Visitors to Inglewood's Civic Center are impressed and often puzzled with the unique Library art work. The sculpted walls of the Lecture Hall and Library stair well (adjacent to Manchester Boulevard) were designed to stimulate curiosity and imagination. They trace the evolution of human intelligence through Mankind's common bond--"The Word." Subjects ranging from Egyptian folklore to Einstein's Theory of Relativity are intertwined in this almost playful interpretation of recorded history.
Artist Tom Van Sant was commissioned to create a unique, unprecedented series of art for the Inglewood Civic Center. The south Library Stair Well has been acclaimed the largest example of poured-in-place intaglio sculpture in the world. The sculpture was included as part of the building process. Van Sant first placed carved polystyrene molds against the construction forms. After the concrete was poured the molds were removed, thus exposing the sculpted surface.
On the fifth floor of the south stairwell pictured here (Photo copyright by Ginger Van Hook, used by permission), the family of man branches to the left with Man's adventure to outer space. Below, Man's understanding of molecular structure and relativity is expressed in Einstein's famous formula E=MC2.
On the fourth floor is "Man the Explorer," "The Domesticator of Animals," and "The Master Tool-Maker," symbolized by an internal combustion engine on the right.
The third floor depicts "Man the Warrior."
On the second floor of the stair well is "Man the Hunter." At the lower right is an early Christian image of God creating Adam accompanied by the equation of the "Evolute," Y=FCX. In the creation scene is the 1897 Dubois equation relating brain mass to body mass in vertibrates: E=KP O256.
At the base floor is the symbol of the Egyptian God Ra creating the first man and woman on a potter's wheel. Also present is the modern chemical formula for the basic life building block, the Amino Acid Molecule, COOH+NH2, and the 1870 Bayer Equation which symbolically defines life in terms of energy, Q+CO2+M2O=CH2O+O2, is in the lower right.