DOS PICOS
DATE: 2014
LOCATION: El Cariso Community Park, Sylmar, California
CLIENT: Los Angeles County Arts Commission
MEDIUM: galvanized steel, steel gabion, native rock
SIZE: 20 ft x 30 ft x 35 ft
Sited at the southern tip of the Cajon pass, in the western most foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, El Cariso Park in Sylmar is a quiet gatepost to the entire Los Angeles Basin. From within the park, which is essentially a mountain meadow, it is only when looking upward, across the rugged San Gabriels jutting to the Northern Sky, do you begin to understand the drama of the geographic context for this quiet foothill community.
Dos Picos (“Two Peaks”) is a sloping, obtuse, asymmetrical pyramid of rock quarried from the local mountains and caged into common gabions — an ancient engineering system. The two angled spires — harsh or graceful depending on the vantage — are set into a gentle hillock near a childrens’ play area, and are designed to bring the mountains down into the park and the eye to the sky, creating a very specific portrait of the park — a micro experience of the whole region.