Gaze out on San Francisco’s Treasure Island from the Embarcadero, and you may notice a gleaming object on the horizon: Is it a colossal sewing needle pointing skyward? The giant metallic sliver is not from a god’s stitching kit, nor is it a relic from Burning Man. It’s a new sculpture by Tokyo-born artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, and it’s the soaring focal point of a forthcoming public park spearheaded by the San Francisco Arts Commission.
Called “Point of Infinity,” the 69-foot stainless steel sculpture tapers to a spired point that represents a mathematical formula for infinity. It also functions as a conceptual sundial; Sugimoto plans to return to the island on the autumnal equinox to install a granite marker that will signify the passage of time.
Funded with $2.35 million of city funding, the sculpture at Yerba Buena Hilltop Park is visible from a few vantage points—including along the Embarcadero and from a car when traveling toward Oakland on the western span of the Bay Bridge. And it will surely serve as a focal point for future residents once the Treasure Island/Yerba Buena Island Development Project is completed in the mid- to late-2030s.
The Arts Commission’s plan is baked into the redevelopment project, along with 8,000 mixed-rate housing units, retail and transportation infrastructure. Twenty-seven percent of the units will be designated affordable housing.
Jill Manton directs the Treasure Island Arts Program—an initiative to transform the former naval base into a 300-acre public park anchored by groundbreaking, site-specific works of art like Sugimoto’s sculpture. Yerba Buena Hilltop Park constitutes the biggest allotment of public space in San Francisco since 1870, when the city began developing Golden Gate Park.
Having just visited the site on Friday, Manton said the sculpture looks slightly different each day—depending on the Bay Area’s mercurial weather patterns.
“The steel spire can kind of disappear, or reflect the blue sky so it almost looks like the sky,” she said.
Sugimoto—an internationally renowned artist best known for bold photography that coyly muddles fact and fiction—submitted his idea in 2017 to an open call to artists that garnered 495 applications. According to Manton, it’s rare for an artist of Sugimoto’s stature to respond to a large request for proposals like this one.
“But Sugimoto put his hat in the ring just like everyone else,” she said.
Ultimately, the 75-year-old artist was unanimously selected as the first and only artist—so far—to contribute a sculpture to the park.
“Which is unusual,” she added. “Especially in a city like San Francisco, where people are so opinionated.”
After an arduous process that began in May, the installation of the sculpture is nearly complete. Manton told The Standard that setting the large-scale sculpture into place proved particularly complex, as the crew couldn’t move its crane onto the site and instead had to park it on the roadway and install the sculpture using a lift.
The installer, David Martin of Atthowe Fine Art Services in Oakland, even took a trip to Japan for a dress rehearsal installation with Sugimoto. Now waiting on the final grouting Manton said the installation will be completed in July—if all goes according to plan.
Sugimoto’s sculpture is part of a larger public art space at Yerba Buena Hilltop Park that is set to open in November—pending approval from the Board of Supervisors—when the property will be transferred from the developer to the city. By then, Manton said, the opening will be cause for a large public celebration.
Manton has secured $50 million for the Treasure Island Art Program, which will be directed toward permanent and temporary visual art, as well as live performances and film screenings. Her team commissioned five local photographers to document the island over the past year—to be displayed in the metal news kiosks that are stationed throughout Downtown San Francisco.
On June 5, the Arts Commission granted the program approval to invite celebrated portrait painter and San Francisco Art Institute graduate Kehinde Wiley—famous for creating striking portraits of former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama—to develop a proposal for a work of art to be installed at the waterfront plaza on Treasure Island.
As the New York Times reported, when viewed from afar, the pointed apex of Sugimoto’s sculpture resembles the Transamerica Pyramid—though the sleek work of art is, perhaps, less polarizing than the skyscraper was when it was built a half-century ago.
Manton, for one, thinks so.
“It’s spectacular,” she said. “The mirror-polished stainless steel almost disappears at the top —proving that it’s near infinity. It’s so pure in its form, and the craftsmanship is just perfect.”
Sugimoto did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.