Urban Ocean

Growing up, one of my favorite local points of interest was the Natural History Museum, located just a stone’s throw from the sea in Santa Cruz’s midtown. I wasn’t particularly interested in what was inside the museum— it was the life sized grey whale sculpture just outside its walls that had me entranced. Built in 1982, this behemoth has served not only as a structure for our local children to climb and play on, but as a poignant reminder of the grand scale and beauty of our offshore cetacean neighbors. 

Because we don’t see much of these creatures in our daily lives, sculptures like serve as powerful reminders to the public of just what is at stake here in our treasured local waters. This exemplifies the hidden power of large scale art installations. As if the sheer amount of materials, man hours, and planning that goes into their creation wasn’t impressive enough, it’s their ability to make a meaningful impact on the communities they inhabit that makes these larger-than-life artistic statements so effective.

They also offer a great way to spice up dull urban spaces while simultaneously providing a public meeting space for members of the community to gather. With the increase in foot traffic and visibility, large scale art instillations also have the added benefit of decreasing crime in their vicinity.

Local environmental artist Ethan Estess is someone who knows a bit about public art’s ability to simultaneously educate and stimulate the communities they reside in. He grew up immersed in the surfing lifestyle here on the Central Coast, and when it was time to pursue a career, he chose an interdisciplinary environmental science program at Stanford that allowed him to combine his love for design with his passion for environmental protection. 

Over the past decade, Estess’ talents have garnered him tons of acclaim, securing him jobs to create art installation at a number of Kelly Slater’s Outerknown clothing retailers, as well as public instillations such as Sea Turtle 1. at Van’s Checkerboard Day with Sustainable Coastlines on Oahu, HI. In his words, he sees his work as “a means to explore his interests, namely the biodiversity of life on Earth, found objects, motion, and the interactions between the ‘human’ and ‘natural’ worlds.’” 

One of Estess’ most recent works is Urban Ocean, a permanent art installation located in the heart of Huntington Beach. This metal whale tail sculpture is a beast of a project and a testament of the ingenuity of the human race. Not only is it impressive to consider as a piece of artwork, it’s also got a message that relates to a serious situation in our seas that needs all the exposure it can get— the well-being of the whale population off our West Coast! I was able to tap in with Estess last month regarding his new piece—what it was made for, how he made it, and what message he hope it sends. Enjoy!

This Summer, I finished up work on Urban Ocean, a 12-foot-tall metal whale tail sculpture I’d been planning for four years with a client in Southern California. It’s a permanent installation on the sidewalk along Main Street in Huntington Beach in front of a new housing development a few blocks up from the pier.

Urban Ocean represents a blue whale’s fluke, made from tightly-wound stainless steel cable, to raise awareness of the issue of ship strikes on whales along the West Coast. Giant container ships run over whales, but if the ships slow down to around 10 knots the collision is less likely to be fatal. Fortunately, many of the big shipping companies are participating in a voluntary speed reduction program, and my goal with the sculpture is to keep this issue in the public consciousness so the industry feels pressure to keep up whale-safe shipping practices long-term.

My goal with all of my work is to make something that hopefully looks beautiful or appealing at first glance, but after staring at it for a while makes people have a deeper reflection about an issue. Art’s super power is its ability to get people to think and feel something new, and I try to leverage that to shock people into thinking about our relationship with the environment.

To create Urban Ocean, I forged and welded about 2,250 feet of 0.5 inch diameter stainless steel cable around a stainless steel substructure to create the sculpture. All-in it weighs about 2,000 pounds! I chose the stainless steel cable because it will be pretty corrosion resistant to the salt air in Huntington Beach, and it also references the cable used by the shipping industry at the center of the whale/ship strike issue.

This was my first time making a whale tail from stainless steel cable so I had to do a lot of prototyping to figure out the process. I designed the substructure in CAD then used a CNC plasma cutter to cut out the components. My neighbor’s at Central Coast Welding and Fabrication are licensed for structural welding so they welded the engineered substructure and I forged and welded the cable around that with a team of recent UCSC grads. It was a full year of fabrication with over 10,000 welds hidden inside the frame.

This sculpture was super gnarly for me because I started a nonstop year of fabrication right after my daughter was born. I was super stressed-out and sleep deprived trying to pull the project off on-schedule while trying to be helpful on the home front. I’m lucky my wife is so supportive because the whale made that year insane- we’re both glad it’s finished! This work definitely required lots of Metallica to stay frothed for long hours of grinding and welding!

I’m happy with how it all came together especially since it was my first time working with the stainless cable and it was a crazy challenge. After spending 4 years visualizing this thing in my head it’s pretty gratifying to see it sticking out of the sidewalk. At the end of the day it’s really important for public art to jive with the community and I’ve been getting some positive feedback from Huntington so I’m stoked!

Check out more from Ethan at www.ethanestess.com

Or follow him on Instagram @estess.art.science