As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the west.
While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel,
Pale silver and streaked with rose color, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon.
For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, rising on       
       opposite edges of the world.
                                                                                                 Willa Cather

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The two groups of hanging light sculptures are special focal points in the lobby.  Their placement establishes a relationship between the two groups that charges the space and includes the entire lobby as part of the art.  Each hangs from the ceiling along the curved wall; a group of three near the west wall and a group of seven near the east wall.  Both numbers are rich in symbolism.

The individual forms of the sculptures are organic shapes executed in individual materials.  They embody both nature and culture, which in turn symbolize the essence of California--its history as "Paradise", its fabled light, its natural beauty, its technologies and customs.  Site-specific, their sizes and rounded curves are informed by the dimensions and elliptical plan of the lobby.  The east wall sculptures are a group of seven curving "lumens" of aluminum mesh and tubing, which project pattens of shadows onto the wall.  At the west wall is a group of three large "pods" of translucent acrylic; aluminum mesh cages inside the sculptures cast patterns of shadow inside the surfaces of the forms.  All are lit using low voltage halogen lamps, and all are responsive to variable light conditions.

A quotation by American author Willa Cather (1873-1947) stenciled directly on the glass spandrel panels of the lower west wall expands the experience of place by referencing natural cycles.  Cather poetically describes the powerful sight of the sun setting and the full moon rising at the same time, as the viewer watches from the center of a level field, much as a viewer on the level lobby floor perceives the light sculptures, floating at different heights on either side of the space.  Thus the artwork metaphorically connects the viewer to the world outside, referencing the important relationship of Californians to their landscape and, by extension, to their State.