Twenty: The Trestle Charity

Continuing the ‘Creeks and Rivers of Silicon Valley’ year long project. (Click here for complete info.)

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1921 was the year the trestle was built. In it’s day the rails carried cargo wrapping around the southern end of San Jose and up over the trestle I painted in number Seventeen: The Eggo Team.

Although the railroad tracks are long gone, it has stood the test of time until recently when the San Jose city council voted to tear it down and put in a new steel trail bridge for the Lost Gatos trail system. Citizens rose up and are demanding the trestle be kept and restored. I agree. The 90 year old trestle is solid, and the Friends of the Willow Glen Trust have now sued the city to stop it’s destruction. You can find some local reports and opinions here, and here. They also have some Facebook pages here, and here. There is a charity event coming up on February 22.

For the last year or so I have wanted to paint the trestle, and figured I better do it now if it is torn down. So here is number twenty in my Creeks and Rivers of Silicon Valley. I visited the site about a year ago, and along the creek, it was pretty junky, with a few homeless encampments nearby. This is only a few miles from “The Jungle”, the largest homeless camp in the US. I’ll save commentary on that for another day. Today, most of the junk was gone right around the trestle I think from volunteers cleaning the area up.

A few pictures. You can now click on a thumbnail, then scroll directly from picture to picture—

The trestle.

I just thought this would make a cool painting. Under the right branch, you can make out a homeless camp.

My easel and partially completed painting.

Here’s the painting–

For better effect, I took out about half of the pylons, otherwise it would have looked like a jumbled mess. This is the only painting I did not complete entirely on site. With some of the noise coming from the homeless camps, I felt a little unsafe being there all alone, so finished about half of it in the studio. My heart goes out to the truly homeless, but many are drug addicts or other problems, and the camps can be dangerous places.

Oh, almost forgot…that’s Los Gatos Creek!

Click this link for a map of all painting locations.

Addendum. Oops…forgot to mention the Save the Trestle website here.