J.B. Blunk’s Station Hill Sculpture

My office is across from the Caltrain station in Menlo Park. Most days, I walk across the Caltrain tracks to a nearby restaurant (Cafe Borrone, Su Hong, etc.) for lunch.

For years, I’ve been walking by a big tree stump located at the Menlo Park Caltrain station. Today, I happened to notice that the big tree stump had a plaque on it – this wasn’t just any old big tree stump, this was a work of sculpture. Talk about Hidden Menlo – this was very well hidden!

The sculptor of this tree trunk piece was J.B. Blunk (1926-2002). Turns out he’s got a personal website that’s still active.

“A master of the chain saw, J.B. Blunk used massive redwood trunks, burled stumps and other enormous pieces of wood to create some of the most distinctive furniture, sculptures, installations, and ‘environments’ representative of the California counterculture in the 1960’s and later.”

Wow, pretty amazing. We’ve got a “chunk” of Blunk’s work right here in Menlo Park!