitious resin.

Petaluma, CA based Van Bebber Brothers bent the 4″d steel tube ‘fish spines’