Once Upon a Time in Fresno

This artwork is a large-scale landscape installation covering nearly the entire 1.5 acres of the public garden between the street and the courthouse entrance.  As experienced by a


visitor entering at the corner of O Street and Tulare Street, "Once Upon a Time in Fresno...." is virtually a self-contained environment that celebrates the natural history of the San Joaquin Valleythe region that the courthouse was built to serve.  While paying homage to the valley's complex ecology, the installation also blurs the boundaries between the inside and outside of the building.

The artists have used plant life and earth forms to emphasize the region's special character.  Along Tulare Street, an allee of Incense cedar trees encloses the site and leads to a grouping of pines at its pivotal corner at Tulare and O Streets.  Low, stone walls dressed in sandstone define the formal edges of the site.  A path of decomposed granite, carpeted with pine needles, leads through the landscape, which centers around a large mound of earth planted irregularly with pines.  A sheltered refuge lies near the garden's inner corner, where oak trees symbolize California and the days when early farmers looked to oaks as sign of fertile land.  The land slopes down gently to a deep pool studded with boulders of Academy Black granite quarried nearby.  The pool represents the area's vernal lakes that receive the running snowmelt each spring.

At the inner boundary of this pool lies the edge of the lobby's smoother stone floor.  The bowed glass curtain wall appears to dissolve between the exterior boulders and several others just inside the lobby that have been honed flat and polished to make seats.  Brass inlays spaced continuously across the main floor of the lobby represent an orchard of orange trees.  Positioned beneath the ceremonial stair is a granite well.  Behind the well is a parabolic dish built into the wall surface to focus the sound of the well's running water, making reference to the sources of irrigation water that changed the history of the valley.