Bay Area artist Leo Bersamina has been selected  to create a public art piece in the city of Walnut Creek.  Mill Creek Residential Trust hired Artsource Consulting to work closely with the Bedford Gallery Advisory Council and Walnut Creek’s Art Commission to select an artist for the project.  Starting with a pool of seven artists working in a variety of media, three artists were selected to submit site-specific proposals for the public art site.

Rendering of Leo Bersamina's public art proposal

The art piece will be images of Walnut and Valley Oak trees taken from hand drawings done by the artists.  The drawings would then be translated into laser-cut wood veneer that would be fused between glass in panels.  The image would begin to grow from the lobby level of the building and extend up to the pool deck level.  The tree images will be cut from veneer of different opacity and transparency, in order to take advantage of light levels throughout the day and night.

preliminary ink drawings

Leo started with pen and ink drawings he made of the various trees in the Walnut Creek landscape.  From these drawings he simplified the tree images to create silhouettes that can be laser cut from the wood veneer.

original architectural rendering

Leo Bersamina was born in San Francisco and grew up predominantly on the coast, just south of the city.  He received his MFA in painting at Yale University School of Art, and then returned to the Bay Area to teach at UC Berkeley and Stanford University.  Currently he is a full time tenured art professor at Diablo Valley College.  He is represented by Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco.