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MADE IN CORONADO
Family ties
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Daughter spearheads public installment of late father’s art piece The Knot
By CATHERINE GAUGH
It is called The Knot. The gleaming bronze sculpture, installed Sept. 7 at Promenade Park overlooking Glorietta Bay, weighs 265 pounds and is 3 feet high. Some of its 11-foot length is a path of rising twists and turns; it would be a terrifying roller coaster ride.
The Knot was created by the late artist
James A. Wood and is one of his most intriguing works, according to his daughter, Coronado resident Jody Esquer, a designer and owner/manager of the Night & Day Cafe. She was instrumental in donating the piece to Coronado through her work on the city’s Cultural Arts Commission.
The location and positioning of the sculpture allow it to point to the nearby Naval Amphibious Base, where Wood was stationed when he discovered his talent for metal sculpting.
« The Knot, by James A. Wood, was installed at Promenade Park on Sept. 7.
LESLIE CRAWFORD PHOTOS
JODY ESQUER
“He was in charge of the welding department, teaching the Seabees construction skills, including welding,” Esquer recalled. “He was always bringing home scraps of all kinds of metals, like iron and steel. He used them to make small sculptures of fish and birds. Later, he became more abstract and started doing large scale sculpture.”
Q: Tell us about your father’s military service and how he came to be stationed in Coronado.
A: At 17, he joined the Navy, he said, ‘to see the world.’ He was stationed in San Diego, had a great time and finished out his service. At 21, he joined the U.S. Army at the start of the Korean War. When he was out of the Army, he went to school at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and graduated with a degree in structural engineering in 1959. He married my mother, Ethel, in 1954, and they had three daughters together.
They lived the civilian life for a while, and Dad was very successful, but he missed the discipline of the military. At 42, he re-upped into the Navy as a lieutenant commander in the Civil Engineer Corps. He was stationed in Coronado for about five years.
Q: The military life took your family all over the country. Where did your parents finally settle?
A: They moved to Monterey, where Dad did his last year of Naval Postgraduate School. Then he retired to work on art full time. They had a hilltop home in Carmel Valley with beautiful views. The property had a large chicken coop that he turned into his studio. I remember seeing The Knot outside in front of their house.
Q: How did your father make The Knot?
A: It is made of ¼-inch fabricated bronze, which you know is an alloy made of copper and tin. To make a curve, he welded in a steel beam every four inches. The sculpture has a coating which has shades of green, reds and yellows — all natural elements.
He was passionate about it and put in an incredible amount of time and energy into it. He has huge sculptures on display all over — in Berlin, Germany, in Pebble Beach, Big Sur, Monterey, in wineries, libraries, colleges and a hospital. He gave
PHOTOS COURTESY OF JODY ESQUER Clockwise from top: James and Ethel Wood, who were married in 1954, were both artists; Wood with daughter Jody Esquer at her wedding; Wood served in Korea with the Army, which he joined when he was 21, after getting out of the Navy.
COURTESY OF JODY ESQUER James Wood created sculptures that are displayed as far away as Berlin, Germany. Among his many pieces on the Monterey Peninsula is this one in Pebble Beach.
most of it away. ‘You like it? Well, here you go!’ He just enjoyed the making of a piece; it did not seem important to be paid.
Q: What makes The Knot particularly suited to Coronado?
A: People ask me what does it mean? They want art to signal a meaning. I’ve been reading Dad’s journals, and he wrote that he doesn’t do anything to try to impress. He loved the process of creating something.
A knot can be many things. People tying the knot. The Navy system of knots.
But when I look at it, I see the transitions of life, or everything we do. We have smooth sailing, then we have to climb uphill and get looped around and around. But you keep going on.
It is so Dad. He had an incredible sense of humor and was always telling jokes. And he suffered periods of disabling depression, which he could work out of through his art. There were difficult periods, lots of hard work to be done.
Q: You have said that both of your parents are artists. They passed the art gene to their children.
A: My mother was a wonderful oil painter. She lived in Dad’s shadow a lot but came into her own. He died in February 2015 at 87. Mom died on the first of June in 2016. My sisters and I are artists, too; we express it different ways.
Q: I understand it was a lengthy process to get approval for the sculpture to be installed here.
A: I started this journey in 2011, when I was working with the Cultural Arts Commission. It was a process, to get everyone to approve and accept. Not to mention the complications of hauling a 265-pound sculpture. My sister, Terry, had The Knot moved to her property in the Sacramento area after my folks moved into a retirement community. She was sorry it took so long, but my feeling is, it’s here, it’s home.
I will be polishing it every few months and will apply wax to protect it. But all the instructions on caring for outdoor bronze art say to make sure to keep the bird poop off. There are a lot of seagulls around here, so I’m on the bird poop patrol. ■
Catherine Gaugh is a freelance writer.
