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Estero en Movimiento by Claudio Talavera-Ballón

Posted by Cindy on May 14, 2023

May 142023

Battery Bridge Between Bush and Market

This street mural is by Peruvian-born, San Francisco artist Claudio Talavera-Ballón.

Talavera-Ballón’s inspiration for his 1,900-square-foot mural is Point Reyes’ Drakes estuary. “I want to celebrate the nature that surrounds us here in the Bay Area, also in hopes the mural can serve as a reminder to protect the richness and fragility of nature.”

The mural depicts the Pacific Ocean as well as the surrounding forests, farmlands, marshes, and shrublands that make up the estuary. Talavera-Ballón calls his work “Estero en Movimiento” (Estuary in Motion).

At a cost of $26 thousand, the mural was funded by Downtown SF in partnership with Tishman Speyer, San Francisco Public Works, and the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Double Horizon by Sarah Sze

Posted by Cindy on May 14, 2023

May 142023

Yerba Buena Center Bridge

Double Horizon is a 5,500-pound boulder split open like a geode. The split sculpture is embedded with tiles to create pixelated color images of the sky at different times of the day.

Sze was born in Boston in 1969 and lives in New York. She received a BA in Architecture and Painting from Yale University in 1991 and an MFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 1997. Sze builds her installations and intricate sculptures from the minutiae of everyday life.

Sze was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 and a Radcliffe Fellowship in 2005. In 2013, she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. Her work is exhibited in museums worldwide and held in the permanent collections of prominent institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and The Tate Modern. Sze has created many public works, including pieces for the Seattle Opera House, The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York, and The High Line in New York.

Node by Roxy Paine

Posted by Cindy on May 14, 2023

May 142023

Yerba Buena/Moscone Muni Station

Node by Roxy Pain

Node is by New York artist Roxy Paine. Paine describes the eight-ton sculpture as an “enormous bio-industrial rhizomatic organism” and “an elegant line connecting earth to sky, people to underground systems and sculpture to city.”

I have been a huge fan of Roxy Paine’s and have seen many of his sculptures throughout the US, including Dendroids in Philadelphia. It is time San Francisco has a representation of his work.

Paine is a contemporary American artist best known for his tree-like structures he calls Dendroids. “I’m interested in taking entities that are organic and outside of the industrial realm, feeding them into an industrial system, and seeing what results from that force-feeding.” Paine was born in New York, NY, in 1966 and attended the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico before returning to New York to study at the Pratt Institute

The sculpture was funded through the Art Enrichment Ordinance at a cost of $1,456,000.

Roof Top Plaza

Posted by Cindy on February 19, 2023

Feb 192023

Atop the Chinatown Metro Station

There is a small parklet above the Chinatown Metro station. It has lovely views out into the area, as well as serving as a nice respite from the hustle and bustle of the neighborhood.

The Chinatown station was designed by Kwan Henmi, now DLR Group, including the rooftop patio,

Benches in the plaza

Looking up through the circular structure in the middle of the plaza

Arc Cycle

Posted by Cindy on February 19, 2023

Feb 192023

Folsom Street / Moscone Center Metro

Arc Cycle by Catherine Wagner

Wagner’s installation uses six photos from her 1978-84 series “Moscone Center” The photos documented the excavation and building process of Moscone Center. The photos were laser-etched onto a 14-by-26-foot pane of glass. The works show the rebar and early construction forms of the convention center rising in what was once home to a large Filipino American community that was mostly eliminated by the construction project.

Catherine Wagner (born January 31, 1953) is an American photographer, professor, and conceptual artist. Her works have been acquired by several major Bay Area museum collections as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London among others.

Dance by Yumei You

Posted by Cindy on February 19, 2023

Feb 192023

Chinatown Metro station

Dance of the Bride by Yumei Hou

These two metal screen sculptures are massive translations of Yumei Hou’s paper-cutting practice, executed in stainless steel using a laser and painted a vibrant red. “Yangge: Dance of the Bride” and “Yangge: Dance of the New Year” both take their names from the Yangge (Rice Sprout Song) folk dance from the northern provinces of China.

“Dance of the Bride” depicts a Manchu wedding celebration with the figures of a bride in a sedan chair, musicians, stilt walkers and fan dancers prominent.

Dance of the New Year

“Dance of the New Year” includes characters from the 16th-century Chinese novel “Journey to the West” including Tang Monk, the Sand Monk, the Pig, and the Monkey King, as well as the figures of the New Year’s dragon and lion dancers.

Yumei Hou is based in Chinatown. She has studied and practiced ancient Chinese paper-cutting techniques for several decades in the United States and China. Yumei Hou was the recipient of the Chinese Cultural Center Visionary Artist Award in June 2022.

A Sense of Community

Posted by Cindy on February 19, 2023

Feb 192023

Chinatown Metro Station

A Sense of Community by Clare Rojas

This arched ceramic tile mural (14 feet high by 35 feet wide) is one of my favorites of the new BART station art installations. Embedded in this colorful array of tiles are small tiles meant to evoke the cultural exchange of the ancient Silk Road trade route where different fabrics, patterns, and ideas intersected. Individual tile patterns were sourced from art and design institutions, fashion designers, and local fabric stores.

Rojas lives in San Francisco and is considered a key artist of the Bay Area’s Mission School movement. This is her third public commission in San Francisco, following “Hummingbirds” at UCSF Children’s Hospital Amphitheater and “Blue Deer” at San Francisco International Airport. Rojas has been recognized with a Project Space Residency and Tournesol Award from Headlands Center for the Arts and a Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, among other awards.

Convergence: Commute Patterns

Posted by Cindy on February 19, 2023

Feb 192023

Union Square BART Station

Convergence: Commute Patterns by Jennifer Starkweather and Amanda Hughen

The painted glasswork can be seen both inside and outside the station and spans the facade, roof deck, and the ceiling of the entrance on Geary. The base images of “Convergence: Commute Patterns” are a blue topographic map of the city with circles in different colors painted on top of the map showing the commute patterns of the Bay Area.

The circles and lines, while explained in signage is not as intuitive as one would like. Here is a discussion by the artists of the project:

“We were working with multiple maps: One is a very precise topography of San Francisco with this fat blue line that runs through that’s showing the waterways, and then we also have this layer of invented topography which is the fog, with these white lines that are very subtle. We also layered the painted circles, which are based on another map of commute patterns of the nine Bay Area counties. The straight lines that connect the circles are a way to create a structural component, but also reference that 1908 map showing the distribution of earth movement in two major earthquakes in Northern California. We’re really interested in capturing not just human elements of San Francisco but also the more landscape-oriented elements of the Bay Area.”

Jennifer Starkweather and Amanda Hughen are based in San Francisco and have worked as a team since 2006.

Starkweather has exhibited widely, including at the Asian Art Museum, Electric Works, the Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco State University, and Dominican University among others. She has been an artist-in-residence at Ucross, Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture, and Ragdale and has been a recipient of the Pennsylvania Center for the Arts Grant and an Elizabeth Foundation Grant. She received her MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Pennsylvania

Hughen holds an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a BFA Candidate at the California College of Arts and Crafts.

Lucy In The Sky

Posted by Cindy on February 19, 2023

Feb 192023

Union Square Muni Station

This immersive work by Erwin Redl consists of more than 500 translucent 10-by-10-inch light panels that each contain an array of LED lights spanning the color spectrum. They are suspended from the ceiling along the entire length of the 670-foot concourse level. The panels are programmed to change color and create patterns, with so many sequences possible that the same combination is unlikely to be seen twice.

Redl (born in 1963) is an Austrian-born artist currently living in the United States. Redl studied electronic music and composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. Then he moved to New York City, where he studied Computer Art at the School of Visual Arts and graduated in 1995.

The artist had this to say about the installation: “It was clear from the get-go that this would be a very long process: Nobody ever thought that this would take two years. Luckily for me, lighting technology has developed exponentially in the last 12 years. There’s just a tiny controller there now that can control the whole installation, there’s no computer involved. The raw, gray concrete and the reflective ceiling give a really beautiful canvas to the piece. There’s a futuristic, almost retro ‘2001: A Space Odyssey look when you walk up the escalator and see my piece floating there like a spaceship. I intuitively choose the title because it’s in a diamond grid. It’s above your head in the sky, and it has this uplifting, positive vibe that I wanted. It’s not a purely visual experience; you have to perceive it by experiencing it and by inhabiting it.”

Silent Stream

Posted by Cindy on February 19, 2023

Feb 192023

Silent Stream can be found at the Union Square Muni station. Meant to evoke an underground creek “Silent Stream” consists of 12,000 highly polished stainless-steel disks of varying sizes; it measures 250 feet in length with widths that vary from 4 feet to 8 feet.

Originally from Chicago, San Francisco based Jim Campbell is an engineer by training, with degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics from MIT. But in college, he was interested in film, and he took a class on documentaries with Richard Leacock, a pioneer of cinema verité. That led to some feature filmmaking, but “I did not have the personality to be a director,” Campbell says. “I was a basket-case introvert. An MIT dysfunctional.”

His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship Award in Multimedia, and a SECA Electronic Media Award presented by SFMOMA. His video LED installation “Day for Night” atop Salesforce Tower debuted in May 2018.

Werner Klotz is a German-born American artist living in New York City and Berlin who works extensively in site-specific and interactive art contexts. His other public works include the interactive, kinetic installation “Anemone,” which is on permanent view at the San Francisco International Airport. Klotz is the recipient of the New York City Art Commission award for excellence in Public Art and Germany’s Marler Medien Kunst Preis Raum-Medien award for media art.

Face C/Z

Posted by Cindy on February 19, 2023

Feb 192023

Yerba Buena / Moscone Center Muni Station

This piece, found at the Yerba Buena/Moscone Center Muni station is by Leslie Shows, a Los Angeles-based artist whose mixed-media works incorporate assemblage, painting, drawing, glass, and sculptural relief. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art.

According to the artist: “All my work is quite layered in the associations and different registers of meaning. ‘Face C/Z’ is like a threshold to a tunnel in a certain way, but it’s also incorporating all the materials of the station itself: the glass and the steel, and even the light, kind of amplifying it. There’s a transformative thing too: It’s like an Earth image, but it also reminds me of the ocean from certain angles or the sky. It was interesting to see that kind of unfold as I was making it. Working on something at that scale was a really special experience. I worked with the glass studio at Oakland Lenehan Architectural Glass and we decided early on that it had to be hand-made by me to do what I wanted it to do. I spent a long time with them working on the engineering, and then when it came time to fabricate it, I learned to use these vitreous enamel paints, which is this really ancient material process for painting on glass. It was like making 35 giant glass paintings and each one is a little like a landscape within itself. I think about people who might be using the station regularly and hopefully, they’ll see something different every time they come, depending on what the light is doing.”

Van Ness Improvement Project Art Work

Posted by Cindy on August 7, 2022

Aug 072022

August 2022

Van Ness Avenue Between Geary and O’Farrell

These two sculptures were part of the Van Ness Avenue Improvement Project and are by Jorge Pardo.

Cuban-born, Jorge Pardo is an internationally acclaimed contemporary artist whose work explores the intersections of painting, sculpture, design, and architecture.

This untitled work consists of 13 steel figures that reach 21 feet at their tallest, topped by acrylic and fiberglass spheres. The two pieces are identical in form but painted in different shades consisting of citrus and peach tones, cool greens, and turquoise.

At night, the top halves of the spheres light up.

Little Puffer

Posted by Cindy on August 7, 2022

Aug 072022

San Francisco Zoo
At the area between Grizzly Gulch and The South American Area

Little Puffer is believed to have been built by the Cagney Brothers’ Miniature Railroad Company around 1904. Herbert Fleishhacker purchased the train in 1925 and installed it at the new Herbert Fleishhacker Zoo, where it remained for 53 years.

The history of Little Puffer is somewhat ambiguous, and if you would like to read the “stories”, you can do so here on the San Francisco Zoo website.

I will pick the story up here. After many years of service at the zoo the train sat in storage for over 20 years and suffered greatly for it. In 1997 the Zoo staff decided to put Little Puffer back in service on newly laid track. The cost to renovate the train was $75,000, and the addition of the new depot, plaza area, track layout, landscaping and storage barn brought the total cost to $700,000.

While I truly enjoyed my twice around 4 minute ride on the Little Puffer, I question if it was worth the $5.00 admission (this is in addition to your zoo entry ticket), that is a lot of money for a family of four.

I am sure conductor Johnny Sala would disagree, you can read his story here.

Infinite Reflections

Posted by Cindy on April 18, 2022

Apr 182022

March 2022

1028 Market Street

Titled Infinite Reflections, the piece consists of sequentially arranged dichroic glass and polished steel panels. The stainless steel mirrors the landscape, and the glass filters the light and changes its colors

“The plan is for people to be able to see the urban environment around them, but reflected and filtered through the art.” – artist Sanaz Mazinani.

Mazinani said that she wanted to design something that would draw attention to the street and the neighborhood itself. She even modeled the installation’s tall, thin dimensions on the classic vertical signs that used to dot Mid-Market’s many theaters.

Dichroic glass can appear to be two colors at once thanks to its special coating.

The project is part of San Francisco’s 1% For Art Program.

The Ladder (Sun or Moon)

Posted by Cindy on March 17, 2022

Mar 172022

March 2020

1066 Market Street

The Ladder (Sun or Moon), is a ten-storied neon and steel ‘ladder,’ resembling a functional fire escape. The piece was created by Iván Navarro.

Born in Santiago, Chile, Navarro obtained his BA in Fine Arts from the University of Chile in Santiago, Chile

“I believe that art must be surreptitiously implanted into the public realm,” “to produce a maximum effect and propel the viewer to question not just the meaning of the single art object, but of the entire lexicon of everyday objects that surround it. THE LADDER should not announce itself as a sculpture, as an object divorced from and yet imposed upon its context. On the contrary, I envisioned an artwork that infiltrates the public space by proposing to ‘naturally inhabit’ its environment.”

Iván Navarro is a Chilean artist celebrated for his unique use of light, sound, and text to create socio-politically charged sculptures and installation. From his furniture made with fluorescent or neon lights to his optical illusions created by lights bouncing off mirrors, Navarro’s work offers enticing sensory experiences, while drawing attention to global concerns.

The piece cost $875,000 and is part of San Francisco’s 1% for Art Program.

Image from Codaworx

Mary Pleasant Memorial Park

Posted by Cindy on March 15, 2022

Mar 152022

March 2022

Near the corner of Bush and Octavia Streets

The Plaque Reads

MARY ELLEN PLEASANT MEMORIAL PARK

MOTHER OF
CIVIL RIGHTS
IN CALIFORNIA

SHE SUPPORTED THE
WESTERN TERMINUS OF THE
UNDERGROUND RAILWAY FOR
FUGITIVE SLAVES 1850-1865. THIS
LEGENDARY PIONEER ONCE
LIVED ON THIS SITE
AND PLANTED THESE
SIX TREES

PLACE BY THE SAN FRANCISCO
AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORICAL
AND CULTURAL
SOCIETY

1814 – 1904

Mary Pleasant was an amazing woman. She was perhaps the most powerful Black woman in Gold Rush-era San Francisco. Little is known of her life before 1820, by then she was living in New England and working to help with the Underground Railroad. Here she met her first husband, James Smith, who upon his death, left her with a large inheritance.

Mary Pleasant remarried in 1848 and set sail for San Francisco in 1852. She was a savvy businesswoman and invested in many things including laundries and boardinghouses (staffed by mostly Black individuals). She owned properties in San Francisco, Oakland and even Canada. In the 1890 census, she listed her profession as “capitalist.”

She generously donated to causes she felt important and was also a crusader for rights. After a streetcar driver refused to stop for her—even though there was room in the car and she already possessed tickets—she sued the streetcar company for denying service to Black citizens. The case went all the way to the California Supreme Court, which declared segregation on streetcars to be unconstitutional.

There are few records of Pleasant’s life, although it is thought she was an ardent abolitionist and supporter of the Underground Railroad in San Francisco as well as the East Coast. Near the end of her life, she told a reporter that she helped fund the militant abolitionist John Brown’s 1859 raid on a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

She died embroiled in scandal due to her financial investments with a Scotsman, but her life was rich, and she was definitely the first black self made millionaire.

Pleasant died on January 11, 1904, and was interred at Tulocay Cemetery in Napa, California. At her request, her tombstone describes her as “a friend of John Brown.”

Her former mansion was demolished and has been replaced by the Mary Ellen Pleasant Memorial Park.

The trees that the plaque refers to, and the park itself, are 6 Eucalyptus Trees she planted just before her death.

The Eucalyptus trees planted by Pleasant right before her death in 1904. The trees were designated a Structure of Merit by the City of San Francisco in 1974.

The plaque was installed by the San Francisco African-American Historical and Cultural Society

Holographic Entities Reminding of the Universe

Posted by Cindy on May 11, 2021

May 112021

May 2021

Pierpoint Lane between Third Street and Bridgeview Way – San Francisco

Holographic Entities Reminding of the Universe – 2020 – Painted Bronze Artist: Masako Miki

Artists Statement:

Consisting of nine artworks, this installation reflects my interest in ancestral traditions and folklore that speak to the interrelatedness of all beings, animate and inanimate, in the universe. The sculptures are inspired by shapeshifters: ever-evolving entities that continue to reinvent themselves by embracing dualites and celebrating new identities. The tallest, Ichiren-Bozu, is a mythic character that represents consciousness. The upward movement and repetition of form implies growth and prosperity. Traveling down the lane one will also encounter Continuous Eyes, the archetype of the protector: Animated BackScratcher and Umbrella Shapeshifter, deities of aged tools: Plant Shapeshifter, inspired by Burro’s Tail, on of the site’s plantings Moth Shapeshifter, a famous secular ghost from modern Japan, and Animated Moon, a reminder of the natural world My installation invites reflection, encouraging passers-by to consider their own interdependence and uphold the Bay Area’s spirit of diversity, innovation, and resiliency.

Ichiren-Bozu

Masako Miki was born in Osaka, Japan and now lives and works in Berkeley, California.

Animated Moon

1996 Miki graduated from Notre Dame De Namur University in Belmont, California with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Arts, Painting and a minor in Printmaking

Animated BackScratcher and Umbrella Shapeshifter

Continuous Eyes

These pieces are a permanent site-specific sculpture installation commission by Uber Technologies through San Francisco’s 1% for the arts

Orbital

Posted by Cindy on May 7, 2021

May 072021

May 2021

Pierpoint Lane between Third Street and Bridgeview Way

Orbital – 2021 – stainless steel colored anodized aluminum

Artists Jason Kelly Johnson and Nataly Gattegno – Studio Futureforms

Artists Statement:

Orbital is a contemporary garden folly, exploring geometric and material exuberance it evokes organic forms found in nature, but also giant robots and futuristic space vehicles. The structure is composed of three coiled legs that spiral towards the sky. The exterior surface is defined by stainless steel origami skins, while the interior space is wrapped by a vortex of colorful tactile shingles. Orbital’s dynamic form evokes an era of rapid change and uncertainty, while also inspiring curiousity and playful interactions.

Jason Kelly Johnson is lead artist and founding design partner of FUTUREFORMS. He brings an expertise in computational design and advanced digital fabrication, through the lens of critical art production and interactive technologies. Jason [b.1973] was born and raised in Canada. He received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Virginia, and a Masters of Architecture from Princeton University. Johnson is currently an Associate Professor at the CCA in San Francisco, CA.

Nataly Gattegno is an artist and founding managing partner of FUTUREFORMS. She brings an expertise in design research and urban speculation, through the lens of art and design theory and urban design. Nataly [b.1977] was born and raised in Athens, Greece. She received a MA from Cambridge University, St. John’s College, UK, and a Masters of Architecture from Princeton University. Gattegno is currently an Associate Professor at the CCA in San Francisco, CA.

This piece was commission by Uber Technologies through San Francisco’s 1% for the arts

Rolling Reflection

Posted by Cindy on March 29, 2021

Mar 292021

February 2021
1500 Mission Street

This piece sits in what the project calls the forum, it is by Sanaz Maninani.

Sanaz Mazinani is an artist and educator based between San Francisco and Toronto. Mazinani works across the disciplines of photography, social sculpture, and large-scale multimedia installations,

Mazinani holds an undergraduate degree from Ontario College of Art & Design and a master’s degree in fine arts from Stanford University. Her work has appeared in solo exhibitions at institutions including the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the West Vancouver Museum.

This is just one of several pieces of art at 1500 Mission Street.

The Project Sponsor is required to provide public art valued at 1% of the construction cost of the building. The Site Permit indicated a construction cost of $200,000,000, so the Project Sponsor must spend at least $2,000,000 on the art program. The Project Sponsor has dedicated a budget of $2,206,968 which equals approximately 1.1% of the total construction cost.

1500 Mission Street

Posted by Cindy on March 23, 2021

Mar 232021

February 2021
This is what is left of several buildings that once sat on this site.

Built in 1925, 1500 Mission was a one-story reinforced concrete industrial building originally designed in the Classical Revival style for the White Motor Company. The White Motor Company was created out of the White Sewing Machine Company. Founded by Thomas H White in 1876, his son, Rollin Henry White, invented the auto flash boiler in 1899. With his two brothers, Windsor and Walter, the sons diversified the sewing machine company’s products by introducing trucks and the White Steamer automobile in 1900.

Around 1940, the building was purchased by the Coca Cola company for a bottling plant.

The building when Coca Cola first purchased it

In 1941 Coca Cola enlarged and altered the building in the Streamline Moderne style. In 2010, architectural historian William Kostura ranked the building among the eleven best Moderne-style buildings in San Francisco: ‘The building as it was added to and remodeled in 1941 remains essentially unchanged since that date”.

The streamline moderne update was done by the architects Pringle and Smith, an architecture firm that worked with Coca Cola across the U.S. The Pringle and Smith Partnership was formed in 1922 by Francis Palmer Smith (1886-1971) and Walter Smith Pringle.

The building was purchased by the Goodwill Company in 1993 – you can see the clock tower on the far right in the background. Several buildings in the area, minus the original building used by White Motor Company and the Coca Cola bottling plant, were demolished in 2017.
The project that now occupies the site is a 1.2-million-square-foot development, located on 2.5-acres on the corner of Mission Street and South Van Ness Avenue. One building is 39 stories of mixed-use and a 550 unit luxury apartment tower. A separate 460,000-square-foot office building will house San Francisco Planning and Public Works Departments.

Refrain by Walter Hood

Posted by Cindy on March 19, 2021

Mar 192021

February 2021
Hunter’s Point/ Bayview

Refrain was produced in 2015 and is made of steel.

Walter Hood is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California. He is also a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and lectures on professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally. He is a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, and 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.

Funding for the piece was proved by the US Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration, the budge was $250,000.

Refrain is a visual response to Frame (a piece further up the hill), created using the same dimensions, the artist views the disk surrounding the rods as pixels that create a picture of the current view at the time of placement. There is considerably more vegetation since the pieces were first installed, so the view is no longer quite as obvious.

Frame by Mildred Howard

Posted by Cindy on March 8, 2021

Mar 082021

February 2021
Bay View / Hunter’s Point

Frame is an enlarged version of an antique Rococo style frame. Howard’s frame is at the scale of the natural world around it, between 15-20 feet high. The use of the frame is no longer intended to frame a single small work of art, it frames the multiple views and perspectives of the Shipyard’s landscape.

Frame is a piece that sits in collaboration with Walter Hood’s Refrain.

Frame–Refrain transfers the framed object’s connoted values of appreciation, privilege, and value to the landscape itself. Frame–Refrain provides a historical point of contact between the worlds of public and private, bridging the brawny, industrial world of steel and concrete and the fragile treasures of the world of art and antiques.

Mildred Howard occupies several posts on this site. Mildred Howard (born 1945) is an African-American artist known primarily for her sculptural installation and mixed-media assemblages. Howard was born in San Francisco and was raised in Berkeley, California. Howard began her adult creative life as a dancer, before working in visual art. In the early 1980s, Howard’s installations took the form of manipulated windows from storefronts and churches. They later evolved into constructed habitats that provided walk-in environments.

Frame was paid for with monies from the US Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration.

Stream of Consciousness

Posted by Cindy on February 25, 2021

Feb 252021

February 2021
Bayview / Hunters Point

Hillpoint Park – Picnic Area
Innes Court

Stream of Consciousness is a 120 foot long ribbon of historic, contemporary, and scientific images interspersed with literary quotes. The tiles tell the story of water from the depths of the sea to the constellations in the sky. The images were made by Bayview Hunters Point school children

This piece was funded by the US Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration. Created by Think Round Inc., the piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, and created by Heidi Hardin working with Colette Crutcher.

The work of Collette Crutcher occupies several posts on this site. Collette began with painting and printmaking, and then branded out to create a broad spectrum of pieces, from very large to very small, from public to intensely personal, from abstract to figurative, and across a range of media: painting and drawing, collage, assemblage, paper mache, concrete, ceramic and mosaics.

Heidi Hardin is a San Francisco community artist, educator and long-time art advocate who works in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood to connect children and youth with the new Shipyard. Hardin is the founder of Think Round, Inc. a non-profit organization that combines well- established educational programs with newly created initiatives, sometimes in partnership with the SFUSD schools in the southeastern neighborhoods.

Floating Points

Posted by Cindy on February 16, 2021

Feb 162021

February 2021
1500 Mission Street

Shannon Finley, a Berlin- based artist, created this piece that stands by the front door to 1500 Mission, between the glass facade and a 30 foot green wall. It stands 15-foot high and is made of stainless steel, powder-coated matte black.

Comprised of multiple planes set at various angles, the sculpture is intended to act as a companion piece to the building itself — its light mimicking the light of the building’s facade. “Floating Points” is Finley’s first US commission.

Shannon Finley is a sculptor, painter and animator who creates works that reflect a strong interest in geometric abstraction. His works on paper, sculptures, and video animations all evince a hard linearity, with patterns composed of sharp angles and geometric forms.

This is just one of several pieces of art at 1500 Mission Street.

Prevailing Winds

Posted by Cindy on February 9, 2021

Feb 092021

February 2021
1500 Mission Street

“Prevailing Winds” by artist Catherine Wagner . Catherine is a San Francisco-based artist, known best for her conceptual photography. Wagner’s work often involves extensive research and, in this instance, she studied Bay Area wind patterns and then laser cut the resulting cartographic data onto eight aluminum panels. Lining the South Van Ness sidewalk of the 1500 Mission Street project, these functional sculptures have arrow-shaped holes and rectangular notches, which both help mitigate the wind and add poetry to the urban landscape. Ms. Wagner is a Professor of Studio Art, as well as the Dean of the Fine Arts Division at Mills College.

The eight panels were manufactured by Gizmo SF.

This is just one of several pieces of artwork at 1500 Mission Street.

Haig Patigian’s Creation at the GGIE

Posted by Cindy on February 3, 2021

Feb 032021

February 3, 2021
300 Filbert / Filbert Steps

Haig Patigian is represented on this site with many of his works. Patigian (1876-1950) was born in the city of Van in the Ottoman Empire. His parents were teachers at the American Mission School in Armenia. He was largely self-taught as a sculptor.Patigian spent most of his career in San Francisco, California and most of his works are located in California.

This piece of art is now on private property, but proudly displayed. It is the studio model of Haig Patigian’s Creation that was sculpted for the Golden Gate International Exposition. It sat in the Court of the Seven Seas.

Photo from Wish You Were Here at the Treasure Island Museum website

The main exhibits of the fair were placed in buildings that were interspersed with broad courts. One of these was the Court of the Seven Seas. The walkway that ran through the Court of the Seven Seas led to the Tower of the Sun which you can see in the background.

The walkway of the Court of the Seven Seas was lined by sixteen equally spaced 64 foot pylons crowned by prows of galleons making a stroll a little humbling.

Patigian had four more sculptures at the GGIE. These sat around the great pool in the Court of the Moon and were titled Earth Dormant, Sunshine, Rain and Harvest.

Absorption

Posted by Cindy on November 4, 2020

Nov 042020

488 Folsom Street

San Francisco

Absorption is the first permanent public art installation in the United States for Berlin-based artist, Alicja Kwade.

According to Kwade’s artist statement, Absorption (2018), is a sculptural abstraction utilizing mirrors and stones to produce an optical illusion that plays with viewers’ perceptions of dimensionality. The installation was included as a way to “contribute something soulful, stimulating, and timeless to the public space at Avery Lane,”

Alicja Kwade (1979 – ) is a Polish-German contemporary visual artist. Her sculptures and installations focus on the subjectivity of time and space.

At 19 Kwade moved to Berlin where she studied sculpture at the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin from 1999 to 2005. In 2002, Kwade spent an Erasmus year at Chelsea College of Arts in London. She lives and works in Berlin.

Signal on Treasure Island

Posted by Cindy on October 23, 2019

Oct 232019

699 Avenue of the Palms
Treasure Island

While much of Treasure Island is under construction you must reach this piece via a detour, the road will end on 9th Street near Avenue B.

In 2015, the historic east span of the Bay Bridge was taken down and its remnants granted to 15 artists around the state. One of these artists was Tom Loughlin a San Francisco based conceptual artist who received 36 tons of steel from the bridge.

The piece, Signal, is meant to function like a giant tuning fork vibrating at 35 hertz, the frequency of a foghorn: “You’re gonna feel it more than hear it,” Loughlin stated.

Signal with the Bay Bridge in the background

According to an SFGate interview with Loughlin: “The tactile addition stems from Loughlin’s interest in understanding the way systems connect — the mind and body, as well as “language, religion, nations, and literal infrastructures like tunnels and roadways.” He’s also interested in how systems fail.

For instance, the new span, which was replaced in 2014, only 25 years after it was damaged in the 1989 earthquake, is already beginning to rust. “Was the bridge we built in 1935 better than the one we just built?” He muses, “It’s an open question.” He’s hoping his sculpture, will prompt people to stop and ask: “What tools are we building and how are they serving us?”

Born in Saint Louis, Laughlin received his MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute and his JD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Signal with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background

A sign near the piece helps explain the way in which the piece vibrates:

The sculpture is composed entirely of bridge-building material and weighs more than 22 tons. The steel is vibrating at its natural resonant frequency, like a tuning fork. This vibration is initiated by electronic equipment inside the sculpture and enhanced by the steel. Elastomeric pads between the steel and the concrete bases allow the ring to vibrate freely, a small departure from their intended use – to isolate bridge columns from roadway movement.

Pathways

Posted by Cindy on October 21, 2019

Oct 212019

Chase Center
500 Terry A Francois Boulevard

Adam Eli Fiebelman is a San Francisco based artist who is known best for his stencil and cut paper-based works. His childhood in Albuquerque, New Mexico was spent examining and interacting with the surfaces of the city through making graffiti art. His awareness of the structures we use every day but often overlook has become the subject of his current work: the buildings, doorways, fenced trees, discarded buses and chipped alley walls that fill our cities and map our lives. Through an intricate process of hand-cut stencils and enamel painting, he explores the relationship between our perceptions of the temporary and the eternal, uncovering the stories we have transcribed on an urban landscape filled with utilitarian objects. You can find more about Fiebelman on his website.

The sign attached to this piece reads: Pathways traces the movement and beauty of the basketball as it travels, second by second, from the inbounding to the all-important basket. Twelve classic Warriors plays were mapped and meticulously drawn first onto paper, then hand cut and digitally traced and die-cut cast from aluminum. Each circle represents the path of the basketball as it moves through the play, with spacing in proportion with the speed and trajectory of the ball. The use of color-shifting paint creates movement, and the multiple layers of the metal creates depth.

The players and the games were:

Wilt Chamberlain – 81st Point, NBA Record 100 Point Game – 1962
Rick Barry – Fadeaway Jumper, 38 Point Game – NBA Finals, 1975
Mitch Richmond – Two-Hand Baseline and One Dunk – 1990
Jason Richardson – Winning Windmill Dunk – Dunk Contest 2002
Stephen Curry – 3/4 Court Halftime Buzzer Beater – Playoffs 2015
Nate Thurmond – Rebound, Pass, Skyhook 1971
Eric “Sleepy” Floyd – Switch Hand Lay-in 51 Pont Game – Playoffs 1987
Chris Mullin – 3 Pointer, 41 Point Game Playoffs 1991
Šarūnas Marčiulionis– Rebound Full-Court Push – Eurostep Finish, 1993
Baron Davis – Posterizes Andrei Kirilenko Playoffs – 2007
Klay Thompson 14th 3-pointer, NBA Record for 3-pointers in a game 2018

Benny Bufano’s Grave

Posted by Cindy on October 19, 2019

Oct 192019

Holy Cross Cemetery
Colma, California

Bufano’s gravesite is marked by his own sculpture of St. Francis. The statue overlooks that part of the cemetery that holds the unmarked graves of indigent children, the only part of the cemetery that permitted the type of statuary marking Bufano’s grave.

Bufano was a well known San Francisco artist whose work has been in this site many times.

Beniamino Bufano (October 15, 1890 – August 18, 1970) was an Italian American sculptor, best known for his large-scale monuments representing peace and his modernist work often featured smoothly rounded animals and relatively simple shapes. He worked in ceramics, stone, stainless steel, and mosaic, and sometimes combined two or more of these media and some of his works are cast stone replicas.

The tile work on this Saint Francis was done by Alfonso Pardiñas. Alfonso Pardiñas created a number of mosaics in San Francisco, including several for BART stations. His firm was called Byzantine Mosaics.

Saint Francis – Prince of Peace
To the human congregation of the United Nations
-A message to live by-
Lord
Make me an instrument of thy peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
Where there is sadness, joy

O Divine master
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be understood as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life

Beniamino Benevento Bufano
October 15, 1890
August 18, 1970

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