Menlo is proud to be home to more than 20 sculptural works thoughtfully situated throughout our campus. These works enrich the campus environment and provide opportunities for students, faculty, staff, and visitors to engage with art as part of their everyday experience. The following guide offers a selection of sculptures found across campus and provides a brief introduction to the artists and works represented. While not comprehensive, it serves as a starting point for exploring Menlo’s growing collection of public art.
Generously donated by Grande and Jordan Lum In honor of their parents Hampson and Evangeline Lum Dedicated October 28, 2021
Foon Sham is a Professor of Art at the University of Maryland and has been awarded many fellowships, grants and artist’s residencies throughout the world––including programs in France, Norway, Bolivia, Chile, Scotland, Hungary, and Australia. He has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally and is featured in dozens of public and private collections worldwide.
This is the second installation of a sculpture by Foon Sham on the Menlo College campus (see The Princess, #11). Wood has always been Sham’s primary medium in his sculpture and installations. He has sawed, cut, laminated, stacked, carved and assembled a multiplicity of soft and hard wood into organic and geometric forms from small to massive pieces. His art echoes his personal feeling to nature, disaster, and the particular environment.
Generously donated by Hampson and Evangeline Lum Dedicated September 23, 2022
Mark Knize made the prototype for the Balls of Fire installation on our campus. The artist makes art in a variety of materials. “I enjoy trying to achieve the perfect form, creating objects that engage the viewer. I see my work functioning as a key visual point within a space, inviting a look and a touch,” said Knize. The geometry of simple curves and round objects has been a decades long interest producing geometric, even practical, vessels. He now is adding more representational images to his body of work including people and animals, a consequence of serious study of figure drawing. Besides winning awards in local art shows, his work is also in private collections in California, Europe, and Japan.”
Generously donated by David Irmer ‘58 ‘H22 and his family in 2024
Strand is a freestanding 9’ x 8’ basalt and bronze sculpture. The piece celebrates the relationship between all things being different yet in many ways all things are the same. The DNA strand that carries the genetic code that creates the unique fingerprint for each person is the same basic instruction manual that creates the branch on a tree that is unique yet similar to all others. The graceful, flowing, gestural relationship of this composition celebrates the oneness of all things and our connection to each other. We are all part of one blueprint that is interdependent and destined for a cooperative existence, if we are all to survive. The piece is quite literally a celebration of “all is one.”
David Middlebrook is an artist who traces his roots to ceramics and who has evolved to become a professional sculptor specializing in site-specific work, public and private commissions, and smaller sculptural elements. He was born and raised in Jackson, Michigan and earned his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. He burst into the art world and quickly became an inspiring pioneer in a ceramic art movement that was gaining momentum in the late 1970s. He accepted a teaching position at San Jose State University in 1974, relocated to California and has maintained a studio in the hills of south bay’s Los Gatos ever since.
On loan from the artist
The second of four works by David Middlebrook on display, Split Decision is a bronze and stone piece featuring exceptional patina finishes created by the artist.
Generously donated by the artist Dedicated September 23, 2022
Giuseppe Palumbo’s Einstein is a notable work in contemporary art, distinguished by its use of cement and its thematic focus on Albert Einstein. The choice of cement as a medium adds a sense of solidity and permanence to the sculpture, highlighting Einstein’s enduring influence on science and thought. Palumbo’s work captures Einstein’s iconic features in a way that balances both literal representation and abstract interpretation. The use of an open edition allows multiple versions of the piece to exist, making this impactful work more accessible to a wider audience while preserving its artistic integrity.
By choosing Einstein as the subject, Palumbo not only celebrates the legendary physicist’s contributions to science but also invites viewers to reflect on the continuing relevance of his ideas. The open edition format suggests a broader dialogue, emphasizing the ongoing impact of Einstein’s work on contemporary discussions in science and philosophy.
Palumbo’s sculpture thus serves as both a tribute to Einstein’s legacy and a contemporary commentary on the way his theories continue to resonate in modern thought.
Dedicated August 2017
The Monument M was fabricated by Thomas-Swan Design using painted aluminum based on a design by Laura Scott of Studio Scott.
The second of four works by David Middlebrook on display, this untitled work is a bronze and stone piece created by the artist.
The third of four works by David Middlebrook on display, Unfinished Business is carved out of white Carrara marble, quarried from the Apuan Alps of northern Tuscany, Italy. Carrara is celebrated for its luminous aesthetics, historical legacy, and exceptional workability for art and architecture.
The 23’ high Whirling Dervish was manufactured with epoxy painted steel. The Chicago-based artist celebrated her 90th birthday at the exhibition’s opening reception in 2022, when she was quoted saying “I have been an artist for over 65 years, creating large-scale public artworks since 2009. My current body of public art embodies feminine strength as an expression of joyfulness and perseverance, in which female torsos are always in motion. Strong female dancers exemplify their free spirit in a bright, striking hue of red, showcasing independence, strength, and a lust for life. They radiate with energy, attracting people of all ages, races, gender, and backgrounds to join in their cheerful rhythm!”
Three life-size abstracted figurative bronzes, all of which reflect Migdal’s long-explored ideas of feminism and the silent strength women possess. Migdal’s bronzes explore the female torso in its many complexities. She uses bronze because of its permanence and flexibility. Installed 2022.
Generously donated by Juliet Sham and Stephen Ho Dedicated September 25, 2020
“As a professor of higher education, and having studied in Oakland, it is a personal thrill for one of my sculptures to find its home on the Menlo College campus. Art is a powerful tool that unlocks one’s creativity and I hope that Menlo’s students and campus visitors will find inspiration in The Princess,” said Sham.
“When we saw The Princess installed on the beautiful Menlo College campus, we realized the setting and the sculpture were destined for each other. My husband and I hope that The Princess elevates art in the Bay Area and particularly inspires young people to appreciate and pursue the arts. We are honored to create the opportunity for this magnificent piece to be enjoyed by everyone who studies and works at, or visits, Menlo College – now and forever,” related Ms. Sham.
The sculpture is located outside Brawner Hall, and it beautifully complements recent landscaping renovations, The Princess is an important addition to the College’s physical environment.
“Everything we do at Menlo College is designed to support our students and their success. In welcoming The Princess to its home on our campus, our business and psychology scholars will surely find balance to the rigors of their academics and the demands of a plugged in world. In its massive grace and beauty our students and community will reflect and think in new ways,” said Menlo College President Steven Weiner.
Invertadude, a product of the Covid pandemic when everything in the world felt upside down – or was it rightside inverted? The sculpture was an outpouring of frustrated feelings at a time of isolation.
Fischer became fascinated with sculpting through ceramics at an early age. Her passion for building objects flourished after she and her husband started an architectural concrete business called Fishstone Studio in 2006.
Over the past 20 years Carrie found making functional art fulfilling and began her study of sculpting with concrete as a medium. Through concrete and her action oriented mentality, she found a calling to make sculptures that depicted the social issues of the world. She is now focused fulltime on sculpting and developing new techniques to use high performance concrete in public art and commissions.
Gifted in remembrance of her father Alfred Gustave Prien July 2, 2024
“I use the natural and eternal presentation that stone affects to carve abstract forms that reflect our common humanity and express the wonder and beauty that is of our world. I flag each sculpture with ethereal colored glass that sparkles with light and throws reflections of color onto the surrounding surfaces of the sculpture. The stone and wood that I carve project a feeling of strength and stability, and the addition of glass (representing our passions and feelings) renders a vulnerable and fragile quality to my art. This quality of opposites, strength and fragility, is a reminder of the beautiful balancing act that is ever present in nature,” said Schultze.
Here, with Silent Guide, the artist used the circle that has a universal image that spans time and crosses cultural boundaries. She carved two very different stones that she then joined, coupled with colored glass, in a relationship expressing her thoughts, revealed without words.
The 12’ tall Wave was manufactured with epoxy painted steel to symbolize perseverance, withstanding natural forces through material confidence.
Generously donated by the artist in 2022
Richard Starks earned a B.A. in Industrial Studies with an Art Minor, and later took eleven semesters of advanced sculpture and public art classes at San Jose State University. He started as a field worker picking berries, cutting apricots, and working in a freezer plant in the 60s. After jobs fabricating custom boat trailers, engine stands, designing and manufacturing fitness equipment, he worked in the custom welding business. Since 1998, he has welded larger metal sculptures in his studio in Gilroy where he also has an impressive sculpture garden with about 100 sculptures.
“My focus is to produce high quality metal sculptures. Beginning with sheet metal, I shape and weld pieces together creating a three dimensional form. To make a sculpture that looks as if it was carved from a solid chunk is part of that focus. The sculptures I make represent phases of my life such as: my thoughts, dreams, experiences, or just interesting shapes I have thought up and developed over time.”
Commissioned by David Irmer ’58 ‘H22. Impact was generously donated by David Irmer and his family Dedicated May 16, 2025
Middlebrook’s Impact has multiple elements, including a hand-carved 16th century Italian Carrara marble column erected vertically and placed on a Spanish marble base. A Native American canoe sits atop the column, placed, per Middlebrook, “in a precarious position to emphasize the temporal relationship of the two objects, as well as their cultural history.” Impact evokes the arrival of the Spanish on this continent, and the subsequent plight of Native American tribes. The Italian Carrara column that is a component of the piece is believed to have been carved in 1519, the same year that Hernan Cortés first landed in the Americas.
Generously donated by the artist in 2024
“Simple and accessible, my sculptures portray common objects in unexpected forms that are surprising, intelligent, beautiful, and humorous. Made from incongruous components, they insinuate something with a unique form, content, and purpose. In their oddity, they attempt to define the essence of things by disrupting our expectations.”
“What makes this junk art? And what is art, anyway? It appears to be something that happens in the brain when the senses are intensely attracted or repelled by a certain image or object. It is a flash, like the painful joy of falling in love, the struggle and sudden comprehension of a clever joke, the fleeting moment of dissipating ecstasy. It is the opposite of monotony in the extreme.”
Kesselman’s pieces portray common objects in unexpected forms. H2O was designed for the Silicon Valley Sculpture 2022 exhibition on the Menlo College campus, the year that water was designated as the show’s theme.
Donated by the artist in October 2012
Wassman executed this sculpture for a Menlo College exhibit entitled Outside the Box, Inside the Frame. The collection featured 20 artists from the Menlo community, and was organized by the Menlo College Art Committee.
