Search Results : Jo Mora

San Francisco’s Holocaust Memorial

 Posted by on July 24, 2012
Jul 242012
 
Land’s End
Legion of Honor
Holocaust Memorial by George Segal

Time has taken its’ toll on this memorial.  The hand on the man above was not to touch the wire as they were electrified.

 *
 *
This memorial shows ten figures sprawled, recalling post-war photographs of the camps.  Placement of this work was controversial.  The choice to look over such a truly beautiful landscape recalling death in a rather graphic way was not acceptable to many.  The artist however, insisted that the viewer might consider death while facing towards the monument and life while facing towards the Golden Gate.
Segal’s work is executed in bronze and painted white. It has been the subject of grafitti, but Segal mentioned, at a 1998 conference at Notre Dame University, that he did not find this a problem since grafitti was a reminder that problems of prejudice have not been solved.
Segal’s ensemble of bodies is not random. One can find a “Christ-like” figure in the assemblage, reflecting on the Jewishness of Jesus, as well as a woman holding an apple, a reflection on the idea of original sin and the biblical connection between Jews and Christians, and raising the question of this relationship during the Holocaust.
The essential figure of the man standing at the fence is probably derived from Margaret Bourke-White’s famous Life Magazine 1945 photograph of the liberation of Buchenwald.
Another plaster version of Segal’s “The Holocaust” can be found at The Jewish Museum in New York.
George Segal (November 26, 1924 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter and sculptor associated with the Pop Art movement. He was presented with a National Medal of Arts in 1999.
Although Segal started his art career as a painter, his best known works are cast lifesize figures and the tableaux the figures inhabited. In place of traditional casting techniques, Segal pioneered the use of plaster bandages (plaster-impregnated gauze strips designed for making orthopedic casts) as a sculptural medium. In this process, he first wrapped a model with bandages in sections, then removed the hardened forms and put them back together with more plaster to form a hollow shell. These forms were not used as molds; the shell itself became the final sculpture, including the rough texture of the bandages. Initially, Segal kept the sculptures stark white, but a few years later he began painting them, usually in bright monochrome colors. Eventually he started having the final forms cast in bronze, sometimes patinated white to resemble the original plaster.
I am a very big fan of Segal’s work being moved to tears while standing in front of his “Bread Line” sculpture at the FDR Memorial in Washington D.C..

While these are at the Johnson Atelier. Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ so the background is different they are the same figures as the FDR Memorial.

Telegraph Hill – Coit Tower Murals

 Posted by on May 31, 2012
May 312012
 
Telegraph Hill
Coit Tower
WPA Murals
 
*

This law library has some interesting book titles when one looks closely.  There are the usual Civil, Penal and Moral Codes, but also the Law of Fresco Painting,  Counterfeiting, and Laws on Seduction.  A fun one is Martial Law by Brady, he was the VFW caretaker who watched over the project and lived in the Tower’s apartment.   The man on the left with the pipe is thought to be, patron of the arts, William Gerstle.

The Stock Exchange. Notice the downward movements of the market.

Federal Reserve Bank. It is thought that the curly haired blond is Fred Olmsted, assistant to Coit Tower artist John Langley Howard and later an artist in the program himself.

The artist on this panel was George Albert Harris (1913-1991). Harris was one of the youngest artist to work on Coit Tower. He was a student at the California School of Fine Art and later painted a mural in San Francisco’s Chamber of Commerce building. He was a professor in the art department of Stanford University.

Golden Gate Park – Atop Rainbow Falls

 Posted by on February 27, 2012
Feb 272012
 
Golden Gate Park
Atop of Rainbow Falls

 

 

 

 

 

Atop of Rainbow Falls is the Prayer Book Cross (also called Drake’s Cross). It is the tallest monument in the park at 64 feet with base. It is not easy to reach, and is well hidden by foliage. It was erected in Golden Gate Park in 1894 as a gift from the Church of England and was created by Ernest Coxhead. Made of sandstone, the cross commemorates the first use of the Book of Common Prayer in California by Sir Francis Drake’s chaplain on June 24, 1579.

On January 2, 1894 the New York Times was there to cover the dedication.

Ernest Coxhead was born in Eastbourne, Sussex, in 1863 and died in Berkeley, California March 27 1933. He was an English architect, active in the USA. He was trained in the offices of several English architects and attended the Royal Academy Schools, London. In 1886 he moved with his older brother, Almeric to Los Angeles where he established an independent practice. The Coxheads moved to San Francisco four years later and soon formed a partnership that lasted until Almeric’s death. Coxhead was an important and innovative designer who contributed to the woodsy regional design known as Bay Area Traditional.

The front of the cross reads:
Presented to Golden Gate Park at the opening of the Midwinter Fair January 1, AD 1894 – As a memorial of the service held on the shore of Drakes Bay about Saint John Baptists Day June 24 Anno Domini 1579 by Francis Fletcher priest of the Church of England and chaplain of Sir Francis Drake chronicler of the service.

The back reads:
First christian service in the English tongue on our coast. First use of Book of Common Prayer in our country – One of the first recorded missionary prayers on our continent. – There is a bottom panel, but it is too worn to read – something that often happens to sandstone structures.

Rainbow Falls was named for the colored lights that originally framed the falls at their dedication in 1930, this is the second of two artificial waterfall systems created in Golden Gate Park (the other being Huntington Falls in Stow Lake). Water is pumped from nearby Lloyd Lake, and circulated in the trench stream along JFK Drive. The very top of the falls is enclosed by fences, so no vantage point looking down over the cascade is possible.

Golden Gate Park – Roman Gladiator

 Posted by on February 23, 2012
Feb 232012
 
Golden Gate Park
*
 Roman Gladiator – 1881 by Geef

In Commemoration
of the
Inauguration
of the
California Midwinter International
Exposition
On this spot the first shovelful of earth was turned
with ceremonies on August 24th 1893.
(That first spade of shovel was turned by President William Howard Taft)

After the popular 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, many American cities planned similar expositions to highlight progressive business ideas. Golden Gate Park became the setting for a hastily assembled fair, the first such west of the Mississippi. With a theme of “California: Cornucopia of the World”, the Midwinter Fair, as it is commonly called showcased the ideal climate and abundance of the state. It opened on January 27, 1894, during the depths of winter.

Michael H. de Young, publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper and the fair’s instigator, had been a director and a national commissioner at large for Chicago’s Exposition. As president and director general of San Francisco’s fair, he hoped the event would help offset the financial panic of 1893 then in full swing. On July 9, 1893, the fair committee met with park commissioners. Park Superintendent John McLaren objected to handing over his newly created park to a profit making venture; he had intended the park to be a haven from just such things. But the highly political and willful de Young got his way. Ground was broken on August 24, 1893, and construction took just five months. The fair was delayed for 26 days, however, because a sever snowstorm delayed rail cars delivering the exhibits from Chicago. (The recycling of exhibitions saved time and expense.) When the fair opened, 77,248 people attended on the first day, and the seven-month term saw 2,219,150 visitors, a triumph. The fair closed on July 4, 1894.

Known as the Sunset City, the 160-acre exposition site boasted 180 structures representing all of California’s counties, 4 other states, the Arizona Territory, and 18 foreign nations. No one architectural style predominated at it had in Chicago, but rather an eclectic approach echoed California’s multicultural population.

The above was excerpted from: San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park: A Thousand and Seventeen Acres of Stories by Chris Pollock and Erica Katz.
The Smithsonian puts the artist of this piece as Georges Geef. A reader kindly pointed out that it was by Belgian artist Willem Geefs, whose first name in French is Guillaume.

Willem Geefs (1805 – 1883), also Guiliaume Geefs, was a Belgian sculptor. Although known primarily for his monumental works and public portraits of statesmen and nationalist figures, he also explored mythological subject matter, often with an erotic theme.

Geefs was born at Antwerp, the eldest of six brothers in a family of sculptors, the best-known of whom are Joseph Geefs (1808–1885, winner of the Prix de Rome in 1836) and Jean Geefs (1825–1860, and winner of the prize in 1846). Guillaume first studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp under the late–Flemish Baroque sculptor Jan Frans van Geel and his son, Jan Lodewijk van Geel, who was also a sculptor. He completed his training under Jean-Etienne Ramey at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and began exhibiting his work in 1828.
In 1829, Geefs traveled to Italy. When he returned to Antwerp, he began teaching at the art academy. During the 1830s, he executed the colossal work Victims of the Revolution at Brussels, as well as numerous statues and busts. In 1836, he married Isabelle Marie Françoise Corr, a Brussels-born painter of Irish descent known professionally as Fanny Geefs. In the mid-19th century, the sculptor Guillaume-Joseph Charlier was an assistant to him and his brother Joseph.
The Geefs family played a leading role in the craze for public sculpture that followed Belgian independence in the 1830s, producing several propagandistic monuments that emphasized a “historical continuity of the southern Low Countries in the new independent state

 

Civic Center – Simon Bolivar

 Posted by on January 26, 2012
Jan 262012
 
Civic Center
 Simon Bolivar
a 1984 “Gift from Venezuela to the People of San Francisco.”

Simón Bolívar, was a Venezuelan military and political leader. Together with José de San Martín, he played a key role in Hispanic-Spanish America’s successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire, and is today considered one of the most influential politicians in Latin American history.

 “With the passing of time your glory shall by exalted like the boundless shade of the setting sun”
Choquehuanca
Simon Bolivar, the liberator, was born in Caracas, Venezuela on July 24, 1783 and died in Santa Marta Columbia, on December 17, 1830.  His remains were returned to Caracas on December  17, 1842 for re-interment in the national pantheon.
The names of all the countries Bolivar liberated.
Simon Bolivar
Liberator of: Columbia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Venezuela and founder of Bolivia
He led the victorious army from Caracas to Potosi engagin in the conclusive battles
Boyaca, August 7, 1819
Carabob, June 24, 1821
Pichincha, May 24, 1822
Junin, August 6, 1824
Ayacucho, December 9, 1824

The President of Venezuela Dr Jaimie Lusinchi dedicated this monument on December 6, 1984.

This is a copy of a sculpture done by Adamo Tadolina in the 19th century. (The original is in Plaza del la Constitucion in Lima, Peru)  It was cast by Victor Hugo Barrenchea-Villega. Miriam Gandica Mora was the engineer for the base. It is owned by the City of San Francisco and administered by the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Tadolini, was the grandson of the sculptor Tadolini Petronio. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna.  In 1813, Tadolini traveled to Italy and attended the Accademia in Rome. There he made a plaster statue “Ajax cursing the gods”, with this he won a place as an assistant in Canova’s studio.

S.F. Bicycle Coalition Mural

 Posted by on January 11, 2012
Jan 112012
 
Castro/Duboce Avenue/Nob Hill
Back of
2020 Market Street

 

In 1972 BART built the Market Street subway, including Muni Metro. Along the Duboce Avenue tunnel entrance was a single eastbound lane for cars. During the 1994 closure of the street, for construction, The Bicycle Coalition worked to show that this street, which when used by both cyclists and cars was highly dangerous, was better served as a bikeway.  They were successful.

In 1995 Peter Tannen of the SF Bicycle Coalition obtained grant funds and Joel Pomerantz, then, co-founder of the bicycle coalition but now, leader of ThinkWalks, was recruited to produce a mural celebrating the first street closed to cars specifically for bicycles.
Joel convinced Mona Caron that she was capable of doing a mural and this was the result.  Mona has been in this site many times before, however, this was her first mural.  The mural is on the back side of the Market Street Safeway along the Duboce Bike Trail where muni heads underground.

According to Mona Caron’s website “At the center of the block long, 6,075 square foot mural is a depiction of the bikeway itself, (complete with its mural,) in geographic and historical context along the ancient streambed which cyclists follow to avoid hills. (The zig-zagging route is now known as “the Wiggle.”) To the east of the Wiggle is Downtown, to the West, residential neighborhoods, Golden Gate Park and, finally, the beach.

At the east end of the wall (downtown), Market Street’s bicycles are seen transforming into pedal-powered flying machines which rise out of the morass of pollution and gridlock. The scene alludes to the subversive nature of Critical Mass in particular, and generally symbolizes the freedom experienced by those with visions of alternatives to the status quo, represented in the mural by frowning corporate skyscrapers. Each of the flying contraptions trails its pilot’s dream of utopia in the form of a golden banner. The whole rest of the mural, westwards from this scene, starts in the shape of one of these golden banners, suggesting that this mural depicts just one of many ideas that make up our collective vision. Ours happens to deal with the issue of transportation, and the City depicted in the rest of the mural is a traffic and pollution free one, where the community takes back the space which now fragments it: the street.”

There is a fabulous, color photo, panel by panel, description of this mural, with stories, trivia and great bits and pieces of San Francisco history available at the Thinkwalks store.

*

*

***

*

Check out this post about the utility boxes across the street.

Victoria Manalo Draves Park

 Posted by on September 11, 2011
Sep 112011
 
SOMA
Folsom Street Between 6th and 7th
Victoria Manalo Draves Park

How many times do we walk by something every day, and forget that, yes it is art. These fence panels are on a park with a fascinating history.

Victoria “Vicki” Manalo Draves (December 31, 1924 – April 11, 2010) was an Olympic diver who won gold medals for the United States in both platform and springboard diving in the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. She was born in San Francisco. Born to a Filipino father and an English mother that met and married in San Francisco. She couldn’t afford to take swimming lessons until she was 10 years old and took summer swimming lessons from the Red Cross, paying five cents admission to a pool in the Mission district.

This 2-acre park is located between Folsom and Harrison Streets, and Columbia Square, and Sherman Avenue, and adjacent to the Bessie Carmichael Elementary School. In 1996, Mayor Brown and the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to allow for a series of property transfers between each agency to construct a new neighborhood park in the South of Market Area. In February 1997, the Board of Supervisors approved an exchange and lease agreement between the City and SFUSD to purchase the Bessie Carmichael School site for a new city park.

Bessie Carmichael school had been a very sad sight. It opened as a temporary school in 1954. Temporary trailers served as classrooms and they surrounded a blacktop area. It was very, very bleak, and lasted in that state for 52 years. The new school is modern, light and airy, and far more conducive to learning. 1 out of 5 students at Bessie Carmichael live in transitional housing: a shelter, residential hotel, or an over-crowded living condition. It was time the kids got a nice place to attend school.

The park is also a wonderful spot for children to come and play.

The panels are aluminum.  The were commissioned by the SF Arts Commission for the Park and Recreation Department in the 2006-2007 budget for $60,000.

The artist is Irene Pijoan (1953-2004) Born in Switzerland, she received her MFA from the University of California, Davis.  She was a professor at the San Francisco Arts Institute.

The creatures are of air and the sea and were dedicated to the artists daughter Emiko Pijoan Nagasawa.

Golden Gate Heights – Mosaics in San Francisco

 Posted by on June 30, 2011
Jun 302011
 

This amazing set of stairs is at 16th Avenue and Moraga in San Francisco.  The artists are Colette Crutcher and Aileen Barr.   This 163 step stairway was a collaboration of the Golden Gate Heights Neighborhood Association and the San Francisco Parks Trust.  Colette and Aileen led a group of over 300 volunteers in making 163 mosaic panels, with over 200 neighbors sponsoring handmade tiles that are embedded in the mosaic.  Colette and Aileen wrote an amazing book about the project, and you can buy it through a link on Colette’s website. I suggest you visit the stairs yourself, enjoy the mosaics and climb them, the view at the top is absolutely unbelievable!

 Newer Entries
error: Content is protected !!