The Brewery in Benicia, California was a functioning bar/restaurant when we first saw it in May of 2000. It was built in 1946 to replace the former Brewery, a wooden structure from 1843 that burned to the ground in 1945.
We converted the building to studios and living space including indoor and outdoor studios, a model making and drawing space, and the asphalt parking lot has become a lush urban garden.
I build most of my large scale work in this studio where I have the bulk of my tools and equipment. With 10′ roll up doors that give onto a concrete pad I am able to construct and move large works indoors and outdoors and onto trucks for transport.
The former L shaped bar has been divided into a library and special collections and a studio space for all of the models I have built for my sculptures dating from 1978 to the present which fill the shelves and surfaces in this former bar and act as a library of ideas.
There are over 100′ of murals of the surprisingly rich history of Benicia painted on the walls of the former bar with depictions of the slip of the tongue that started the gold rush of 1849, civil war soldiers meeting at the arsenal, and Jack London writing about the waterfront.
The location in a small California town just a short distance from the major cities of the Bay Area serves as our urban site.