Lou Pearson
1925-2005

Pearson was born in 1925 to Swedish immigrants in the Idaho silver mining town of Wallace. He learned the family craft of carpentry, and went to work as a builder while taking night classes in commercial art. He created his first sculptures as a teen, forming huge cartoonish heads out of snow in his front yard.
Pearson moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1940s and began designing and building terraced retaining walls -- ribbons of curvy concrete that created pockets for planting. He built 600 to 700 of the undulating walls, and hundreds of them are still believed to be standing around the Bay Area.

His work with curving forms and functional esthetics led to a career in sculpting stainless steel and bronze. His larger metal pieces feature flowing shapes and shining surfaces, and are installed in outdoor settings across the nation.

Examples of his sculptures in San Francisco can be seen in the lobby of the California Pacific Medical Center, 3700 California St., and outside the Broadmoor Hotel, 1499 Sutter St.

As an artist, Mr. Pearson's big break came in 1965 when Fred Maxwell, owner of San Francisco's prestigious Maxwell Galleries, became his benefactor. His work has been collected by art aficionados, including actor Eddie Murphy, bandleader Artie Shaw and television producer David Wolper.


In the 1980s, Mr. Pearson turned his talents to trail-building. He spent more than 3,000 hours blazing the Hazelnut and Brooks Creek trails in San Pedro Valley County Park. He decorated parts of them with doll-sized polyester resin sculptures he hung from tree branches. At the time, park rangers were not appreciative of his work. In a 1994 Chronicle story, rangers called him "a compulsive renegade trailblazer" and said they took away his tools to halt the work. The dispute was eventually resolved, his daughter said, and the trails are listed in hiking guides and on Web sites.