Collins and Thompson,
Public Art Works, Marin, California,
Susan Pontious, Director
Tidal Well emerged out of dialogues about place, phenomenon and site specificity while working with senior artist Mark Thompson at Headlands Center for the Arts. The issue the artists sought to engage was the interface between people, the land and the bay; the littoral zone, which is neither solid land, nor pure water. The problems of what to make and why to make it were resolved when they discovered a set of remnant pilings from a long destroyed dock. The work was built to ‘fit’ this pre-existing (lost) structure, and constructed to appear from the outside as it was a long-resident waterfront artifact. Inside, the east-west and high-tide/low-tide orientation was brought alive with a mirror finish copper which began to patina with the movement of water, sun, moon, and the bay-wet hands of visitors.