July 01, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

'A mad scientist' in an 'artist's body'

by Bill D'Agostino

In the past six months, artist Samuel Yates has traveled nearly the length of the continental U.S.A. without leaving Palo Alto.

Armed with a digital camera, Yates shoots photos of each and every property within the city's borders. By the end of this week, he'll have shot nearly 9,000 total. After each day, the photos are downloaded into a computer housed in a solar-powered garage located in a flowerbed outside City Hall, which he especially built for this singular art project.

A sign above the door of the garage tallies the number of parcels Yates has shot, marking the project's progress.

After he has photographed all 17,860 parcels on Dec. 30, he will average all of the colors of all the pixels in all the pictures by computer and find what he has termed "The Color of Palo Alto."

The quest -- part performance-art piece, part environmental-awareness campaign, part public-safety aid -- was officially commissioned by the city's Public Art Commission for $10,000.

Since the photography portion of Yates' journey is officially half-over as of today, he agreed to take a break and ruminate on the first six months of his work, which San Francisco Magazine named "Best Art Project" in the Bay Area last year.

Every single city parcel -- from businesses to homes, from parking garages to parks -- is included in the project, he said. "I really love vacant lots. There's a quietness to them, a space, a break in the fabric."

Visiting every street in the city, from rural road to busy county expressway, Yates said: "You definitely get the tone and tenor of the town."

He has devised a complex, albeit arbitrary, set of procedures for how he takes the pictures, which in and of themselves are mini-artworks -- sometimes strikingly beautiful, sometimes surprisingly banal.

The process lacks efficiency; he's taking the pictures alphabetically by street, starting on Abel Avenue on Jan. 3 and ending a few blocks away on Ynigo Way on Dec. 20. He often travels to various corners of the city in a single day.

When he gets to the next parcel, Yates first spends a few minutes finding its center, often eyeballing the location but occasionally approximating it using his footsteps. He then stands across the street, at the edge of the sidewalk, and shoots straight ahead, lining up the bottom of the frame with the opposite sidewalk.

He takes each image numerous times, attempting to get the frame as level with the sidewalk as possible. "It's just like target shooting -- you have to be very quiet and do your breathing."

The amount of the property he captures in each image varies greatly, often by the size of the road. With narrower roads, Yates captures less of the property in the frame; wider roads mean he captures more. Yates said he's taking "core samples of color" from each lot.

Touring the narrow Jacaranda Lane, near California Avenue, Yates stood at the center of one commercial property and noted that all he would shoot is one small section of the building's pale blue wall.

"This one's great -- pure color," he said, holding a silver clipboard filled with various property maps and wearing a day-glow reflective vest.

Along the industrial alleyway, Yates was typically facing the backs of commercial properties, spotting worn signs, dumpsters and an unusual staircase that crawled up the side of one building.

"That's one of the coolest things about the project -- you end of looking at spaces you just would not have looked at before," he said.

Yates said he's never tired of the time-consuming process. "No, no, no," he said. "It's getting exciting."

Although he maps out his week beforehand, Yates often makes on-the-spot adjustments based upon the angle of the sun or other factors.

"Every day is an adventure and you never know where you're going to go," he said.

While traveling, he's seen numerous hybrid Prius cars, a point he takes to heart. Yates hopes to use "The Color of Palo Alto" to raise awareness about environmental issues. His red scooter and other equipment are charged by renewable energy, through the city's PaloAltoGreen program. The City Hall garage is made from recycled materials and is topped with solar panels.

The color of Palo Alto will be to environmental awareness, Yates predicted, what the pink ribbon is to breast cancer awareness.

The project will also have numerous other tangible benefits for the city, far outweighing the $10,000 cost, Yates said. Having a picture of each parcel -- and having them manually entered into the city's digital maps -- will allow police officers or firefighters to pull up the image of a home or business as they respond to an emergency, he noted. Planning officials and the city's arborist will enjoy similar benefits.

As he enthusiastically discussed the many facets of his artwork, Yates resembled a young boy discussing the numerous ways his baseball card collection can be arranged. Councilman Vic Ojakian calls Yates "a mad scientist put into an artist body."

"That guy is going to be 'It' and we're going to say we knew him," concurred Public Art Commissioner Karen Frankel.

The project originated back in 2001. The then-chair of the commission, David Levin, saw one of Yates' previous works -- where he took pieces of a sports car apart, flattened them, and placed them in a towering series of filing cabinets -- and invited him to submit a proposal for a temporary exhibit in Palo Alto.

The project began as a riff on the idea of public art. Yates wondered if a public art project could actually use the public.

"The Color of Palo Alto" has consumed his life since 2002, when he graduated with a master's degree in fine arts from Columbia University. He now begins his day at 7 a.m. and aims to finish by 11 p.m. However, he sometimes works as late as 4 a.m., Yates said.

At the beginning of the year, Yates shaved his hair and said he would let it grow until he found Palo Alto's color. As he was interviewed this week, his hair was starting to approach Rip Van Winkle proportions. Yates shaved his head, he said, so that people he met along the way would have a physical representation of how long the project was taking.

The $10,000 the commission gave him all went into the project, but it wasn't nearly enough to complete it. Yates has relied on many donations and a few interns.

"He gives up a lot to do this," said art commission Vice Chair Paula Kirkeby. "I'd give him the world; I think he's terrific."

Although Yates, 30, lived in his car during periods of the project, he's now being hosted by a series of families. Currently, he's staying, gratis, in the National 9 Inn. He's essentially living off the kindness of strangers.

After the photographs have been taken, the project will take new twists and turns. The average color will be sold in paint cans at local hardware stores. The pixel color of each home, street and neighborhood will be available for calculation on the project's Web site, www.thecolorofpaloalto.com.

The artist also plans to wrap City Hall with all of the photos he's taken, using a translucent plastic similar to the material Caltrain is using to place advertisements on its trains.

"People are going to end up looking at the city in a way they never had before," Yates said.

Staff Writer Bill D'Agostino can be e-mailed at bdagostino@paweekly.com.

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