About Time

This large sculpture that resembles an hourglass was created by artist Marcos Ramírez ERRE for the U.S. Land Port of Entry in San Ysidro.  The artwork’s title, forms, and materials invite us to contemplate the idea of time.  The sculpture comprises a steel frame that holds a pair of cones.  The bottom cone is made of granite, which represents the natural world and billions of years of geological time.  The top cone is made of concrete, a man-made material.  Along with the steel beams and hardware, the concrete represents the technological achievements of human civilization over a comparatively brief 5,000 years of recorded history.  The concrete cone is suspended with just a small gap between its stainless steel tip and that of the granite cone below.

The sculpture also carries two inscriptions: SOMOS TODOS DISTINTOS on the granite cone and WE ARE ALL EQUAL on the concrete cone.  The text on the top cone is upside down, mirroring the text below it, to invite our contemplation of the relationship between the two volumes.  According to Ramírez, the two parts of the sculpture represent “equality in diversity at this moment in history and framed by eternity.”