Artist: Bruce Tomb
Bruce Tomb was awarded the commission to create permanent art integrated into the bridge design in areas such as pedestrian railing, structural components and stone abutments. Bruce has taught across California and is a senior adjunct professor at California College of Arts in San Francisco/Oakland teaching Architectural Design and Sculpture Studios since 1989. Tomb began providing design input in 2017 and began work on the project in March 2018.
Oak Knoll Bridge Over Rifle Range Creek
The art component for the Oak Knoll Bridge over Rifle Range Creek is to be a cast-iron railing system. The railing system will occupy the outermost edges of the pedestrian walkways flanking the primary trusses of the bridge. This will run the entire 120 feet of the span and in effect, frame the entire bridge. The system is to be integral such that the entire bridge can be considered as an artwork, as bridges are often the subject of artworks.
This is a Romantic project that embraces the 19th-century notion of the modified Warren Truss bridge with its constructed setting, the result of daylighting Rifle Range Creek. The goal of the cast-iron railing system is to provide an intimate version of 19th-century technology to compliment the robust bridge trusses. The Corten bridge structure will have a mottled rust coloration giving it a rugged painterly quality. The cast-iron system, likewise, will remain uncoated, a living surface, and be allowed to rust in a similar manner.
The intricacies of the 24-inch by 24-inch by 1-inch castings’ design will highlight this graceful aging process with the lively surfaces of a Penrose geometry, holding light and shadow. When viewed up close from the pedestrian walkway, the two-sided castings will present leaf forms. When the bridge is viewed from afar, the railing will present its pure geometry resonating with the triangulated trusses.