Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

The San Francisco Mint

Posted by Cindy on December 9, 2012

Dec 092012

The United States Mint in San Francisco, affectionately known as the Granite Lady, stands today as a result of the California Gold Rush. When gold was discovered in 1848 at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California, the great gold rush began, and with it, a need for financial institutions. A mint was necessary to convert the miners’ gold into coins. Without a mint in California, all gold was shipped to Philadelphia for coining, a dangerous and expensive effort. On July 8, 1852, President Millard Fillmore signed an act authorizing the building of a mint in the state of California. The California legislature Continue Reading

Aero #8 by Moto Ohtake Spinning in the Richmond

Posted by Cindy on December 7, 2012

Dec 072012

Aero #8 by Moto Ohtake Spinning in the Richmond

851 27th Avenue Richmond District * Aero #8 by Moto Ohtake – 2012 – Stainless Steel Inspired by the natural elements on both macro and microscopic levels, aero #8 is a self-contained wind driven system that creates an infinite number of movements in response to changes in weather patterns. Moto Ohtake was born in 1952 in Tokyo Japan. He holds a BFA from Nihon University in Tokyo, Japan, a BFA in sculpture from the Academy of Art College and an MFA in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institue. He is presently an instructor in sculpture, three dimensional design and Continue Reading

StreetSmARTS covers the History of Bayview

Posted by Cindy on December 6, 2012

Dec 062012

StreetSmARTS covers the History of Bayview

Palou and 3rd Street Bayview Titled the History of Bayview this is a 2011 Street SmArts mural by Bryana Fleming. Panel 1 and 3: Originally dominated by grassland and tidal marshland, Bayview-Hunters Point has a unique history for its transformation into an urban industrial neighborhood while segregated from the metropolitan area. Slaughterhouses and their associated industries in the 1800s and shipbuilding in the 1900s drove its urbanization. Panel 2: Constructed in 1888, the Bayview Opera House Ruth Williams Memorial Theatre (known affectionately as “the Opera House” or the “BVOH”) is located at 4705 Third Street in the heart of the Bayview Continue Reading

Mosaic Planter at Beautiful McLaren Park

Posted by Cindy on December 5, 2012

Dec 052012

Mosaic Planter at Beautiful McLaren Park

McNab Lake Wayland and University Street John McLaren Park Monica Treanor was educated in Trinity college, Dublin, Ireland where she graduated with a PhD in Environmental Sciences. She has worked as an ecologist on all seven continents. Her experiences stretch from the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific, living on a uninhabited island to the frozen Antarctica where she was the ecologist on board a tall ship expedition. Monica’s passion for the environment and her extensive knowledge of the fine, intricate details of nature are delightfully exposed in her work as a mosaic artist. She first began her training as an apprentice Continue Reading

Fire at Fire Station #24

Posted by Cindy on December 4, 2012

Dec 042012

100 Hoffman Castro/Cole Valley * Fire by Jaap (Jacob) Bongers – 1993 Jaap Bongers was born in Stein, Holland and studied at the Jan Van Eyck Academie of Fine Arts and the Stadsacademie of Fine Arts, both in Maastricht, Holland. In addition to his travels to Africa, Bongers also visited the United States for the first time in 1985 and settled permanently in San Jose in 1987. This piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Art Commission for $14,000. The words are ways to say fire in several other languages. Api – Indonesian Apoy – Ilocano/Filipino Feu-French Feuer-German Fuego-Spanish Fuoco Continue Reading

Street SmArts Mural in Bayview

Posted by Cindy on December 3, 2012

Dec 032012

Palou and 3rd Streets Bayview * * This mural (done in 2010) by Briana Fleming is part of the Street SmArts program of San Francisco. A collaboration between the San Francisco Arts Commission and SF Department of Public Works started in 2010, the program connects established urban artists with private property owners who own buildings with walls that are graffiti hot spots. Artists create vibrant murals on the walls and buildings become a canvas for art enjoyed by all. The outcome is a phenomenon of reduced incidences of graffiti tagging on the properties. Like many artists, Bryana Fleming is a product of her surroundings. Continue Reading

Tuzuri Watu

Posted by Cindy on December 2, 2012

Dec 022012

3rd and Palou Bayview This mural was painted by Brooke Fancher in 1987. It is titled Tuzuri Watu (Swahili for “we are beautiful people”). It is a tribute to Afro American culture inspired by black women writers. The design shows scenes of black peoples’ lives, rural and urban, with a strong emphasis on community and family life. Quotations from the works of five black women authors appear throughout the mural. Fancher explains her choice of location and topic by saying that “A lot of people don’t even know about black women writers. Their work is part of the self-affirmation of Continue Reading

Lenora LeVon Riley Struts her Stuff

Posted by Cindy on December 1, 2012

Dec 012012

Palou and 3rd Streets Bayview * Lenora LeVon Riley was a fashion designer from San Francisco whose work was prominently displayed in Ebony and Jet Magazine. Bryana Fleming is a native to the Bay Area who resides in Mill Valley, California. Both of her parents were working artists, and she instantly became interested in art from a young age. (Her father was a storyboard artist and her mother, a fine art painter.) Bryana attended the California College of the Arts from 2000-2004, receiving a BFA in illustration

Freeway Art – Its Time has Come

Posted by Cindy on November 30, 2012

Nov 302012

Highway 101 -280 Interchange Street Level Freeway stantion paintings are starting to pop up around the country, this is the first one in San Francisco. The artist is Cory Ferris and the work was done in 2011. According to a June 2012 article on SF Gate by Sam Whiting: Cory Ferris is a 19-year-old who was a senior at Mission High School when she got the commission. “I’m just really happy that I get to have my art on a column,” she says, unaware of its larger historic significance: This might mark the first time Caltrans has permitted an artistic interpretation on Continue Reading

Sunset Playground’s New Fencing

Posted by Cindy on November 29, 2012

Nov 292012

2201 Lawton Sunset District Sunset Playground This piece was commissioned by the SFAC for $70,000. The artist selected was Bryan Tedrick. Brian is a local boy, born in Oakland, he holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. He is a prolific and very versatile metal sculptor. These five sculptural elements were inspired by the Sunset District’s setting sun and plentiful wind. Sunset Playground is a four acre park that occupies a full city block between 28th and 29th Avenues, at Lawton and Moraga. In addition to a recreation center, the site has two tennis courts, a basketball court, a Continue Reading

Fish are swimming near Ocean Beach

Posted by Cindy on November 28, 2012

Nov 282012

39th and Ortega Ortega Library Ocean Beach Wowhaus consists of artists Scott Constable and Ene Oseraas-Constable. These two artists were also responsible for the Sunnyside Menagerie at the Sunnyside Conservatory here in San Francisco. Located near the entrance of the library, the artwork features a duo of large-scale, glass mosaic fish sculptures. The sculptures represent a silver Forage Fish and a vermillion Rockfish, two species that swim in the waters just off Ocean Beach that have played a vital role in the natural and cultural history of the region. The artwork’s title, Abundance, speaks to the concepts that inspired the Continue Reading

La Madre Tonantsin

Posted by Cindy on November 27, 2012

Nov 272012

3495 16th Between Sanchez and Dehon Castro District Colette Crutcher is a multi discipline artist. Her career began with painting and printmaking, but now covers a broad spectrum, 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. According to Collete’s website: This mural is a renovation of La Madre Tonantsin, a similar mural I painted there in 1991. The original fence was rotting, and along with it the mural. A grassroots fundraising campaign, helped by a grant from Precita Continue Reading

A New World Tree

Posted by Cindy on November 26, 2012

Nov 262012

Mission Playground and Pool 19th and Linda The New World Tree by Juana Alicia, Susan Cervantes and Raul Martinez – 1987 Juana Alicia describes the history and the mural itself on her website: The Mission Pool and Playground at 19th and Linda Streets has been a gathering place for the neighborhood since the 1930′s, when it was called the Nickel Pool, dubbed for its entrance price. Heavily graffitied in the 1980′s, it received a recreation center addition under the auspices of then-mayor Diane Feinstein. In 1988, I also collaborated with Susan K. Cervantes and Raul Martinez to paint the Continue Reading

A Heroine is Honored

Posted by Cindy on November 25, 2012

Nov 252012

1199 Mason at Washington Chinatown This is the entry to the Betty Ong Recreation Center in Chinatown. Betty Ann Ong was a flight attendant on American Airlines, Flight 11, the first airplane to become hijacked on September 11, 2001. Shortly after the hijacking began, Betty chose to be involved and make a difference by taking action to notify the American Airlines ground crew of the hijacking situation on board the airplane. Amid horrific danger, she stayed on the telephone for 25 minutes, relaying vital information that eventually led to the closing of airspace by the FAA for the first time in Continue Reading

Playthings of the Wind

Posted by Cindy on November 24, 2012

Nov 242012

1199 Mason at Washington Chinatown Betty Ong Chinese Recreation Center * Colette Crutcher’s mosaic mural, titled Playthings of the Wind, located in the playground of the new center, honors China’s 2000-year tradition of kite making. The mural depicts a young child, in traditional dress, holding a string attached to a butterfly kite, which is joined among the swirling clouds and sun by two other kites in the form of a “flying lizard” and bat. The mural continues onto an adjacent wall with a depiction of a dragon kite. Using a combination of stained glass, mirror, broken fragments of Chinese cookery Continue Reading

Art at the Richmond District Library

Posted by Cindy on November 23, 2012

Nov 232012

351 9th Avenue SF Public Library Inner Richmond * According to Scott Donahue’s website “these sculptures were designed to integrate into the very symmetrical renovate library landscape and building. Each dome is a relief sculpture map. On is the entire Bay Area and portrays a time in history from 15000 years ago to 100 years ago. The other is a close0yo view of San Francisco and the Richmond District from today. The interpretation exaggerates certain features like the mountains and hills and there are little reliefs and images depicting how virtually everyone arrived, or their relatives arrived, to be looking Continue Reading

Philosophers Walk on the Top of the World

Posted by Cindy on November 22, 2012

Nov 222012

Philosophers Walk on the Top of the World

John McLaren Park Mansell Drive and John F. Shelley Drive Excelsior and Visitacion Valley This is the view towards downtown San Francisco from John McLaren Park. Named for John McLaren, the superintendent of Golden Gate Park from 1887 to 1943, it is the second largest park in the city, after Golden Gate Park. Within McLaren Park’s 312 acres are lawns and planted gardens, a lake and a reservoir, a golf course, picnic areas, playgrounds, baseball diamonds, basketball and tennis courts, an indoor swimming pool, a soccer field, dog play areas, and an amphitheater. Rich in native plants and animals, the park Continue Reading

Mission Parade

Posted by Cindy on November 21, 2012

Nov 212012

* According to the artist, “The artwork is a playful interpretation of the Mission District’s diverse community and creativity. The procession’s cast of historical and imaginary characters evoke the neighborhood’s past while casting a cheerful look toward the future.” Mission Parade consists of 20 steel cut panels with 10 unique vignettes that repeat at both park entrances. Each panel features three fantastical characters. Some of the figures include a peg-legged pirate with a hook for a hand; a friendly one-eyed, one-toothed monster; an alligator with a top hat holding a flower; a fire-breathing dragon; a plant watering can following a Continue Reading

Artwork at Candlestick Park

Posted by Cindy on November 20, 2012

Nov 202012

Candlestick Park Gate A Jamestown Avenue St Francis by Ruth Wakefield Cravath – 1971-1973 The sculpture is a standing abstract figure representing St. Francis, the patron saint of San Francisco. The figure is made of concrete, but the face, torso, halo, cross, and lower section of his robe are made of colored pieces of Plexiglas. The halo is gold; the face and torso are turquoise; the cross is red, and the lower section of the robe is gold. The sculpture is installed on a low base in the middle of the bus area at the stadium. Ruth Wakefield Cravath is known Continue Reading

Willie Woo Woo

Posted by Cindy on November 19, 2012

Nov 192012

Willie Woo Woo Playground Chinatown Sacramento Street and Waverly Place Willie Wong (b:1926,d:2005) was a Chinese-American basketball player who was born and raised in Chinatown, San Francisco. Though Wong was only 5’5″ tall, he excelled, and was known as one of the finest Chinese-American basketball players in the 1940s. He was nicknamed Willie “Woo Woo” Wong by a local sportswriter because fans would shout “Woo Woo” when he scored. He starred at Poly and Lowell high schools in San Francisco before being recruited to the University of San Francisco (USF). After playing for USF, Wong continued to compete at various local and national tournaments as part of the San Francisco Saints team. Wong died on Continue Reading

Ghost Figures of the Financial District

Posted by Cindy on November 18, 2012

Nov 182012

580 California at Kearney Financial District This building sits on the corner of Kearny and California Streets. It has twelve untitled figures along the four top edges resembling ghost forms wrapped in long cloth garments. They were created by the sculptress Muriel Castanis from 1982-85 for a commission by the building architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee. The sculptures are made of molded fiberglass, selected due to its strength, light weight (1200-1300 lbs. each) and weathering properties. The three female figures in each tableau are reproduced on each of the four sides of the building. Muriel Brunner Castanis (September 27, 1926 Continue Reading

Driving Me Up A Wall

Posted by Cindy on November 17, 2012

Nov 172012

255 Third Street SOMA * * These three paintings are on the 3rd, 4th and 5th floors near the elevators of the Moscone Center Garage. Painted by Dan Rice in 1982 they convey the artist’s impression of motorized existence and depict the frenzy and banality of the daily commute. * * * Autoscape #3, Twin Spin, Driving Me Up a Wall by Dan Rice Dan Rice who received his MFA from UC San Diego said this about the paintings in 1982: ” “My paintings reflect my perceptions of the contemporary american way of life,’ Rice said. ‘They deal with symbols abstracted from our Continue Reading

Leaping Lizards

Posted by Cindy on November 16, 2012

Nov 162012

Myrtle and Larkin The Tenderloin This piece is by Satyr. Satyr has some other murals in the Haight. Satyr is known for his quality murals in San Francisco. He was brought up by The Master Piece Creators, one of the original aerosol art crews to bring concept walls to the city. Years into his graffiti career, Satyr became formally trained in illustration.

With Love and Respect for Moebius

Posted by Cindy on November 15, 2012

Nov 152012

Clarion Alley Mission District * This beauty is by BODE, CUBA and Stan153. With Love and Respect for Moebius. Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (8 May 1938 – 10 March 2012) was a French comics artist who earned worldwide fame, predominantly under the pseudonym Mœbius, and to a lesser extent Gir (used for the Blueberry series). He has been described as the most influential bandes dessinées artist after Hergé. (Herge is known to most in the U.S. as the author of TinTin) Among his most famous works are the Western comic series Blueberry he co-created with writer Jean-Michel Charlier, one of the first Western anti-heroes to appear in comics. Under the pseudonym Moebius he created a wide range Continue Reading

Native American Tongue

Posted by Cindy on November 14, 2012

Nov 142012

This piece is on the Laguna Side of Love in the Lower Haight. The artist is Krusch Rhoades. It is titled Native Tongue and was done in 2012. Krusch Rhoades, 33, spent the formative years of his youth in the “armpit of New York, the shoulders of New England and on the polluted teat of New Jersey.” Since then, Rhoades has travelled all over the country, and currently calls Santa Cruz his home. He has painted, drawn, molded, and scrawled for as long as he can remember. “Identifying myself as an “artist” at an early age somehow allowed me Continue Reading

Sex and Culture all in one Mural

Posted by Cindy on November 13, 2012

Nov 132012

1349 Mission Street at Grace SOMA This eclectic mural is being funded by the Center for Sex and Culture. According to their website: The Grace Alley Mural Project will be a highlight of San Francisco’s sexual history and culture– paying homage to our past sexual renegades, founders, activists and healers featuring some of our very own notorious and not so notorious mural artists. The Mural location is in an area of SF that is a mix of nightlife, non-profits, neighborhood residential, and mixed commerce– but it’s also an area in need of beautification to our public spaces. It will enhance the good Continue Reading

Alebrijes in the Haight

Posted by Cindy on November 12, 2012

Nov 122012

1301 Haight Street * * Jet Martinez, whose work is all over San Francisco is responsible for these colorful frogs. It is titled Bosque de Alebrijes. This is what Jet said on his Facebook page: Alebrijes are small animal figurines decorated with beautiful colors and patterns. They are really incredible on their own, but what is truly inspiring to me about them, is the fact that entire communities in Oaxaca will dedicate themselves to making this artform and have created an economy around the art they create. The art in turn, defines the community and creates the visual identity of Continue Reading

Honoring San Francisco Vets

Posted by Cindy on November 11, 2012

Nov 112012

Tenderloin Shannon Alley between Geary and O’Farrell These murals were done in 2011 around Veterans Day. They are part of the SF Vets Mural Project. According to their website: The alley will contain murals painted by veterans which will tell their story. The significance of this alley is that the art regarding veterans is very often done by artists that are not veterans. This alley will give veterans a permanent voice and presence within the community. The SF veterans alley will work with all veterans regardless of discharge status, gender, sexual orientation, theater of conflict or time period served. Any Continue Reading

Happy Herbs

Posted by Cindy on November 10, 2012

Nov 102012

1391 Haight Street This creature by Bode is on the side of the new Happy High Herb Shop in the Haight. Happy High Herbs is not your everyday head shop. Their website and sign promise to “promote herbs that bring happiness, bring wellness, increase horniness and bring contentment,” and they say their products “are marketed only in our physical shops, in a face to face situation, as alternatives to drugs of harm and addiction.” That said, you still have to be 18 to buy them. The company was founded in Australia by Ray Thorpe to offer safer alternatives to typical party drugs. The Haight Continue Reading

The Great White Way

Posted by Cindy on November 9, 2012

Nov 092012

My interest in the revitalization of Market Street came about when I wrote this piece for Untapped Cities about the Hibernia Bank Building. A friend who has a wonderful website about the architecture of Mid Market and other areas of San Francisco, titled Up From The Deep, introduced me to this project, and I feel so passionately about it and its success that I would like everyone to take the time to view the video, go to the website, and please, if you can, donate to the cause. This is the purpose of the project “In San Francisco, an unusual Continue Reading

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