Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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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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Grandview
7351 Route WI-39 Hollandale, Wisconsin This lovely and imaginative spot well in the countryside of Wisconsin is the creation of Nick Engelbert. In 1937, after his children were grown, Nick Engelbert began to build an elaborate arched porch of concrete around the front entrance of his farmhouse, ultimately covering every inch of the outside surface…
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A. D. German Warehouse
300 South Church Street Richland Center, Wisconsin The Albert Dell German Warehouse was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Mayan Revival style, between 1917 and 1921. While there is some controversy, it is believed that Wright was born in Richland Center, making this his only building in his birth town. The building is a…
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Wisconsin Historical Society
816 State Street University of Wisconsin, Madison Campus The building that houses the Wisconsin Historical Society (officially the State Historical Society of Wisconsin) is an excellent example of the classicism that followed the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago The organization is simultaneously a state agency and a private membership organization. Founded in 1846 and chartered…
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The State Capitol of Madison, Wisconsin
There is more information on the State Capitol of Madison than many I have seen. So I will just be touching on the art and architecture, rather than the history, of this magnificent building. It is important to point out that the people take very seriously that this is the building of the people, so…
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The Jacobs I House
Madison, Wisconsin 441 Toepfer Avenue Traveling with the VSA we had the true pleasure of touring the home of James Dennis, who graciously opened his home and took time to answer all of the questions we could possibly throw at him. The home is the first of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian homes and was originally…
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The Unitarian Meeting House
Madison, Wisconsin Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and completed in 1951, when Wright was 84 years old, this church is recognized as one of the world’s most innovative examples of church architecture and one of Wright’s more influential buildings. Despite being one of the more stunning buildings in Madison it was almost not to be.…
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Taliesin East
Spring Green, Wisconsin So very much has been written about Taliesin that it seems silly to write a post about it, but it has been on my list of architectural sights to see ever since my father took me to Taliesin West when I was 10. Taliesin was named in honor of FLW’s Welsh heritage,…
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Wyoming Valley School
Spring Green, Wisconsin Built in 1957, the building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who donated his design and 2 acres of land to the Wyoming School District in honor of his mother, Anna Lloyd-Jones Wright. It is the only public school ever designed by Wright. The story goes that the school had land close…
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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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A Duel Fought Over Slavery
The site is in an unamed park Off of Lake Merced Boulevard Access is available off of El Portal Way near number 79 Daly City just South of the San Francisco City Limits Just after the discovery of gold the State of California found that its citizens were as divided as the rest of the…
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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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Light as Art
Ellis Street Between Stockton and Powell The Ellis entry to the O’farrell Garage This light installation, titled Spine, is by Christopher Townsend Sproat, it was created in 1993. Sproat was born in Boston and studied art at Boston University, the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, and Skohegan School of Fine Arts. He has created…
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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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Aero Memorial
Philadelphia has the largest collections of Public Art in the United States and much of it can be viewed with an audio tour I was particularly drawn to this bronze sphere which sits opposite the main entrance of the Franklin Institute and is dedicated to aviators who died in World War I. Inscribed with the…
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