Resistance… And Then

DATE: November 2024
LOCATION: Del Rio Trail, Sacramento, CA
CLIENT: The City of Sacramento / Cal Trans

As a poetic symbol, the feather is timeless and universal. Since the dawn of human consciousness, feathers have scribed the edges of the mundane and the magical.

“Resistance.  And Then…”  is an extension of a larger ongoing inquiry of Stephen Glassman Studio. Entitled “Hope is a thing of feathers…”  the intention is to create a universal spatial language through an architecturally scaled sculptural calligraphy that can echo and reference forces larger than ourselves — a global tumbling swarm of feathers in a single wind.

Beginning south at Sutterville Road, a large boulder rests defiantly upon a track remnant,  a feather etched into its surface like a contemporary petroglyph. Entitled “Resistance”, the piece marks the termination of the old rail line and it’s return to the earth.

At Del Rio Trail’s northernmost apex is “And Then. . .”  — a shimmering fifteen-foot feather floating nearly forty feet above the horizon, taking one’s eye to the sky.  It is a gesture of radical hope, embedded in our civic landscape for generations to come.

Together, the two pieces frame the trail as a singular installation and journey – a connection of sky to ground, the end of one era and the beginning of another . . . always.

PROJECT CREDITS

Artist: Stephen Glassman

Project Director: Aaron Slavin

Studio Design Associates: Freesia Torres, Gavin Laughlin

Owner | Developer: Arts Commission of Sacramento/Caltrans

Structural Engineers: SOM (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill)

Fabrication: Milgo/Bufkin NYC