RISEN FROM RUBBLE CSUN WILL DEDICATE EARTHQUAKE GARDEN.

Byline: Lisa M. Sodders Staff Writer

NORTHRIDGE - As the crowning touch to nearly a decade of rebuilding since the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, CSUN will dedicate a sculpture garden Sunday that incorporates rubble, warped metal and broken columns from a damaged campus structure.

Located on the south end of California State University, Northridge, the garden celebrates the institution's resiliency in the face of natural disaster.

``It's not a memorial to the earthquake,'' said Paul Lewis, a Sherman Oaks landscape architect who created the garden with artist and CSUN alumna Marjorie Berkson Sievers. ``It's dedicated to the rebuilding after the earthquake.''

CSUN is a mile northeast of the epicenter of the 6.7 magnitude temblor, which damaged all 107 buildings on the campus. The university spent more than $400 million in rebuilding the campus and upgrading shattered buildings, including the landmark Oviatt Library.

The garden, located just off the Lindley Avenue and Nordoff Street entrances to the campus, is named after Lauretta Wasserstein, a former CSUN health science faculty member who died of breast cancer more than 10 years ago. The university contributed about half the cost of the $150,000 project, with Wasserstein's friends and family donating most of the balance.

The garden - to be dedicated during an invitation-only ceremony - features several individual sculptures, including concrete steps salvaged from a damaged campus parking structure.

Reddish rings of concrete, representing seismic waves, radiate from an undulating grassy hill with a center incorporating shards of blue and green glass.

Twisted rebar, a warped railing and falling columns form part of another sculpture, and two of the benches were made from a parking structure wall.

In time, the plants selected by Lewis will grow and cover the sculptures. He chose drought-resistant native grasses such as blue oat grass in addition to giant timber bamboo and a purple orchid tree. A palm tree and duranta tree already on the site were preserved.

``I think it's a demonstration, an image of how you can live through something really terrible, a natural cataclysm and through the creative imagination, you can make something positive,'' said Philip Handler, CSUN's vice provost for academic affairs, who was instrumental in the garden's creation.

The project took eight years to complete and was complicated by the university's rebuilding efforts.

The site plan changed several times as buildings were torn down, moved or redesigned. And although the sculpture was completed by the anniversary of the earthquake, officials decided to wait a few more weeks to give the grass and other plantings a chance to grow.

But CSUN alumna Sievers said the garden has been well worth the wait.

``Yesterday I watched a student eating lunch on a bench in the midst of the earthquake garden, and it made eight years of planning a dream come true,'' she said. ``It confirmed my belief and the concept behind the garden that out of catastrophe comes new life.''

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2 photos

Photo:

(1) Cal State Northridge student Diane Domingues, 22, of Fillmore rides a scooter through a new sculpture garden celebrating the university's resiliency after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. CSUN is a mile northeast of the 6.7 temblor's epicenter.

(2) Artist Marjorie Berkson Sievers and landscape architect Paul Lewis stand in CSUN's new Lauretta Wasserstein Earthquake Sculpture Garden, named for a CSUN health science faculty member who died more than 10 years ago.

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer