Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Bernal Heights – Odonatoa

Posted by Cindy on October 7, 2011

Oct 072011

Holy Park Playground Holy Park Circle Bernal Heights Odonatoa by Joyce Hsu Bernal Heights is a wonderful area that has some of the cities best weather. This sculpture sits on top of a delightful park that has views of all around the city. Bernal had its origin with the 1839 Rancho Rincon de las Salinas y Potrero Viejo Mexican land grant It remained undeveloped, though, until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Built atop bedrock, the hill’s structures survived the temblor, and the sparseness of the development saved much of Bernal from the ravages of the firestorm that followed. The commercial Continue Reading

Visitacion Valley Community Center

Posted by Cindy on October 6, 2011

Oct 062011

243 Leland Avenue Visitacion Valley Community Center Artist: Victor Mario Zaballa A prolific and fascinating artist Victor Zaballa is an Aztec originally trained in aeronautical engineering in Mexico City. He has lived and worked in San Francisco for a number of years where he is a popular and respected member of the artist community. He works in every medium including cut paper, painting, tile, steel, wood, and wire sculpture, puppet theater, and music composition, performance and musical instrument invention and construction. His performing group “Obsidian Songs,” has been heard in numerous venues throughout California. He has had a kidney transplant and Continue Reading

Fire Station #44

Posted by Cindy on October 5, 2011

Oct 052011

Fire Station #44 Formerly #47 1298 Girard Street This piece is titled “Diagonal Relief” by Elizabeth Saltos. According to Elizabeth she creates sculpture from a continually evolving series of geometric configurations using a visual alphabet of shape, color and surface in dialogue with its architectural environs. This piece is on Firehouse #44. It was originally Firehouse #47 and is the oldest firehouse in the City of San Francisco still in use. The portion with the sculpture is a new section built in 1973. The older side was completed and ready to be occupied in 1913. The two-story brick building, designed by John Reid Continue Reading

Islais Creek Park

Posted by Cindy on October 4, 2011

Oct 042011

Islais Creek Park Quint, Third and Berry The Ohlone Indians were harvesting mussels, clams, and shrimp on the shores of Islais Creek long before Europeans arrived in 1769. The creek appeared on Mexican maps in 1834, named for Los Islais (is-lay-is), a hollyleaf cherry and favorite Indian food. On today’s map it is the gateway to (the former) Butchertown, Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhoods.In the 1850s Islais Creek provided fresh water to Franciscan friars from Mission Dolores and irrigated the produce that Portuguese, Italian, and Irish vegetable farmers grew in the Bayview district. The Gold Rush marked the start of the creek’s Continue Reading

Bayview/Hunters Point Muni Stop

Posted by Cindy on October 3, 2011

Oct 032011

Bayview/Hunters Point 3rd Street Light Rail Kirkwood/Oakdale Station The Marquis Pole Horace Washington was the artist for the third station. His work represents the tradition of shipbuilding and the history of WWII in the neighborhood. At the start of World War II the Navy recognized the need for greatly increased naval shipbuilding and repair facilities in the San Francisco bay area, and in 1940 acquired property on the waterfront and named it Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. The property became one of the major shipyards of the west coast. The first USS Pike (SS-6) was a Plunger-class submarine in the service Continue Reading

Bayview – Hunters Point Muni Stop

Posted by Cindy on October 2, 2011

Oct 022011

Bayview/Hunters Point 3rd Street Light Rail Project LaSalle/Palou Station The Marquis signpost The Canopy This station designed by Frederick Hayes deals with Afro-Centric issues. Hayes uses a kente cloth roof design and African language and cowrie shell symbols on the platform. Kente cloth, known locally as nwentoma, is a type of silk and cotton fabric made of interwoven cloth strips and is native to the Akan people of Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Cowrie shells, throughout Africa and South and North America, symbolize the power of destiny and prosperity. Spiritually, according to African legend, if you are attracted to cowrie Continue Reading

Hunters Point – Muni Stop

Posted by Cindy on October 1, 2011

Oct 012011

Hunter’s Point 3rd Street Light Rail Project Revere/Shafter Station A Second team led by Horace Washington created stops in the Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood. These artists attended many community meetings for input and direction about what kinds of concepts were desired for inclusion by neighborhood members. Many ideas were proposed including futuristic, ethnic, ecological and Victorian. Joe Sam was the developer of this one about birds. The Canopy Mosaics on the platform. Joe Sam makes a home on both coasts of the U.S. One in San Francisco and one in Connecticut. Here is what he says about himself on his website: Continue Reading

San Francisco’s Muni Stops

Posted by Cindy on September 29, 2011

Sep 292011

Cable cars have been synonymous with San Francisco since the 1800’s. We correct people all the time in the vernacular of cable car versus trolly, but, we have trolly lines too. Our muni system is just that. Muni covers much of the city, and many people that visit our town ride the vintage trolly cars along the embarcadero. For twenty years the muni system sought to expand its line from 4th and King streets (one block from our baseball park) along 3rd street to Candlestick park. It finally accomplished this feat. Originally envisioned as a simple rail line with minimal Continue Reading

Nob Hill – Resting Hermes

Posted by Cindy on September 28, 2011

Sep 282011

Nob Hill Corner of Powell and California This bronze statue “Resting Hermes,” is a remnant of the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition that sits outside the University Club on California Street in San Francisco. If you ride the cable car and hop on or off at the top of Powell street, walk over and take a look. He sits along the wall on the California side of the club, between Powell and Miles Street. The 300-lb bronze depicting the Greek god of merchants and shepherds – as well as travelers, translators, and some other things – was originally sent to San Continue Reading

Stencil Art

Posted by Cindy on September 27, 2011

Sep 272011

San Francisco All Around Town Stencils Stencils are a fun, down and dirty way to place art on the street. Most of their creators you will never know, but the creator of these is out in the open. Jeremy Novy began stenciling koi fish on the sidewalks, often on top of graffiti tags, to “beautify the area.” There are now more than 2,000 of his koi throughout the city, including commissioned ones at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Quan Yin Meditation Center, Cafe Flore and the hair salon Every Six Weeks. This was on a mailbox on Folsom Continue Reading

Richmond District – Rochambeau Playground

Posted by Cindy on September 26, 2011

Sep 262011

The Richmond District Rochambeau Playground 25th Avenue between California and Clement The artwork celebrates sports at Rochambeau Playground. Two concrete pillars clad in ceramic tile are topped by an 8-inch mosaic tennis ball and a 22-inch mosaic basketball. They mark the end of the handicapped ramp and the wall between the children’s playground and the blacktop courts. The work is by Johanna Poethig who has shown up numerous times in this website.

The Richmond – Speaking Stones

Posted by Cindy on September 25, 2011

Sep 252011

The Richmond District Richmond Recreation Center 251 18th Avenue Throughout the park is poetry cast into concrete benches and carved into stones. The artist, Seyed Alavi titled this piece Speaking Stones. It was to be a poetry garden with metaphors for health, contentment and community. Seyed Alavi received a Bachelor of Science degree from San Jose State University and a Masters of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute. Alavi’s work is often engaged with the poetics of language and space and their power to shape reality. The various concrete benches read from left to right : They stained Continue Reading

Playland Revisited

Posted by Cindy on September 24, 2011

Sep 242011

The Richmond District Corner of LaPlaya and Cabrillo Many people come to San Francisco and head to the Musee Mecanique. There the first person you encounter, either with your ears or with your eyes is “Laughing Sal.” Well she wasn’t always in a museum. Laughing Sal was originally at “Playland”. Playland (also known as Playland at the Beach and Whitney’s Playland beginning in 1928) was a 10-acre seaside amusement park located next to Ocean Beach at the western edge of San Francisco, along the Great Highway where Cabrillo and Balboa streets are now. It began as a collection of amusement Continue Reading

Richmond District – Fire Station #4

Posted by Cindy on September 23, 2011

Sep 232011

The Richmond District 41st Avenue at Geary Fire Station Number 4 This is one of my favorite fire stations in the city. There is something about its size, the fact that it is brick, and the position between two streets that just charms me. The Phoenix is by artist Lenda Anders Barth, and was installed in 1997. The inscription reads: This relief sculpture, inset into a brick wall in front of the station, depicts the legendary Phoenix – the mythical bird reborn from its own ashes whose image is also on the City’s seal. This beautiful teal bird is set Continue Reading

Marina District – Passage

Posted by Cindy on September 22, 2011

Sep 222011

Marina District Bay and Laguna Kent Roberts Passage I fell in love with this the moment I laid eyes on it. There is something so simple and yet amusing about this piece. It is 25 feet long and made of stainless steel. The piece is part of the city’s Civic Art Collection. The description states that it pays homage to ships that carried early settlers to the San Francisco Bay. During the Gold Rush, hundreds of people who arrived at the harbor abandoned their ships. These eventually had to be sunk and became the landfill on which the Marina District Continue Reading

North Beach Swimming Pool

Posted by Cindy on September 21, 2011

Sep 212011

North Beach Swimming Pool and Clubhouse Lombard and Mason Streets Artist Vicki Saulls was selected for this site-specific commission through the Arts Commission’s Public Art Program which, by city ordinance, allocates 2% of the construction cost of civic buildings, new parks, and other capital projects for public art. This is the entry door to the North Beach Clubhouse. “Locus” is a sliding sculptural door on the eastern side of the clubhouse adjoining the pool building. The surface of the metallic gray door depicts a stylized topographical map of the North Beach neighborhood. Although no locations are identified on the map, Continue Reading

St. Regis Hotel

Posted by Cindy on September 20, 2011

Sep 202011

SOMA St. Regis Hotel 3rd and Mission Streets This is by Raymond Saunders, an American artist born1934 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He lives and works in Oakland, California and is currently a professor of Painting at California College of the Arts, in Oakland. I found this description from a press release put out by the St. Regis: “The southeast façade of the historic Williams Building has been enhanced with an art glass transcription of a work on canvas by Oakland artist Raymond Saunders. An internationally acclaimed artist, Saunders is known for mixed-media paintings that are layered with fragmentary impressions and imbued with Continue Reading

Polk Street History in Murals

Posted by Cindy on September 19, 2011

Sep 192011

Tenderloin 1221 Polk Street This series is by Dray. This set of murals is on the side of Lush Lounge at 1221 Polk Street in San Francisco. When I spoke to Dray about these murals he relayed an article in the San Francisco Examiner that discussed the controversy regarding a series of murals that was to be scheduled in the neighborhood on Hemlock, just down the street. While Dray’s murals were not quite as controversial the Examiner stated “The Fern Alley mural proposal was far less contentious — the artist, Dray, proposed a visual timeline of Polk Street dating back to 1906. The Continue Reading

Woh Hei Yuen Park in Chinatown

Posted by Cindy on September 18, 2011

Sep 182011

Chinatown Powell Street Between John and Jackson Streets This is the most wonderful little city park. It is only a half block, but it is such an amazing little retreat. There are benches, green grass and a very small area for children to play. It even has two pieces of public art done in 2000. It is called Woh Hei Yuen Park. The one above is called Tectonic Melange. A 26-foot circular paving medallion composed of black, yellow and red granite depicts calligraphic Chinese characters based on a poem written by Wang Bo during the Tang Dynasty (650 to 676 B.C.E.) Continue Reading

SOMA – Man With Flame

Posted by Cindy on September 17, 2011

Sep 172011

SOMA Convention Plaza 3rd Street Between Howard and Folsom Man With Flame by Stephen de Staebler This little walk way offers a wonderful respite from the hectic goings on inside Moscone Center. There are lots of tables and chairs, wonderful public art, and a Starbuck’s if you are so inclined. I have copied the following directly from his New York Times Obituary. Stephen De Staebler, a sculptor whose fractured, dislocated human figures gave a modern voice and a sense of mystery to traditional realist forms, died on May 13 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 78. The cause Continue Reading

SOMA – Venus with Rope

Posted by Cindy on September 15, 2011

Sep 152011

SOMA Convention Plaza 3rd Street Between Howard and Folsom “Venus with Rope” Jim Dine 1986 Jim Dine has shown up in this site before. In 1962 Dine’s work was included, along with Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Dowd, Phillip Hefferton, Joe Goode, Edward Ruscha, and Wayne Thiebaud, in the historically important and ground-breaking New Painting of Common Objects, curated by Walter Hopps at the Norton Simon Museum. This exhibition is historically considered one of the first “Pop Art” exhibitions in America. These painters started a movement, in a time of social unrest, which shocked America and the Art world and changed Continue Reading

Soma – Pneumatic Dreamer

Posted by Cindy on September 14, 2011

Sep 142011

SOMA W Hotel 3rd and Howard Streets Pneumatic Dreamer Michael Stutz Stutz studied painting at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and York Street College of Art in Belfast, Ireland. He began his career in San Francisco, supporting himself designing merchandise displays for Macy’s. His commitment to public art grew out of work he did in New Orleans, designing and building large scale papier mache figures for the city’s Mardi Gras parades. Later he began using recycled materials to create sculptures that have been shown throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Pneumatic Dreamer is Stutz’s first work in bronze, and Continue Reading

Keith Haring

Posted by Cindy on September 13, 2011

Sep 132011

SOMA Moscone Center Corner of Howard and 3rd Streets This piece has become iconic in the city. It is viewed by anyone that is heading into the Moscone Convention Center. Keith Haring is controversial on his best days. Which is sad because he was a truly gifted artist who was passionate about facing up to discrimination of all types, and gave of himself freely to charitable work, children’s issues and causes he felt powerful about. The first time he had a showing at SFMOMA, this was the sign that stood outside: IMPORTANT PARENTAL ADVISORY:Some of these exhibitions contain artwork of Continue Reading

SOMA – Spider Pelt

Posted by Cindy on September 12, 2011

Sep 122011

SOMA Convention Center 3rd and Clementina Artist Dustin Shuler, who calls himself an “urban hunter of cars” created this work in 1985. Titled “Spider Pelt,” it is a mounted sculpture of a “skinned” red fiat spider. The Los Angeles artist has built his artistic career, on hunting cars, skinning them of their sheet metal exteriors, and arranging them into thin, flat compositions he calls “pelts. “Spider Pelt” created from a 1971 red fiat spider -was commissioned by the Arts Commission for the Moscone Parking Garage. The piece weighs 150-pounds. “Spider Pelt is on the garage’s south wall, where it is Continue Reading

Victoria Manalo Draves Park

Posted by Cindy 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 Continue Reading

Mohamed Bouazizi in Clarion Alley

Posted by Cindy on September 9, 2011

Sep 092011

The Mission District Clarion Alley These two murals are by Daniel Doherty. Clarion alley is a famous mural alley that has been around for quite a long time in the Mission District. Once an artist is given space, and as long as it is maintained it, pretty much belongs to the artist.. There is a committee that notifies the artist if the mural has been tagged or defaced. I chose this particular artist because of the timeliness of the message. Mohamed Bouazizi was the young man that gave spark to the riots in Tunisia. The man behind what much of Continue Reading

Sun Yat Sen

Posted by Cindy on September 8, 2011

Sep 082011

Chinatown St Mary’s Square Quincy, Pine, California and Kearny Streets Sculpted by Beniaminio Bufano This 12 foot statue is inscribed (in Chinese): Dr. Sun Yat Sen 1866-1925 Father of the Chinese Republic and First President Founder of the Kuo Min Tang Champion of Democracy Lover of mankind: Proponent of friendship and peace among the nations, based on equality, justice and goodwill Bufano has been in this blog before. His work usually used an easily-recognized style of glazed terra-cotta, a technique he learned from porcelain glazers while traveling in China. Also while in China, Bufano met and befriended the Chinese revolutionary leader, Dr. Sun Continue Reading

Chinatown’s Fire Station #2

Posted by Cindy on September 7, 2011

Sep 072011

Chinatown, San Francisco 1340 Powell Street Fire Station #2 When you are in the building trades you realize that building parts can be art too. For most people, however, they are just that, parts. In the case of this fire station, Al Wong has added art that is whimsical, appropriate, and yet truly probably missed by most people that walk by. This is etched out of the glass in the jut out on the left, when the sun is right it paints clouds on the ground below. The bay markers also reflect “clouds” Al Wong graduated with an MFA in Continue Reading

Laura Campos – No One is Illegal

Posted by Cindy on September 6, 2011

Sep 062011

The Mission District – San Francisco 24th Street and Capp This mural entitled “No One is Illegal” is by Laura Campos. Laura was born in Mexico and grew up in Texas. While young, and not yet legal she was called an illegal alien on a regular basis. When she did become legal she was still called an “alien”. This is the reason she tends to paint aliens. Her work has helped her work through her feelings for that word. She does not use spray paint, and the brushes she uses are exceptionally small so all her work takes a very Continue Reading

SOMA 1:AM Gallery

Posted by Cindy on September 5, 2011

Sep 052011

South of Market 1 AM Gallery Folsom and 6th Street 1 AM Gallery has been in this site before. Their new exhibition is entitled Dark Mater. What I love about the gallery is that they always do graffiti/murals regarding the current exhibit on the side of their building. I love the concept of just using black and white for this. The exhibit explores the darker side of the human psyche. Gathering the voices of eight emerging contemporary artists working across mediums, the aim is to examine and confront the mysterious and sometimes sinister side of human nature.

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