D R E S S   U P    national parks lend formal attire to underdressed city park

The setting provides a neighborhood ritual in which residents descend from the surrounding city hills to bathe together in the roseate glow of the setting sun. Sunset Cliffs Natural Park, amidst an urban neighborhood is hardly an ugly stepchild. Sculpted sandstone strata become well-worn benches overlooking the Pacific Ocean for the daily rite. Like most forlorn urban parks,“The Cliffs” have been impacted over generations of daily wear. A neighborhood council was set up to protect further decline and to increase appreciation. The group acknowledges the natural erosive action which sculpted the landscape in the first place, and continues still doing so in geologic process. “We must treat this natural creation and its processes with care and respect, honoring the cliffs and park no less than other natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon or Arches National Parks”.

Asking that  Sunset Cliffs Natural Park be seen as a treasure rather than the daily indifference it has suffered, is accomplished by appropriating the respectable and iconic format of our beloved National Parks’ and their brochures. Each brochure’s cover title reveals just a portion of these national treasures. The Cliff’s undulating, sinuous shoreline is revealed incrementally during the brochure’s entire unfolding. The ocean and the land’s encounter, best seen from above and down the coast instead of out to sea, could only be rendered in the poetic brush of an artist. The prose of the geology was captured in the camera of a remote helicopter. A panoramic painting by a renowned local artist created the magic moment. The brochure’s text and images interpret the extent of the nature of the park and its inhabitants, past, present and future.

• educational
• environmental
• interpretive