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Dispatch from the Dogpatch
A SeAm Between Landscape artist,
merchant, and cultural anthropologist/philosopher Topher
Delaney |
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By Zannah Noe
Topher Delaney is a tour de force unto
herself. A world-renowned landscape architect and conceptual
artist, she has made a trade in putting serenity in space.
She’s a spry woman, who looks every bit the avant guard
artist, especially with her choppy, short hair. Known for
her landscaped sanctuary gardens, Topher originally studied
cultural anthropology and philosophy at Barnard College in
New York in the 1970s. After transferring to UC Berkeley,
she widened her influences to the West Coast’s outlook of
reuse-recycling, spiritual practice, and the different
cultural uses of land. Topher is an extremely productive and
multitalented woman who is comfortable working in
landscaping, sculpture, public art, publishing, and retail.
Scrutinizing two massive, three-ring binders
filled with articles and interviews from all over the world
that span 20 years, it is evident that Topher is a prolific
artist. Images of cracked open walls with gardens blooming
through a yawning crevice and yellow-haired grasses lining a
hillside turquoise pool in Napa are some of the magical
spaces that Topher has designed. Fountains of huge bowls of
water with overflowing edges showering down on a graveled
path, exemplify the words of William Blake: “…melting
apparent surfaces away and revealing the infinite which was
hid. ”Incorporating the theories of
ethno-botany and her cultural anthropology background, she
tries to understand the context a plant inhabits within its
environment, which then influences the role of plants in her
sanctuary gardens. When she designed a healing garden for
the Breast Cancer Center at San Francisco General Hospital,
she |
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The Dead Ship Shore
Known as “Rotten Row,” the ship carcasses that littered the
shoreline staked shady claims to these early water lots. The
still intact ship Niantic came to her end in 1849. Water
tight and intact, she was floated to her resting spot on at
the northwest corner of Clay and Sansome Streets and
operated as a hotel. On Battery and Clay Streets, the
General Harrison rests. Originally built in 1840 in
Newburyport, Massachusetts, it served the high seas for ten
years. After it was abandoned by its crew, it was scavenged
by a “Hulk Undertaker,” as they were known at the time, for
use as a warehouse in 1850.
The sailing ship the Apollo was hauled up to rest on Front
Street, between Sacramento and Commercial Streets, and
housed a brisk restaurant business. At the southwest corner
of Sacramento and Front Streets, the hull of Thomas Bennett
rests, running parallel with Sacramento Street. Hardie, an
English brig, and the ships Inez and the Noble are located
in the block bordered by Davis, Drumm, Jackson, and Pacific
Streets.
The fire of 1851 leveled many of these ships to their burnt
out hulls and dispersed the entrepreneurial pirates that ran
them. Eventually, the shoreline was filled in.
Source: The Armada of Golden Dreams, Chronicle, July 2, 1916
by Walter J. Thompson. Thompson is a writer who captures the
spirit of the 1850s waterfront and its characters with
poetic eloquence. Search google or visit http://www.zpub.com/sf50/sf/hgsto3.htm. |
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incorporated healing plants used in
pharmaceuticals to develop a contemplative and educational
space to aid patients in their recovery. Creating serene
spaces that incorporate comfort, healing, and faith in and
of the land is a trademark task for Topher.
After 9/11, Topher was inspired by the spontaneous gardens
left at the doors of New York firehouses. Seeing this act of
compassion, remembrance, and tribute, she was moved to
create something that was permanent yet would grow with
time. She created the WTC Forest Memorial (wtcforestmemorial.org),
where 3,000 trees are being planted to represent each of the
9/11 victims from New York and the surrounding Burroughs.
This living memorial serves as a passionate way to filter
the grief into the environment and embed memories into the
landscape as a lasting tribute.
SeAm
To experience a space created by Topher, all you have to do
is enter her little shop SeAm. It’s in the heart of Dogpatch
waterfront (in New Yorkese, “Do-Pa, Wa-Fo”), on the corner
of 17th and Illinois Streets. People stroll in through the
meat locker curtains that form the doorway and often ask,
“What is this place?” The handmade clothes, tools,
sculpture, crafts, and design books that filled the
industrial space make a strange inventory. It is apparent
that the proprietor has many converging interests. The shop
is a laboratory of ideas that hint at Topher’s work as a
landscape designer and give the public a glimpse into the
inner sanctum of a very talented and complex artist.
Topher’s working studio sits directly behind the retail
area. It is a space with a wall of books, collected art,
workstations, and a workshop. It is a seamless environment
where inventive concepts are born and transformed into
conceptual products, art, and garden spaces. A shop and
practice in a creative class of its own. If there were a
rating system for Dogpatch businesses, SeAm and the work of
Topher’s studio would get 4 Fire Hydrants.
General Harrison, the Buried Ship
The financial district of San Francisco was built on
mudflats that dried at the base of the neighboring hills. At
one time, the muddy shoreline came up to Montgomery Street.
The mudflats were riddled with masts, an armada of
toothpicks hugging the shores. The hulls of abandoned ships
left by their crews when they headed for the gold in the
California hills were often used as hotels, jails, stores,
and warehouses. In 2001, one of these ships, the General
Harrison, was uncovered at the corner of Clay and Battery
Streets; today the Elephant & Castle Pub sits atop the
remains of the hull.
The Oakland-based archaeology firm Archeo-Tec was allowed to
painstakingly uncover the ship and document its findings. As
development of the site was imminent, the developers
commissioned a work to commemorate the finding. Topher’s
studio landed the project and worked with the archaeologists
to find accurate drawings of the skeleton of the hull. Based
on the drawings and photographs, Topher worked with
colleague Curtis Hollenback to design and build a piece of
public artwork that could be mounted on the side of the new
4-story building. Repeating the design of the outline of the
ship, the sculpture is a 60-foot, flatted hull made of
copper with supporting ribs that attach to a stainless steel
grid and frame. On the street level,
the sidewalk is designed with the glittering shards of
copper nails collected from the hull. An inlaid metal strip
outlines the curved starboard edge of the ship, disappearing
into the base of the building. The portside is under the
building, and the bow extends onto the Battery Street
sidewalk. It is reminiscent of a police chalk outline of a
victim, like a shadow from the past coming up from the fill.
Zannah Noe can be reached at zannah@baycrossings.com.
Artist, writer and looking for shelter in the Dogpatch
neighborhood. |
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