Artwork Detail

The Criminal Courts Building was renamed in honor of Clara Shortridge Foltz, a pioneer for women’s rights and equality within the California justice system, in 2002. This memorial illustrates her life and achievements. Foltz was the first woman to join the California Bar, the first person to author a bill separating juvenile and adult offenders in California’s prisons and one of the first people in the United States to argue for a public defender’s office. Artist Susan Schwartzenberg depicts Foltz’s life through an “image biography” – a visual timeline on a series of glass panels placed alongside the building's north and south walls, interior doorways and partitions. The images are collages of historic photographs and text partially taken from Foltz’s journal. The artwork also includes a set of glass doors symbolizing the opportunities Foltz helped to create, two tapestries, two large glass panels featuring photos of Clara Shortridge Foltz and a portrait of Foltz overlaid upon a 1908 Los Angeles map. Outside are benches, with inscribed statements: “No one should buy justice in a land that boasts that justice is free.” These are Clara Shortridge Foltz’s words on the necessity for a public defender system. The bench seating is intended to suggest Foltz’s struggle to give all citizens a right to legal representation, that is, a place at the bench.

Susan Schwartzenberg is a California artist who has exhibited her work internationally. Many of her works explore the connection between our outer physical environments and our inner personal lives. Her public commissions include Philosophers Walk in McLaren Park in San Francisco, the Rosie the Riveter Memorial in Richmond, California, and the Ernest W. McFarland Memorial in Phoenix, Arizona. She has also published several books including the recent Becoming Citizens: Family Life and the Politics of Disability. She has taught at the University of Santa Cruz, Stanford University, and the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. In 1998, Schwartzenberg received a Loeb Fellowship for Advanced Environmental Studies from Harvard University.