Category: All of SAN FRANCISCO
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St. Francis of Assisi in the Fragrance Garden
Fragrance Garden Botanical Garden Golden Gate Park This statue was part of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exhibition on Treasure Island. It is by Clara Huntington who has been on this site before. Huntington was the adopted daughter of Collis Potter Huntington, one of the Big Five railroad magnates. “Oh, Clara Huntington, yes, Clara Huntington Young.…
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Seven Dancing Stones and Seven Dancing Stars
Mission Police Station 630 Valencia Street Seven Dancing Stones and Seven Dancing Stars is the creation of artist Gary Dwyer. Installed in 1984, Seven Dancing Stones and Seven Dancing Stars sits in the lobby of the police department. Dwyer created this sculptural installation based on a legend of the Ohlone Indian tribes which originally inhabited…
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The SFPL Card Catalogue
San Francisco Public Library 3rd, 4th, and 5th Floors With the move to the new Main Library, items in the card catalog (used to access the collection for more than 100 years) have been replaced by an online computer system. Artists Ann Hamilton and Ann Chamberlain embedded these obsolete cards in plaster covering the principal diagonal wall…
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Constellation at the SFPL
San Francisco Public Library Atrium area 160 names of writers are illuminated on a wall that rises five stories behind the grand staircase in the atrium of the San Francisco Public Library. The artist’s work is inspired by a Beaux Arts tradition with origins in the Bibliotheque Saint-Genevieve in Paris (a model for the…
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Hands by Vicki Saulls
Eureka Valley Rec Center 100 Collingwood Castro The project consists of casts of hands of citizens throughout the neighboring community. The call for volunteers read: “My sense of the center is that it’s a really welcoming place for diverse interests and community groups. I wanted to use the welcoming theme and came up with the…
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Dolphin from the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939
Presently in storage at Golden Gate Park This statue is from the Golden Gate International Exposition. It is by Cecilia Bancroft Graham. Graham was born in San Francisco, on March 2, 1905. She studied at the California School of Fine Arts, graduated from Mills College in Oakland, and studied sculpture with Oscar Thiede in Vienna,…
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Take Root
Chinatown Public Library 1135 Powell Street Take Root is a set of bi-lingual panels referencing traditional Chinese salutary plaques in contemporary materials of rear-illuminated, die-cut anodized aluminum. The Chinese text is based on calligraphy written for Take Root by well-known artist and calligrapher C. C. Wang. It features a Chinese-American saying about setting roots in…
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San Francisco’s Sister Cities
Hallidie Plaza Market Street This Sister Cities signpost was dedicated on June 28, 2018, it was created at the request of interim Mayor Mark Farrell. It was a joint effort amongst many departments of the city, Public Works managed the project and installed the foundation, SFMTA made and installed the signs, and the San Francisco…
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Skydancing
Laguna Honda Hospital Pavillion Atrium 375 Laguna Honda Boulevard Forest Hill This is Skydancing by Takenobu Igarashi they are painted aluminum sculptures, reminiscent of blossoms and suspended from aircraft cables. Japanese artist Igarashi has taught at Chiba University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He collaborated in the foundation of the Faculty of…
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Nuotatori
North Beach Pool 661 Lombard Street This piece, by Vicki Saulls, is an actual cast of 23 residents of North Beach shown in their swim gear. Ms. Saulls also created Locus, a second piece of art that can be found at this North Beach pool. Vicki Saulls was born in Idaho and raised in the…
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Building the Iron Horse
Laguna Honda Hospital Lobby of the Pavillion 375 Laguna Honda Boulevard Forest Hill Owen Smith’s WPA-style mosaic murals depicting the building of the Golden Gate Bridge pay homage to Glen Wessel’s Professions mural series in the historic Laguna Honda lobby and provide a visual continuity between the old and the new buildings. The artist chose…
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Peter Vandenberge and his Whimsical Ceramic Art
Christopher Park 5210 Diamond Height Boulevard Diamond Heights These whimsical tile plagues are by Peter Vandenberge and reside inside, what is now, the nursery school in the Christopher Park Rec Center Building. Born in 1935 in The Hague, Vandenberg grew up in Jakarta. “I was obsessed with making things out of clay,” “I was like…
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Laguna Line
Laguna Honda Hospital 375 Laguna Honda Boulevard Forest Hill By observing Laguna Honda residents using wheelchairs and the handrails located throughout the building, Cliff Garten saw the potential for a public artwork in the form of a handrail. While meeting all codes and functional requirements, he transformed a ubiquitous handrail into a sensuous sculpture…
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Reflections
Laguna Honda Hospital 135 Laguna Honda Forest Hills This bi-fold, water-cut, stainless steel access door is by Diana Pumpelly Bates. The design incorporates selected elements of the new architecture of the hospital and imagery derived from the surrounding environment. The relationship of the lines and shapes in the imagery are intended to suggest a “landscape…
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Rabbinoid on Cell Phone
Laguna Honda Hospital Garden Area 375 Laguna Honda Forest Hills This life size bronze is called Rabbinoid on Cell Phone and is by California artist Gerald Heffernon Gerald Heffernon lives in Winters, California. He has shown at galleries and museums nationally as well as in France, including the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. …
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Islais
Islais Creek 3rd Street and Cargo Way Bayview – Hunters Point Islais by Cliff Garten Studio is an artwork that is inspired by the history and landscape of Bayview Gateway and Islais Creek. “I have created sculptures whose gestures and forms are iconic yet formal and free, solid and transparent, because no one history should…
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Glass Flowers
Portola Branch Library 380 Bacon Street Portola/Excelsior Dana Zed has been exhibiting her art nationally and internationally for over 30 years. She holds a BA from Brown University in Rhode Island. She has works in the permanent collections of The Corning Museum in New York and The Oakland Museum. Zed owns and operates a glass…
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Yarn Bombing Civic Center
San Francisco Civic Center Plaza These whimsical animals and are designed and installed by Jill and Lorna Watts of Knits For Life as part of the “Knitting the Commons” project. For those not familiar Yarn bombing is a type of street art that employs colourful displays of knitted or crocheted yarn or fibre rather than…
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Gates of Kezar Stadium
Kezar Stadium Frederick Street Entrance These gates stand at the entry to Kezar stadium and were installed in 1991. There are 22 of them around the stadium Kezar Stadium has a long history in the City of San Francisco, but much of its original elements no longer remain. The gates were purchased by the San…
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Balboa Has its Name up in Mosaic
Balboa at 39th and 34th Avenues These two sided sign posts on Balboa street were commissioned by the SF Arts Commission as part of the Balboa Streetscape Improvement Project. They were created by artist Colette Crutcher, who has been in this site many times. The site of the Balboa Streetscape Improvement Project extends from 34th…
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Red Gothic
Muriel Leff Mini Park 7th Avenue between Geary and Anza Richmond District This piece by Aristeded Demetrius is titled Red Gothic. It was donated to the park by the Cyril Lerner Foundation and was installed in the park in 1986 at the request of Ms. Leff and other community members. Demetrius has several pieces throughout…
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Global Garden
474 Natoma South of Market On this affordable housing unit are digitally embossed metal panels entitled Global Gardens, by artist Catherine Wagner. The images are of culturally specific plants representing the diverse community. Catherine Wagner is a Professor of Studio Art, as well as the Dean of the Fine Arts Division at Mills College. She…
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SurfHenge
Taraval and 48th Street Sunset District These sculptures designed by DPW landscape architect Martha Ketterer are part of the Taraval Streetscape Improvement Project. The design combines the lightness and fragility of surfboards or sails with monumental weight and verticality. The work was then adorned with tile work by Colette Crutcher suggestng the ceaseless dance of…
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Dahlias at Cabrillo
Cabrillo Playground 853 38th Avenue Outer Richmond Cabrillo Playground, and its attached club house were completely renovated with $45 million dollars from the 2008 Clean and Safe Neighborhood Parks Bond. The budget for the art was $35,970. These lacy flowers are by Colette Crutcher and were inspired by the Dahlia Garden that is attached to the park.…
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Oche Wat Te Ou
Yerba Buena Gardens Oche Wat Te Ou – Reflections is by Jaune Quick-to-see Smith and James Luna. It sits in Yerba Buena Gardens and was installed in 1993. This tribute to the native Ohlone Indians, created by artists Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and James Luna, takes form in a semicircular wood wall patterned with Ohlone basket designs.…
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Local Color by Leah Rosenberg
Natoma at 180 New Montgomery This wall of colors that include small tables and chairs is a by Leah Rosenberg and was sponsored by SitesUnseen. Leah Rosenberg is a San Francisco-based artist whose practice spans a range of media including painting, sculpture, installation, printmaking, and performance. Color plays a primary role in her work. Rosenberg…
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Alleyways of San Francisco
Jessie and Annie Streets Sites Unseen is a fiscally-sponsored public art project of the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District (YBCBD). They presently have three projects on the outskirts of San Francisco’s Museum District. The first is Love Over Rules These 6 X 6 Neon letters are on the exterior wall of the Salma Family Building…
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Alice Aycock at the SFPL
San Francisco Main Library 100 Larkin Street 5th Floor Alice Aycock has designed a spiral stairway between the fifth and sixth floors of the suspended, glass-enclosed reading room that projects into the library’s great atrium space. The staircase wraps around a cone tipped at an angle, and as the two-story cone appears to unravel, it…
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Controversial Comfort Women Statue
St. Mary’s Square Chinatown From the moment of installation of this statue by Carmel artist Steven Whyte it has been controversial. The plaque that accompanies the statue reads: This monument bears witness to the suffering of hundreds of thousands of women and girls, euphemistically called “Comfort Women”, who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial…
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Gloria Victis
Civic Center 505 Van Ness Edmund G. Brown State Office Building Closed Weekends The statue was a project between the Hungarian Freedom Fighters Federation of San Francisco and the Honorable Ernie Konnyu, a former Representative of the California State Assembly. The statue portrays Hungaria, the Spirit of Hungary, and symbolizes the idea of everlasting hope…