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Oct 18, 2024

S.F.'s Hunters Point giant crane is getting lit up this week

At 450 feet high and almost three football fields wide, it’s already difficult to miss the gantry crane at Hunters Point. Shine spotlights and video projection on it, and it’s practically impossible

At 450 feet high and almost three football fields wide, it’s already difficult to miss the gantry crane at Hunters Point. Shine spotlights and video projection on it, and it’s practically impossible to.

For two days only, anyone from Bernal Heights to Alameda should be able to spot the decades-old crane as it gets illuminated in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Shipyard Artists, a studio community of more than 300 creatives.

Helmed by visual artists Ian Winters and Elaine Buckholtz, the installation will bathe the crane and its sidewall in searchlights and an arena-scale video projection, accompanied by a musical quartet. Winters and Buckholtz are to improvise along with the musicians, using moving searchlights and colors in tandem with video.

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“It’s complicated, but San Francisco is complicated,” Winters said of the artistic endeavor, budgeted at $50,000. “We wanted to come up with a way to make visible and really light up this thing that is this icon that gets overlooked.”

He and Buckholtz have worked together for decades and are slated to do a private test run of the light show on Friday, Oct. 18. The official lighting event is the following day, with three 30-minute-long shows beginning at 7 p.m. It will also be livestreamed online.

The installation will coincide with the Shipyard Open Studios, which will allow visitors to meet and shop from more than 130 artists on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 19-20.

Hunters Point crane illumination: 6-10 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19. Free. Building 101, 451 Galvez Ave., S.F. 415-418-4350.

Fall Shipyard Open Studios: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, Oct. 19-20. Free. Building 101, 451 Galvez Ave., S.F. 415-418-4350.

While the show should be visible from various locations around the Bay Area, a free on-site viewing party at Building 101 is open to the public from 6-10 p.m. Saturday. Some individual artists will also host their own watch parties on site.

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“It’s not just a random spectacle,” said Barbara Ockel, who runs the Shipyard Open Studios. “This is about community history and shipyard history and a really important part of San Francisco history.”

The shipyard first opened in 1867 and was eventually taken over by the U.S. Navy, used for World War II efforts after the Pearl Harbor attack. During the 1940s, the shipyard had 18,000 workers and became a loading site for atomic bomb parts. The space played a large role in the aftermath of the Bikini Atoll atomic tests and was the site of the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory until 1960.

In 1974, the site was decommissioned by the Navy and declared a Superfund Site in 1989, with ongoing remediation for soil contamination.

The Hunters Point Shipyard Artists are celebrating 40 years with a massive light projection installation.

“Most artists probably don't feel excited about war in general. But for better or worse, everybody loves the structure and loves seeing it,” Ockel said of the gantry crane, which was the largest in the world when it was installed at the site in 1947.

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“We wanted to just raise awareness of our existence and the opportunities that the shipyard presents to all artists in San Francisco or, for that matter, artists who already had to leave San Francisco because they couldn’t afford it anymore,” said Ockel, who has been with the Shipyard Artists since 1984.

Winters and Buckholtz already plan to recreate their crane projection installation in 2026.

Reach Zara Irshad: [email protected]