David Ireland; artist turned home into master work; 78

Mr. Ireland, who had been in failing health the past few years, died of pneumonia Monday at the Davies Campus of California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, said his sister, Judy.

Best known for transforming a decrepit 1886 Victorian house in San Francisco's Mission District into a home that was also a work of art, Mr. Ireland saw ordinary things as extraordinary raw materials. After purchasing the 500 Capp Street house in 1975, he embarked upon a renovation that became an excavation of the structure's history.

As he peeled back layers of materials, he exposed information about former inhabitants and made collections of remnants, sometimes turning old woodwork and scraps of wallpaper into artworks. Periodic "open houses" allowed visitors to follow his progress and participate in an experience that got to the core of Mr. Ireland's philosophy of art.

"Whether San Francisco artist David Ireland qualifies as a Zen master I cannot say, but certainly he's a master of Zen art," wrote Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight in 2005. "He doesn't make zenga, the word the Japanese use to describe bold calligraphy, traditional paintings of monks, and other staples of this age-old Asian repertoire. Instead he makes Conceptual art, and his idiom is fully Western and completely modern. But his work seeks to produce in the viewer what can only be called an awakening. Nothing is more Zen than that."

Among works that elicited many critics' comments were "dumbballs," spheres of concrete made by tossing a lump of wet concrete back and forth, from one hand to another, hour after hour.

The finished sculptures offered little to look at, Knight wrote, but are "theoretically provocative" works that "stress an acute awareness of the slow transformation of materials from one state to another."

Mr. Ireland had developed a strong interest in Africa in the 1950s, living and working in Johannesburg and traveling throughout South Africa. Drafted into military service, he served two years in the Army from 1956-58, then returned to his hometown of Bellingham, Wash.

In his early years, Mr. Ireland tried many occupations, including selling insurance and leading African safaris.

Finally launching his art career in his 40s, he moved to San Francisco in 1972 to attend graduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he joined a circle of adventurous artists including Tom Marioni, Terry Fox, and Paul Kos.

In the early 1980s, he began making sculpture and installations that were shown at museums and outdoor venues.

Over time, his work was exhibited in prominent institutions such as the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Center in Washington, D.C., and Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.