RACETRACK GHOSTS
The bricked street paralleling the Thoroughbred building in Emeryville, CA is what remains of the original racetrack, where Ulysses S. Grant once saw a world record broken and years later Barney Oldfield raced an airplane.
The artwork consists of aluminum panels; silhouettes cut with water jet technology and hand painted using Tnemec water based acrylic industrial coating. The backside of the panels offers a bit of the rich history of the Emeryville racetrack, that occupied this spot from 1871 to 1915. Thanks to Jos Sances for providing expertise with silk- screen stencils for the text.
This is the second iteration of a work commissioned through the Emeryville private percent for art program, installed in December of 2009.
Earlier, in 1999, the original horse and riders were carved from architectural foam cement coated, hand painted and stuccoed to the wall of the long building. This work, at ground level, suffered from accessibility and deteriorated over time. It was removed and replaced by the more permanent gateway installation.