Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco, January 10, 2012

Yerba Buena Gardens
Childrens Museum side of Howard Street

 Urge by Chico Macmurtrie

This has always been one of my favorite sculptures in San Francisco.  There is something so lifelike and yet so robotic about the figure.  The sculptor works in a team that he formed in 1992, called Amorphic Robot Works.  They are a group of artists, engineers and technicians.  Some of their work is based on the concept of moving robotic figures, and yet other pieces are haunting and so diverse to belay any attempt to categorize it.

This piece also gives credit to others - Engineer: Dave Fleming - Fabrication/Sculptural Crew: Andrew Forrest, Mark9, Vicente Contredas, Bruce Milligan, Juan Martines - Project Manager: Todd Blair

Chico MacMurtrie was born in New Mexico in 1961 and lives in San Francisco. He holds a B.F.A. from the University of Arizona and an M.F.A. in New Forms and Concepts from the University of California at Los Angeles.



The craftsmanship on this piece is just exquisite.  It's background against the trees makes it a little hard for me to show you how exquisite.

5 comments:

  1. I agree about it being very robot like. And I like it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I haven't visited in a while; I so enjoyed going back through your recent posts. I really like the variety of art that you share. This IS a great sculpture. I like the side view, where he seems to be catching his balance!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wonderful! I like the side view too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was going to mention how much I liked the side view too:) Cathy and I are in synch:) The statue definitely has very nice bones:)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I really like the big ball of earth! On occasion I taught geography and a big ball like that would have really helped. I think. :-)

    I also like the way the figure seems to be holding out its arms as if to welcome everyone!

    ReplyDelete