Mission Branch Library

As part of a collection of interrelated works, a large-scale core sample stands in front of the Mission Branch Library. Each layer represents a major period in the history of the land reaching back into prehistory. Embedded artifacts give a clue about who or what existed there previously. Embedded near the top of the core are embedded film reels and projector harkening back to the sites previous life as a drive-in theater. At night, the name of the library is projected onto the side of the build from an light installed within the embedded projector.

In the center of the courtyard stands another large core sample resting next to the hole from which it appears to have come. Water trickles out from fissures in the core, filling up the adjacent hole.
Every layer of the core sample contains artifacts from major periods in the history of the site reaching back to pre-history. Atop the core is a mountain laurel tree still growing as if it had never been excised from the adjoining flowerbed. The mountain laurel was sacred to the indigenous people who first inhabited the land.

Inside is a mural size painting with the library (in which it is housed) depicted sitting on a horizon line next to Mission San Jose, an 18th century Spanish colonial mission. Below both buildings are many stratigraphic layers representing moments in the history of the site reaching back to the pre-Cambrian.

Didactics explaining the layers and artifacts are found below the painting along a long shelf.