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They call it the Shipyard, and it’s a lot like Jim Mason’s art—so grandiose and revolutionary that some people just don’t know quite what to make of it. 

When Mason, an icon of the Burning Man Festival, ringed a West Berkeley lot with 27 shipping containers two years ago to provide artists with studio and storage space around a shared courtyard, he found himself besieged, first by kinetic sculptors looking for affordable digs, and then by building inspectors, wondering if the project could possibly be legal. 

It wasn’t, of course. 

At least not until last Thursday, when about 150 local artists, joined by Burning Man Festival founder Larry Harvey, jammed into City Council chambers to hear the Zoning Adjustments Board consider a use permit for the property. 

ZAB chair Laurie Capitelli needed both hands to grip the hefty stack of cards identifying the artists who, one-by-one, testified about the sad plight of anyone looking for creative space in the pricey Bay Area and sang the praises of the unique benefits of Mason’s creation. 

When the board gave its unanimous approval to the permit, they were saluted with resounding cheers. 

“I don’t know of any other place where people aren’t limited by a ceiling,” said Kiki Pettit, a Shipyard artist whose Egeria fountain was given top billing at last year’s Burning Man festival in Nevada. 

Pettit said she would have needed about 1,000 square feet to build her creation in a warehouse—where the going rent is $1 per square foot. At the Shipyard she paid just $300. 

Pettit’s creation stood a dozen feet tall, dominated by three copper bowls supported by steel beams—a work she says was too big to be constructed anywhere but under the sun. Atop the fountain sat a sobbing Egeria, the Roman goddess who myth says cried so hard for a lost love that she melted into a fountain. Encircling Egeria, 20 fish spat streams of water that cascaded down the rims of two smaller bowls into a 10-foot basin beneath that held more than a ton-and-half of water, atop which floated a crown of burning fuel. 

Entering the Shipyard, a visitor is surrounded by the larger-than-life remnants of Burning Man creations scattered throughout the yard. To the left, a six-foot head perches atop a 1940’s amphibious cargo ship while dead ahead is a machine that resembles an eight-foot jelly donut in which the rider sits between two giant independently revolving wheels, powered by a wheelchair motor. 

This was precisely the sort of work Mason had in mind when he leased the 8,000-square-foot property—which formerly housed an art gallery—at 1010 Murray St., just across from Urban Ore. 

Among the many Shipyard-created projects displayed at Burning Man have been Mason’s own G-7 puppets, 25-foot-tall marionettes depicting the leading financial officers for the world’s seven richest countries. The giant homunculi starred at the 2001 festival, where they gyrated in response to stock market data converted into electromechanical signals. When U.S. stocks dropped, Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan crouched into a ball; when the market soared, he raised his arms in triumph. 

Mason said he wanted to create a communal space where like-minded machinists and industrial artists could collaborate on massive projects without the need to cover exorbitant rents. 

Mason thought shipping containers—already used for artist studios in the Netherlands—were the way to go. Built to withstand long journeys on the turbulent Pacific, used containers are sturdy, cheap, easy to transport and stackable to maximize space. So Mason bought, rented, and leased 27 of them, which he stacked two layers deep, envisioning the lower units as studio space and the upper ones as storage. 

He charges the 20 lucky artists $250 per month per container plus $50 to cover utilities and use of the courtyard. 

However, his project soon attracted the attention of neighbors, who wondered why trucks were dropping off empty shipping containers eight miles from the Port of Oakland. They called the city, which soon determined that Mason didn’t have a construction permit. 

Mason admits it wasn’t simply an oversight. “This is what artists do. They just go and start something and know that at some point they’re going to get caught and ask for forgiveness.”  

The city did show some leniency, allowing artists to continue working outdoors at the Shipyard, but ordering that the containers be used only for storage until Mason completes the arduous task of getting a building permit. 

The reprieve allowed Mason to keep his tenants, but his relationship with city officials hasn’t been smooth. 

In an effort to avoid the permit process, Mason first argued that the containers were a temporary structure. When the city disagreed, he tried to save money by doing the application himself. But city staff demanded he hire an architect and pay consultants for an environmental review. 

“It was tremendously frustrating,” Mason said, criticizing Berkeley’s zoning process for making nonprofits jump through the same expensive hoops as wealthy developers. His two-year effort for a use permit has cost him $12,000. 

Meanwhile, the Shipyard was garnering a reputation as the Bay Area’s leading forum for the kinetic arts. 

Now, use permit in hand, Mason still isn’t declaring victory. He still needs a building permit, which history has shown to be particularly tricky for unorthodox structures. 

“The building code tends to be oriented toward standard construction techniques,” said shipyard architect Thomas Dolan. “Whether there’s a standard on how you take ship containers and anchor them into the ground, I doubt it.” 

Another specter lurked in the background during the ZAB hearing: the example of the Crucible, an artists’ collective and teaching workshop located a block away from Mason’s Shipyard until it fled to West Oakland last year amid conflict with city building staff. 

Though many in Berkeley attribute the Crucible’s move to fallout from a party where a promoter overbooked the venue and two attendees were wounded by gunfire, Crucible founder Michael Sturtz appeared at Thursday’s hearing to tell ZAB commissioners that he left the city in frustration because every effort he made to expand the project met with inertia from city planners and building inspectors. 

“We struggled to exist three out of four years in Berkeley,” he said. “If you lose the Shipyard, that’s just one more thing that won’t be in Berkeley.” 

ZAB agreed to urge building inspectors to interpret Berkeley building code flexibly for the Shipyard, and Mason has no intention of renting out its space for parties or offer classes to the community as the Crucible did.  

He must now hire a geologist to conduct earthquake studies as well as a structural engineer to examine soil strength to determine how best to anchor the containers to the ground—a prerequisite for getting a Building Permit. 

Meanwhile, Mason’s newest project is sure to get him away from—at least for a while—the rigors of Berkeley development. 

He’s rebuilding a World War II amphibious landing craft he found on a Richmond lot. Once he finishes restoring the seven-ton craft, he plans to venture off to islands of Asia. 

“I’m going to use it for long-distance travel,” he said. “I’ll ship it to Singapore and then work my way around Indonesia on the way to New Guinea.”