Crab Carillon

Artist Biography

https://www.sdcivicartcollection.com/portals/civic-art-collection/#asset/7499

Roman de Salvo is a San Diego-based conceptual artist who works in both sculpture and installation, infusing the ordinary with surprise and poetry. Much of de Salvo’s work is site-specific, and he has contributed temporary and permanent installations to the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery, inSITE’94 at the San Diego Natural History Museum, 96 Containers in Copenhagen, Caltrans District 11 Headquarters, San Diego, the New Children’s Museum, San Diego, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. His projects often transform vernacular objects into artworks of poignant humor. He has exhibited in institutions and galleries across the country and his work is held in several museum collections. He received his BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts and MFA from the University of California, San Diego. |
Joseph Waters is a musician and professor and composition at San Diego State University’s School of Music.

Crab Carillon is an interactive “chime rail” created as one of several pedestrian-oriented streetscape improvements made to the 25th Street bridge over the Martin Luther King, Jr. freeway. The bridge serves as a major pedestrian route for K-5 elementary school students who live in Golden Hill and Sherman Heights, and the rail acts as protection from auto traffic as well as an interactive, musical artwork. The railing is comprised of 488 individually tuned chimes spanning the full length of the bridge, which can be played by passerby. De Salvo commissioned Joseph Waters to compose a short, sophisticated palindrome, which sounds the same played forward or backward. The title refers to the way that crabs scuttle from side to side, similar to the movement of those who interact with the artwork.