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About the Sculpture
Journey of a Bottle gracefully fills the soaring stairwell at the library’s north entrance. Thoma created the piece before the library door or two-story window was in place so it could be moved inside. The spiral form reminds some people of a DNA molecule. For others, it’s vastly scaled up to be a spiral nebula and yet others think of it as a crowded highway.
About the Artist
Early in her career in 1993, Marta Thoma spent four months as the artist-in-residence at Recology San Francisco, the city’s trash collection and recycle company. The on-going residence program is at the San Francisco landfill site. Finished artworks often go into a sculpture garden, and the company has a gallery at the site. Check out Bedford Gallery's 2021 traveling exhibition Reclaimed: The Art of Recology.
During her residency, Thoma collected bottles and created Earth Tear of rebar and inverted plastic bottles. “I choose to use discarded objects and materials because the materials themselves express much about contemporary life,” she says of her work.
Indeed, reuse may be considered a metaphor for Journey of a Bottle. Consider the material’s starting point as dust in space coalescing to form a sun and planet, then rock, which the ocean beats to sand. Glass is made from sand into containers for water, wine, salsa, and thousands of other substances. When the contents are used, the bottle may be tossed into recycle bins, collected and the journey begins again.
The bottles do indeed get washed occasionally. A forklift needs to be brought for the cleaner, who carefully hand washes every bottle.
Location: Above the north entrance staircase in the Downtown Walnut Creek Public Library at Civic Park on 1644 North Broadway, Walnut Creek, CA
Image Credit: Marta Thomas, Journey of a Bottle, 425 recycled bottles, steel, 2010. Photo courtesy of Shaun Roberts.