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Embarcadero – Hills Brothers Coffee Drinker

Posted by Cindy on January 23, 2000

Jan 232000

2 Harrison Street

The Embarcadero

This is the Hills Brothers Coffee Drinker. He is located at 2 Harrison Street in the plaza of the original Hills Brothers Coffee Building. This sculpture was created by a dear friend of mine Spero Anargyros. (1915- 2004) Spero finished this sculpture in 1992. It is a 9′ tall bronze beauty.

The “drinking man” or “Taster” was designed by a San Francisco artist named Briggs, in celebration of vacuum packing. It is said that the original was a tribute to the Ethiopian roots of the coffee itself. After gracing the first vacuum packed can, the Taster remained the company logo for many years. Folgers, an original San Francisco company is now part of the Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA brand of companies.

2 Harrison is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Cupid’s Span

Posted by Cindy on January 22, 2000

Jan 222000

Embarcadero

Foot of Folsom Street

Cupids Span

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

2002

This is the artists statement regarding this piece: “Inspired by San Francisco’s reputation as the home port of Eros, we began our project for a small park on the Embarcadero along San Francisco Bay by trying out the subject of Cupid’s stereotypical bow and arrow. The first sketches were made of the subject with the bowstring drawn back, poised on the feathers of the arrow, which pointed up to the sky.

When Coosje van Bruggen found this position too stiff and literal, she suggested turning the image upside down: the arrow and the central part of the bow could be buried in the ground, and the tail feathers, usually downplayed, would be the focus of attention. That way the image became metamorphic, looking like both a ship and a tightened version of a suspension bridge, which seemed to us the perfect accompaniment to the site. In addition, the object functioned as a frame for the highly scenic situation, enclosing — depending on where one stood — either the massed buildings of the city’s downtown or the wide vista over the water and the Bay Bridge toward the distant mountains.

As a counterpoint to romantic nostalgia, we evoked the mythological account of Eros shooting his arrow into the earth to make it fertile. The sculpture was placed on a hill, where one could imagine the arrow being sunk under the surface of plants and prairie grasses. By slanting the bow’s position, Coosje added a sense of acceleration to the Cupid’s Span. Seen from its “stern,” the bow-as-boat seems to be tacking on its course toward the white tower of the city’s Ferry Building. “

Electrified Earth

Posted by Cindy on January 21, 2000

Jan 212000

The Embarcadero

Electrified Earth by Jill King

The Cool Globes project came to San Francisco, set up in Crissy Field, in 2008. Cool Globes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet, is a public art exhibition designed to raise awareness of solutions to climate change. Cool Globes grew out of a commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2005, and was incorporated as a non-profit organization in 2006. It is their hope that the millions of people who have experienced the exhibit, leave with a vast array of solutions to climate change, and with one clear message….we can solve this.

The globes were prefabricated fiberglass and arrived at the artists studios ready to be transformed into their own vision. They are 7′ High and 5′ wide. They were later auctioned off. This particular globe on the Embarcadero is by artist Jill King, it is covered in colored sand, and glow-in-the-dark sand.

The artists themselves are not credited on the globes, this is the only sign you will find on all of them.

The piece is owned by the Gap Foundation and as of August of 2015, the globe has been removed.

The Embarcadero – Aurora

Posted by Cindy on January 20, 2000

Jan 202000

The Embarcadero

Aurora by Ruth Asawa

Ruth Asawa is an American artist, who is nationally recognized for her wire sculpture. Ruth, at the age of 16, along with her family, was interned in Rohwer camp in Rohwer, Arkansas at a time when it was feared the people of Japanese descent on the West Coast would commit acts of sabotage. It was the first step on a journey into the art world for Ruth. In 1994, when she was 68 years old, she said of the experience: “I hold no hostilities for what happened; I blame no one. Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the Internment, and I like who I am.”

Honoring the Workers

Posted by Cindy on January 20, 2000

Jan 202000

Corner of Mission and Steaurt

An Injury to One is an Injury to All – The rallying cry of the Wobblies. That is the name of this sculpture found on the corner of Spear and Mission Streets, San Francisco.

The brass plaque that accompanies it reads

“In memory of Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise, who gave their lives on Bloody Thursday, July 5, 1934, so that all working people might enjoy a greater measure of dignity and security.

Sperry and Bordoise were fatally shot by San Francisco police at the intersection of Mission and Steuart Streets, when longshoremen and seamen attempted to stop maritime employers from breaking joint strike. Community outrage at these killings sparked a general strike by all San Francisco unions.

The maritime strike continued through the middle of summer, concluding with a union victory which brought decent conditions to the shipping industry and set the stage for the birth of a strong and democratic labor movement on the west coast.”

Painted in 1985 by an artist’s collective on steel forms shaped to evoke images of the sea, the six panels depict the events before, during and after the 1934 Maritime Strike. This mural-sculpture was placed by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union near the Sperry and Bordoise Memorial (which consisted of the brass plaque, mounted on a stone monument). When the Hotel Vitale was built in 2004, the sculpture and plaque were moved a short distance and re-erected, with the plaque now mounted on the wall of the hotel.

The artists were: Miranda Bergman, Tem Drescher, Nicole Emmanuel, Lari Kilolani, James Morgan, Raymond M. Patlan, Eduardo Pineda, James Prigoff, O’Brian Theile and Horace Washington.

A Toast to the French on the Embarcadero

Posted by Cindy on January 20, 2000

Jan 202000

1-21 Mission Street
The Embarcadero

Hippolite d’ Audiffred gave San Francisco this Second Empire, Parisian Style masterpiece. In 1850, Audiffred left his native France for Vera Cruz, Mexico. By 1865, French-appointed Maximillian, Emperor of Mexico, was making it difficult to be French in Mexico, so Audiffred loaded all of his belongings onto a donkey and walked the 2,000 miles to San Francisco. He began selling coal to Chinese laundries and eventually began speculating in real estate.

Audiffred and a partner purchased this lot, at the corner of Mission and Embarcadero in 1873. After a falling out with his partner, Audiffred found himself the owner of the property and decided to erect a building in honor of his beloved native country. There is no record of an architect on this project. It is speculated that the building was modeled after 19th-century sketches of Parisian commercial buildings, many of which included the extremely fashionable mansard roof.

The mansard roof-first popularized by François Mansart (1598—1666)-was a characteristic of the French Renaissance architecture of the early 16th century and used in parts of the Louvre. A revival of the mansard roof occurred in the 1850s under Napoleon III. This style, Second Empire, is often used to describe any building with a mansard roof.

A mansard roof has two slopes on each of four sides. The lower slope is so steep it can look like a vertical wall. The upper slope has a low pitch and is often not seen from the street.

In the Audiffred building the roof houses a garret, an additional floor that provides habitable space. The garret is punctuated with tall windows. The second floor of the building is brick with tall round-topped windows and sparse ornamentation. The first floor has cast iron pilasters. Cast iron was used for construction throughout the 1800s and early 1900s in the United States. While cast iron had been used for thousands of years, it was not seriously considered for commercial use until Thomas Pritchard designed the world’s first cast-iron bridge over England’s River Severn in 1781. The use of cast iron really took off after it was featured in the design of London’s Crystal Palace (1851).

The building has a colorful history in San Francisco. The original tenant was the Bulkhead Bar and Coffee Saloon. It is rumored that when the 1906 fire raged in the area, fire crews were sent to dynamite the Audiffred building in order to slow the pace of the fire. The bartender promised two quarts of whiskey to each man and a horse cart full of wine if they would not destroy the building. The building was saved, and along with the Ferry Building, was one of the few waterfront survivors of the quake and fire.

Another early tenant was the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, the oldest seagoing union in the world.

In 1928, A.P. Giannini opened one of the first branches of his Bank of Italy-later to become the Bank of America-in the Audiffred building. It was A.P. Giannini who commissioned the highly ornamented frieze that surrounds the building today. The frieze celebrates the waterfront with dolphins, lighthouses and sailing ships.

History markers help you find your way.

By 1969, the Audiffred building had been boxed in by the Embarcadero Freeway and lay in the heart of skid row. 1978 saw the interior completely gutted by fire. During reconstruction a low domed penthouse was added. In 1979, the Audiffred Building became City of San Francisco’s Landmark #7 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in May 1981.

A two-year restoration was completed in 1984. The upgrade involved reinforcement of the brick exterior walls, wood floors and roof framing, and timber pile foundation. Today it stands in all its French glory as one of the more beautiful buildings on the San Francisco waterfront.

A woman watching the street from the second floor window

Poetry of Pier 14

Posted by Cindy on January 19, 2000

Jan 192000

Pier 14
Waterfront/Embarcadero

This 637-foot-long pedestrian span opened in 2006. It is the newest recreational pier on the San Francisco waterfront.

The reason it exists is the breakwater on which it rests, a shield for ferries from winter storms; the design, by ROMA Design group was to top the pier with a 15-foot-wide corridor of concrete framed by long thin rails of horizontal steel.

This $2.3 Million was done in two phases.

Phase I construction was completed in 2004, and included building a 115-foot pier extension to connect the breakwater to the Embarcadero Promenade, a 30-foot diameter terminus at the outer

end, entry railings, and a portal structure with a rollup gate.

The playful swivel chairs, designed by ROMA Design Group and the Port, were fabricated by Eclipse Design, who also fabricated all 1300 feet of the Pier’s railing. These items were done in 2005 under Phase II.

Along the way you can read the Sailor’s Song (From Death’s Jest Book, Act I) by Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849)

TO sea, to sea! The calm is o’er
The wanton water leaps in sport
And rattles down the pebbly shore
The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort,
And unseen mermaids’ pearly song
Comes bubbling up, the weeds among.
Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar:

To sea, to sea! the calm is over.
To sea, to sea! our wide-winged bark
Shall billowy cleave its sunny way,
And with its shadow, fleet and dark,
Break the caved Tritons’ azure day,
Like mighty eagle soaring light
O’er antelopes on Alpine height.
The anchor heaves, the ship swings free,
The sails swell full. To sea, to sea!

Boats on the Bay – Pier 14

Posted by Cindy on January 19, 2000

Jan 192000

Pier 14
The Embarcadero

Titled “Boats on the Bay,” the project was designed and created by students of the Build San Francisco Institute . These simplistically drawn, colored tiles depict tugboats, cruise liners, and military ships.

The Architectural Foundation of San Francisco has created the Build San Francisco Institute, a half day high school program for students interested in design, construction, engineering and architecture. The Build San Francisco Institute is a unique community educational partnership, involving AFSF, San Francisco Unified School District and more than two dozen major San Francisco firms. The program combines a rigorous academic program with mentorships in the partner firms, so that students not only gain new knowledge, but also have the immediate experience of applying that knowledge in a real world setting.

An Ohlone Indian Tule Canoe – 1597

Pier 14 was inaugurated on June 15, 2006, the 637-foot public pier was built upon the recently constructed breakwater for the SF downtown ferry terminal at Embarcadero and Mission Street.

Art at One Market Street

Posted by Cindy on January 18, 2000

Jan 182000

1 Market Street
The Embarcadero

San Francisco has many laws regarding open space and art work. This piece sits just inside the doors of 1 Market Street. Both pieces of this installation are available to view through the windows, or are available to see up close between 7:00 am and 6:30 pm.

This installation is part of the POPOS and the 1% for Art programs.

Privately-owned public open spaces (POPOS) are publicly accessible spaces in forms of plazas, terraces, atriums, small parks, and even snippets that are provided and maintained by private developers. In San Francisco, POPOS mostly appear in the Downtown office district area. Prior to 1985, developers provided POPOS under three general circumstances: voluntarily, in exchange for a density bonus, or as a condition of approval. The 1985 Downtown Plan created the first systemic requirements for developers to provide publicly accessible open space as a part of projects in C-3 Districts. The goal was to “provide in the downtown quality open space in sufficient quantity and variety to meet the needs of downtown workers, residents and visitors.”

The Downtown Plan also established the “1% Art Program”. This requirement, governed by Section 429 of the Planning Code, provides that construction of a new building or addition of 25,000 square feet or more within the downtown C-3 district, triggers a requirement that provide public art that equals at least 1% of the total construction cost. Beginning January 1, 2013, public art will be required beyond the traditional downtown for non-residential projects within South of Market, DTR and certain EN and C-2 zoning districts.

Float by Mark Lere – Metal/Bronze

Mark Lere was born in LaMoure, ND in 1950. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Metropolitan State College, in Denver, Colorado, and a Master of Fine Arts from UC Irvine. Language, used in a title or as part of a piece, is an important element in his work. He currently lives and works in the Los Angeles area.

Mahatma Gandhi and the Controversies

Posted by Cindy on January 17, 2000

Jan 172000

Ferry Building
Foot of Market
Embarcadero

This statue of Mahatma (Mohandas) Gandhi is by Zlatko Paunov. Presented to the City of San Francisco by the Gandhi Memorial International Foundation, it sits on the water side of the Ferry Building. Its location is intentional, as to honor Gandhi’s “Salt March to the Sea” Its objective is to foster principles of nonviolence.

Zlatko Paunov was born in Tryavna, Bulgaria and emmigrated to New York during the communist era.

This seemingly benign statue is not without its critics.

In 2010 the Organization for Minorities of India asked for the removal of the statue that has been in its place since 1988. The group — which seeks to publicize the oppression of Christians, Buddhists, Dalits, Muslims, Sikhs, and other Indian minorities — claimed Gandhi was a racist with violent urges.

“The popular image of Gandhi as an egalitarian pacifist is a myth,” Bhajan Singh, one of the organizers, reportedly said in a statement. “We plan to challenge that myth by disseminating Gandhi’s own words to expose his racism and sham nonviolence.”

The protesters directed their demands at the Ferry Building management, but the statue is actually under the supervision of the San Francisco Arts Commission.

“I suppose Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela must have their critics as well,” Arts Commission President P.J. Johnston told the Chronicle in response to the planned demonstration. “These folks are free to lodge their protest, but I doubt that our commission will move to take down the statue.”

The Gandhi Memorial Foundation too is of interest. It was a controversial non-profit organization run by Yogesh K. Gandhi, who claims to be related to Mahatma Gandhi. However, an immediate descendant of Mahatma Gandhi, publicly stated that Yogesh K. Gandhi was a “scam artist”, and “interested primarily in enriching himself.”

The organization’s business dealings were investigated by the United States Senate, in March 1998. On March 8, 1999, Yogesh Gandhi was charged by the United States Department of Justice with “tax evasion, mail and wire fraud and perjury” for dealings related to the Gandhi Memorial International Foundation. The Foundation was reported to have ceased its activities in 1999

This photo shows Gandhi without his eyeglasses. They are often a victim of theft. Replacement is done at a cost of approximately $1100.

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Posted by Cindy on January 16, 2000

Jan 162000

Justin Herman Plaza
Embarcadero

American Lincoln Brigade Memorial
Painted Steel, Onyx, Concrete and Olive Trees

In 1936, General Francisco Franco led a military uprising to overthrow the elected government of Spain. Forty thousand people went to Spain to fight for democracy. The 2,700 Americans who joined the fight were known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (ALBA). After Franco gained control of Spain in 1939 with help from both Hitler and Mussolini, the Nazis invaded Poland and World War II began.

The members have continued to fight injustice, supporting various international causes ever since. On Sunday, March 30, 2008, the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade unveiled this national monument in Justin Herman Plaza near Vaillancourt Fountain.

The monument was designed by Ann Chamberlain (1951-2008) and Walter Hood. Visual artist Ann Chamberlain is a former Program Director at the Headlands Center for the Arts who taught at several Bay Area colleges. In collaboration with Ann Hamilton, she designed the card catalog display in the San Francisco Library made with fifty thousand library cards, each with a hand-written note. Walter Hood is professor and former chair of the Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

The memorial cost $400,000, and was donated by the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives and Veterans and Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

The Embarcadero and The San Francisco Bay Trail

Posted by Cindy on January 15, 2000

Jan 152000

The Embarcadero

The San Francisco Bay Trail is a bicycle and pedestrian trail that will eventually allow continuous travel around the shoreline of San Francisco Bay. As of 2011, approximately 310 miles of trail have been completed. Twenty six miles of the trail lies in the City of San Francisco one half of which is finished. The portion in San Francisco is expected to be completed in 2030 at a cost of approximately $6 million. The stretch along The Embarcadero is decorated with wonderful brass plaques set into the sidewalk explaining the fauna found in the area.

The following plaques will be found on the water side of The Embarcadero between Candlestick and Pier 39.

Each creature is accompanied by an explanatory brass plaque.

Pacific Tree Frog

Mostly nocturnal, this native amphibian seeks shelter not in trees but in fissures of rocks, in nooks and crannies of buildings and in plants along stream beds. It ranges from deep green to brown to gray with a tell-tale eye mask extending from nostril to shoulder. With a voice disproportionate to its two-inch body, a chorus of tree frogs’ kree-eks drowns out all else.

Burrowing Owl

Nesting in vacant burrows, this small, earth-brown owl is often seen in open country, hovering just above its prey it has a stubby tail and always stands upright, whether perching or on ground. When startled, it bobs up and down on long legs, making a sound like a rattlesnake. Burrowing owls mate for life, their song is a soft coo-c-o-o.

Dungeness Crab

Looking much less clumsy underwater than on shore, this big crab slides lightly over the sea floor on the tips of its legs. When startled or preying on fish, it can move with great speed. Spending much of its life almost buried in sand, the Dungeness Crab is found in water from 100-300-feet deep, coming to shallow water only to molt. It has a grayish-brown shell tinged with purple.

Red Tailed Hawk

Sadly, the Red Tailed Hawk’s explanation plaque was missing but if you are interested in reading about them here is the Wikipedia link.

Ochre Sea Star

This coastal sea star is 10-inches across; it has five stout, tapering arms and a center disk embossed with a geometric pattern of stark white spines Its color actually ranges from yellow to orange and brown to purple. Found in great abundance on wave-washed rocky shores, both above and below the low-tide, it creeps about with a slow, gliding motion.

Mule Deer

Feeding on grass, twigs, fruits and acorns, this black-tailed deer inhabit forests; open woodlands and chaparral. Throughout Fall and Winter, bucks and does stay together, but in Spring does wander off to bear their young. Mule Deer bed down during the day in leafy thickets where newborn fawns, with their lightly-spotted coats, are perfectly camouflaged.

Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse

This petite mouse has rich brown fur on its upper parts and a lighter, tawny belly. It avoids open fields, making its home in the dense pickle weed stands of salt marshes. Though a good swimmer a feeding Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse might scurry to higher ground when the bay tides rise, briefly exposing itself to an awaiting egret or hawk.

Chinook Salmon

Most of their lives, these fish are seagoing, but starting in mid-December, they journey up-river to spawn and die in the very waters where they hatched. From the time they leave the ocean until they spawn, five to eight months later, they survive without feeding. At sea, Chinook Salmon have gray backs and silver sides, when spawning, they range from olive to maroon.

Vaillancourt Fountain

Posted by Cindy on January 15, 2000

Jan 152000

Vaillancourt Fountain – the controversy in Justin Herman plaza – San Francisco.

This fountain has been the center of controversy since the day it was installed. Created by Armand Vaillancourt in 1971, it is actually entitled “Québec libre!” It is representative of the relationship between Vaillancourt’s art and his political convictions. It is a huge concrete fountain, 200 feet long, 140 feet wide and 36 feet high. The night before its inauguration, Vaillancourt inscribed Québec libre! in red letters, to note his undying support for the Quebec sovereignty movement and more largely, his support for the freedom of all people. The following day, seeing that the city’s employees erased the inscription, he jumped on the sculpture to reinscribe the sentence many times.

In 1987 the fountain became the object of a polemic involving U2’s Bono. During a free concert, Bono climbed the sculpture in front of the 20,000 people in attendance and wrote Rock & Roll stops the traffic. Reacting to the act, the city’s mayor (Dianne Feinstein) declared that she deplored the sculpture’s vandalism and that this kind of act could be punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment. Vaillancourt was then contacted to learn if he supported the gesture, which he answered by going to U2’s concert in Oakland the following day, where he wrote “Stop the madness” on the stage, in front of 70,000 people. He defended Bono’s gesture, after a speech on injustice, declaring that graffiti is a necessary evil as young people do not generally have the same access to newspapers, and media in general, as politicians do to express themselves.

All this seems so silly today, but we have come so far in our regards to what is free speech and how public art and graffiti are accepted today.

The other “controversy” is that you either love it or hate it. There is rarely any in between when it comes to this piece of public art. At its dedication, people handed out handbills calling it a “howling obscenity” and “pestiferous eyesore”. I personally love it. You can climb on it, you can wade in it, it makes a very powerful noise which is amazing in itself.

In 2004, Aaron Peskin, a local supervisor spearheaded a drive to have the fountain removed, he says the city doesn’t want to pay the annual $250,000 in electricity costs to pump 30,000 gallons of water through the square tubes; and it has become an “attractive nuisance,” providing a sheltered public space where the homeless sleep at night. While one can’t argue with those facts, the entire city has warrens of places for the homeless, and most great cities have great fountains, sometimes, you just have to admit, yours is a tad odd, but it is part of your city’s history.

Movement – The First 100 Years

Posted by Cindy on January 14, 2000

Jan 142000

Embarcadero Center

Susan Bierman Park

Drumm Street

Movement: The First 100 Years – by Man Lin Choi

The First 100 Years, is also known as the Korean Monument. It was created to symbolize the bond between our two countries. On May 22, 1983, the sculpture was donated to the City and County of San Francisco by the government and people of the Republic of Korea to commemorate the centennial of diplomatic relations between the United States and Korea. Then Mayor Diane Feinstein and California Secretary of State March Fong Eu presided over the ceremony. Formal diplomatic relations between the Republic of Korea and the United States of America were established when the Treaty of Peace, Amity, Commerce and Navigation was concluded on May 22, 1882 at Inchon, Korea. It was in San Francisco that the first Korean delegation set foot on American soil on September 2, 1883.
Two identical sculptures were commissioned. The other is located in Inchon, Korea.

Man Lin Choi, is a Korean artist born in 1935. He was the Director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea from 1997-1999 and then listed as a Emeritus Professor at Seoul National University.

Update: In October of 2011 Movement: The first 100 years was moved to Susan Bierman Park on the Embarcadero.

The Electric Sun Wall

Posted by Cindy on January 13, 2000

Jan 132000

Pier 15
Embarcadero

The Electric Sun Wall, along the south side of Pier 15, references a modified schematic of the museum’s complex photovoltaic energy system. The design elegantly expresses what’s going on behind the ten-foot wall of half-inch-thick steel plates, where photovoltaic energy gathered from the museum’s solar panels is converted into usable electricity. The project was designed by Mark McGowan.

The Exploratorium intends to become the largest net-zero energy use museum in the U.S., if not the world. This goal is being supported by the Exploratorium’s new partnership with SunPower, a Silicon Valley-based manufacturer of high efficiency solar technology. The Exploratorium’s new home uses a 1.3-megawatt SunPower solar power system to offset its electricity demand.

“This project combines an effort to both innovate and think critically about the impact science can have on the world. Our net-zero goal is, in part, a way to reduce our global footprint and help improve the community we’ve been a part of for more than 40 years,” said Dennis Bartels, PhD, Executive Director of the Exploratorium. “Net-zero is a process – and an opportunity for the public to learn with us.”

Mark McGowan is the art director for the Exhibit Environment for the Exploratorium and head of the EE Design department with a staff of five artists and designers. He and his staff work with artists, exhibit developers, writers, and scientists to create meaningful environments and clear signage and labels for the hundreds of exhibits on the museum floor. Before joining the Exploratorium, Mark received his undergraduate degree in San Diego in Filmmaking/Photography/Architecture and an MFA in Filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Sun Swarm at the Exploratorium

Posted by Cindy on January 13, 2000

Jan 132000

Pier 15/17
The Embarcadero

San Francisco’s Exploratorium has moved to a new and much bigger location. This new location is allowing lots of outdoor exhibits that anyone can enjoy without paying the entry fee.

This fun piece is titled Sun Swarm and is by Chris Bell.

According to the Exploratorium’s website: This is an elevated topography of silvered squares inserted between the water and the sky, Sun Swarm is an architectural intervention that collects and disperses bits of sunlight across the deck of Pier 17. Clusters of tiny mirrors on the end of steel rods reach up from a series of pier pilings, swaying with the tide in unpredictable ways. Stretching for nearly 100 feet, Sun Swarm is an understated and elegant complement to the natural light play that occurs elsewhere over the water.

Chris Bell is an artist and a Sculptor who makes site-specific installations: total environments, considering all features of an interior space and using these to construct a place with a cause. Bell was born in Sydney, Australia in 1966. Two years study in Industrial design was followed by his Bachelor of Arts degree in Sculpture at Sydney College of the Arts, graduating in 1992. He has since exhibited sculpture or installations yearly, mostly with experimental art organizations. He has received support from The Australian Council of the Arts, Arts Victoria and the Pollock-Krasner foundation, (1999). He won Melbourne’s Fundere Sculpture Prize in 2003 and a major public commission for Melbourne’s new civic square in 2000. He has worked as resident artist at Belfast’s Flax Art Studios, the Noosa Regional Gallery and California’s Headlands Center for the Arts. He currently lives in San Francisco, having recently completed his MFA with Stanford University.

Fog Bridge #72494

Posted by Cindy on January 13, 2000

Jan 132000

Piers 17-19
Embarcadero

The Fog Bridge sits to the right of the new Exploratorium very near the entrance and was designed by Fujiko Nakaya.

Nakaya’s fog installation stretches across the 150-foot-long pedestrian bridge that spans the water between Piers 15 and 17. Water pumped at high pressure through more than 800 nozzles lining the bridge creates an immersive environment shrouding participants in mist and putting their sense of themselves and their surroundings at the center of their experience.

Although Nakaya’s fog environments have been presented around the world, this is her first project in the San Francisco Bay Area, a region famous for its dramatic fog. With the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, the completion of the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the America’s Cup, and the reopening of the Exploratorium on the San Francisco waterfront, 2013 is being viewed in San Francisco as the Year of the Bay. Amid all of the water-related activity, Nakaya’s project will heighten public awareness of San Francisco’s dynamic weather and bay ecology for an international public.

Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya is the daughter of the physicist and science essayist Ukichiro Nakaya, renowned for his work in glaciology and snow crystal photography. Like her father, Ms. Nakaya’s lifelong artistic investigation engages the element of water and instills a sense of wonder in everyday weather phenomena. Working as part of the legendary group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), she enshrouded the Pepsi Pavilion at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka in vaporous fog, becoming the first artist to create a sculptural fog environment.

Since that first project, Nakaya has created fog gardens, falls, and geysers all over the world. You can experience her permanent fog landscapes at the Nakaya Ukichoro Museum of Snow and Ice in Ishikawa, Japan; the Australian National Gallery in Canberra; and the Jardin de L’Eau, in the Parc de la Villette, Paris. She recently created a fog sculpture for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and consulted with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro on the Blur Building for the Swiss Expo in 2002 on Lake Neuchatel. Nakaya has also collaborated with artists Trisha Brown, David Tudor, and Bill Viola to develop fog performances and stage sets.

Nakaya collaborated with Thomas Mee, a Los Angeles-based engineer, in the development of her first fog installation in 1970. Mee had originally developed techniques for generating chemical-based artificial fog to protect orchards from frost. Through their collaboration and perseverance, Mee figured out a system for generating water-based artificial fog. The company he founded, Mee Industries, is now operated by his children. Nakaya has been collaborating with Mee for the last forty years.

Have a seat at Pier 7 in San Francisco

Posted by Cindy on January 13, 2000

Jan 132000

Pier 7
Embarcadero

Bay Bench by Steve Gillman in 1996
Sunset Red Granite and Bronze

These two identical sunset red granite benches with curved bronze grill insets, are reminiscent of ship’s hatch covers.

Steve Gillman received a BA from San Francisco State College and and MFA in sculpture from the University of Oregon. His work is site specific. This is what he had to say about Bay Benches:

Bay Bench granite and bronze, 17″H x 8’6″ square. The bronze grill provides visual access to the undulating bay water below. What’s important here is not how the sculpture looks, but rather, it is the experience of sitting on the stone and being able to visually access the water moving and swelling below that is focus of this work. San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco, CA. 1990

Levi Plaza Brings the Sierras to San Francisco

Posted by Cindy on January 11, 2000

Jan 112000

1155 Battery
The Embarcadero

In 1982, the Haas family (heirs to Levi Strauss) were looking to build a new corporate campus for the Levi Corporation. They called upon Lawrence Halprin to design the plaza for the campus. While prolific, Halprin is best known for Sea Ranch in California and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington D.C. Sometimes referred to as “Modernism’s Olmsted,” Halprin is one of the most celebrated landscape architects of the late-20th and early-21st century.

From the beginning, the Haas family requested that the company’s values be incorporated into the design. They desired a “sensitivity to detailing and high standards of workmanship” and expressed the following sentiments: “monumental architecture is not our style,” “The Plaza too should be distinctive,” and “Quality never goes out of style.”

Halprin divided his design for Levi Plaza’s five acres into two parts: a hard park and a soft park. The hard park is similar to a European plaza. The soft park was described by Halprin as a “transplanted piece of the Sierras.” In part, this is in homage to Levi Strauss himself, who got his start selling riveted, denim work pants to miners in the Sierra Nevada.

The soft park is an open space easily accessible to anyone that chooses to enter. This portion of Levi Plaza fills a triangular lot surrounded by The Embarcadero, and Battery and Union streets.

This “transplanted Sierras” includes open water, fountains and attractive nuisances (anything on a premises that might attract children into danger or harm) that would not work in another environment. Thanks to 24-hour, 365-day security, this type of appealing, open design is allowed to exist in an urban environment. Unlike public parks that are funded by tax payers and subject to public use-be it for picnics or protests like OWS-Levi’s Plaza has an autonomy that comes with private funding.

A waterfall at the end of the park is a well recognized fixture of Halprin’s designs. This waterfall flows into a gentle stream that snakes throughout the park. Lined with granite boulders that act like sculpture, the stream is caressed by artificially constructed grassy burms sheltering the visitor from noises that emanate from the streets surrounding the park.

When the park ran $4 million over budget, the Haas family chose to pay for it out of their own personal funds. They have also made provisions to keep the park maintained in perpetuity.

The Embarcadero Belt Railroad Engine House

Posted by Cindy on January 10, 2000

Jan 102000

The Embarcadero

Belt Railroad Engine House

Lombard, Sansome and the Embarcadero

According to the National Park Service: The State Belt Railroad of California was a shortline that served San Francisco’s waterfront until the 1990s and played an important role in World War II. Its tracks extended the length of the Embarcadero from south of Market Street to Fort Mason and the Presidio. The Belt transferred cargo between ships and main line railroads such as the Southern Pacific, Western Pacific and the Santa Fe. It also loaded trains onto car ferries for ports across the Bay. Although locals nicknamed the line the Toonerville Trolley and the Wooden Axle Line, the State Belt had an illustrious career. The first section of the State Belt was built by the Board of State Harbor Commissioners in 1890. In 1913, the State Belt built the Belt Line Engine House, a five-stall roundhouse at Sansome Street and the Embarcadero in San Francisco. This engine facility housed a modest number of oil-fired steam switchers, and later, ALCO S-2 diesels. An accessory building to the engine house, the sandhouse, was built the following year. Both buildings are simple utilitarian buildings of this period, constructed with reinforced concrete and plaster. The buildings were altered in the 1950s replacing five main doors with industrial type roll-up doors set back from the façade. Renovation work done in 1984 included replication of the original doors and reinstallation in their original location.

In 1914, the State Belt tracks were extended on a wooden trestle across a shallow stretch of the Bay known as Black Point Cove. There, at the end of Van Ness Avenue, a new railroad tunnel built by the Army took the track under Fort Mason to the dock area on the fort’s western edge. The Army’s railroad went on to the Presidio, and was used through World War II and beyond to transport supplies, and occasionally troops.

The State Belt contributed greatly to the movement of materials during the war. Army and Navy switchers were added to provide enough locomotive capacity. The State Belt also delivered trainloads of fresh troops to debarkation points, and picked up hospital trains and returning troops.The railroad moved 156 troop trains and 265 hospital trains in 1945 alone.

Check out the fencing materials

This fountain is in the little courtyard behind the Roundhouse building.

Skygate

Posted by Cindy on January 9, 2000

Jan 092000

The Embarcadero

Skygate by Roger Barr

This is not the first time, and I am sadly sure, it will not be the last, when researching an artist I find the information in their obituary. The San Francisco Chronicle carried Roger Barr’s obituary on January 14, 2000 and it was so eloquent I will simply repost it here.

Roger Barr, a prominent sculptor among whose works is “Skygate,” the first piece of public art along San Francisco’s Embarcadero, died Friday in a hospital in Joshua Tree from complications of diabetes.

Mr. Barr had lived in Santa Rosa for 25 years. His works are in the collections of many museums, including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Natural Art Museum in Goteborg, Sweden, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Art in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Erected in 1985 as San Francisco’s first piece of public art financed by a corporation, the 26-foot-high Skygate is an arch-shaped structure near Pier 35 that was dedicated to longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer.

At its dedication, Hoffer’s friend, journalist Eric Sevareid, praised the work a “shining link between sea and sky.”

Mr. Barr was born Sept. 17, 1921, in Milwaukee and studied and taught art in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Los Angeles, Paris, San Francisco, Hayward and Santa Rosa.

He was a Navy flier during World War II, spending part of the war as the flight deck officer of the USS Fanshaw.

After the war, he studied and taught art in Los Angeles, then Paris. He was a professor of art at American College in Paris in the early 1960s.

He returned to the United States in 1969. His third marriage in 1971 was to painter and printmaker Elizabeth Quandt. The couple traveled together in England, France and Japan.

Eric Hoffer was a fascinating man as well. An American social writer he authored ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, although Hoffer believed that his book The Ordeal of Change was his finest work.

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