Isamu Noguchi’s California Scenario: Inside Costa Mesa’s ICONIC Sculpture Garden

Secluded and quiet, most people don’t seek out the garden—they simply stumble upon it, says Charles Dahms, a longtime security officer at the plaza and a self-proclaimed Noguchi enthusiast.

“People find it a sort of tranquil place and enjoy being here and the points of interest,” Dahms says—a place to meditate, to contemplate life.

Although Noguchi was born in Los Angeles to American writer and editor Léonie Gilmour and Japanese poet Yonejiro Noguchi, he spent his childhood splitting time between Japan and the American Midwest. That upbringing shaped his distinctive way of interacting with space and material, but it also meant he wasn’t deeply connected to his birthplace.

Thus, in 1979, when developer Henry T. Segerstrom approached Noguchi about creating a fountain adjacent to his new office complex in Costa Mesa, roughly 40 miles south of Los Angeles, the artist wasn’t particularly interested.

“Noguchi was in the phase of his career where he was only taking on projects that were creatively rewarding for him,” says Matthew Kirsch, curator and director of research at The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in New York.

In what Kirsch calls “standard Noguchi fashion,” the artist pushed for a more ambitious project: transforming the entire site. “Segerstrom’s willingness to consider it impressed Noguchi,” Kirsch says, as did his willingness to give the artist creative freedom.

Exhibition curator Monica Obniski says that this creative freedom is what makes California Scenario so unique. “It was the only one in which he was given carte blanche by the client to create freely,” she says. “Like many of his projects, California Scenario confounds categories—is it a garden? A landscape? A plaza?”

Noguchi always considered himself a sculptor rather than a designer, but experts agree his career defied convenient labels. Besides sculpture and gardens, he also created plazas, memorials, playgrounds, theatrical sets, furniture, and even lighting.

It is said that he refused to play within the tidy lines dividing fine art from applied art or aesthetics from practical use. Among his best-known examples of this philosophy are Playscapes, the playground in Piedmont Park, his iconic furniture designs for Knoll and Herman Miller, including the celebrated IN-50 coffee table and Costa Mesa’s California Scenario.

“It was a process of learning about where he was from,” says Kirsch. “He studied the different terrains and ecosystems of California to come up with a concept, but there is also an element of commentary. He communicates his understanding of how people came to populate California’s different terrains and the ecological toll on its natural resources.”

Three years later, the garden opened to the public.

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Those who wander through the space encounter elements representing California’s diverse ecosystems: towering redwoods, Sierra white granite, massive boulders, and desert plantings such as mesquite and palo verde trees, yucca, prickly pear and barrel cactus.

Noguchi wanted the garden to be made of natural materials that would weather and blend with the landscape. He was such a perfectionist, says Bonnie Rychlak, assistant to Noguchi for eight years and a curator at The Noguchi Museum in New York for an additional 22 years, that he even “had the rocks in the stream positioned so that they would flow a particular way.”

Begin at the 30-foot sandstone triangle known as Water Source, then follow the stream toward Forest Walk, where redwoods, approximately 60 to 85 feet tall, stand guard. Other notable points of interest include the 25-foot Energy Fountain, constructed of brick and stainless steel, and The Spirit of the Lima Bean, a playful reminder that this site was once a lima bean farm.

More than four decades later, California Scenario is considered one of Noguchi’s defining landscape works and remains one of Southern California’s most accessible public art experiences.

The garden continues to draw visitors. “This is the hallmark of a good public project,” says Obniski, “that people are still engaged, that they want to be there.”

“Compared to everything else he did, it’s the most authentic for me,” says Rychlak. “It incorporated some of the formal structures, like the pyramid. But other than that, everything else was science fiction.”

It’s especially exquisite at night, as Noguchi worked with a lighting consultant to ensure the sculptures were illuminated in a particular way.

“So there are shadows that are cast from the artificial lights that are just remarkable, against the wall, against other structures,” Rychlak explains. “And then it’s just bouncing off of each other and playing. And of course, you or other people, as they’re wandering through, their shadows are cast throughout, and that’s also very, very beautiful.”

Noguchi considered the entire landscape, not simply its sculptures, to be the artwork. “It’s not a passive garden,” Kirsch says—for the artist, the plantings, benches, surrounding buildings, and even the open sky were all part of a single composition.

“Noguchi understood sculpture as something the viewer coexists with and participates with,” Kirsch says.

Perhaps that’s why the space feels so much like a stage.

Throughout his career, Noguchi enjoyed a long collaboration with choreographer Martha Graham, creating more than 18 stage designs for her company. It seems fitting, then, that the Martha Graham Dance Company performed in California Scenario.

“It’s also very much like his dance sets,” says Rychlak. “It feels like a big dance set for me.” Likely, that was Noguchi’s vision all along. Because visitors do not simply observe California Scenario.

They become part of it.​

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California Scenario

Pacific Arts Plaza

611 Anton Blvd Costa Mesa, California.