The Big Wave - The Fine Art of Gabion Walls

Whidbey Island artist Dan Freeman was asked to turn a length of concrete beach wall into a work of art....no small task. Home owners Wendy and Mike Waitt hated the expanse of plain concrete retaining wall with 13 ugly drain pipes sticking out of it, on the beach side of their waterfront home. The house faces southwest, and is right on the beach so waves, sun and wind are an issue. Any art piece would need to be tough, and effectively cover up the drain pipes while still letting them do their job.

What Freeman came up with is not only durable, but looks almost as if it washed up from the water in a storm, and settled in place along the wall. A rusty metal cage sculpture undulates the full hundred feet along the wall, and is thickly packed with rock, as if a gabion wall had simply been stretched out, turned on its side, and hung as an art piece.

"It was a challenge to line everything up from panel to panel in the shop, take them to the site and install," says Freeman. " I had to drill 215 holes into the concrete for the anchors to support it. The rock for the piece was craned in to the site and carried in buckets to the piece for filling," is how he describes the laborious process that resulted in a piece that looks perfectly at home with its colors of beach, sea, and sky. It's amazing how effective just two materials - metal and rock - can be, and how such industrial materials, in this configuration and location, can look so organic.

You can learn more about Freeman's wall-basket sculpture in this article in the South Whidbey Record, and see more of this talented artist's work at http://homing.elementalartwork.com

Here's the wide-angle lens view, to give you an idea of the massive scale of the piece....The cage is about 4" deep, runs along the entire hundred feet length of the wall, and holds at least six tons of rock....

A closer look to give you a feel of the curvaceousness of these hard materials...

Such an affinity between rusty metal grid and rounded, multi-colored rocks...

 

Comments

[Elaine]

Or better not to build right on the beach! Washington State has such ridiculous laws, this should be public space :-(

[Chris]

I also am amazed that they were allowed to build so close to the beach, if not right on it! I would be afraid of sliding right into it after seeing so many homes having met similar fates!! I agree, there should definately be some sort of a setback between beach and construction, if not for the safety of the homeowners but for esthetics, as well!
The rock wall, art work is nice though! :)

[gg]

huh, why not get rid of the ecologically barren bulkhead and do a natural shoreline restoration?