Metal Sculpture – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Prevailing Winds

Posted by Cindy on February 9, 2021

Feb 092021

February 2021
1500 Mission Street

“Prevailing Winds” by artist Catherine Wagner . Catherine is a San Francisco-based artist, known best for her conceptual photography. Wagner’s work often involves extensive research and, in this instance, she studied Bay Area wind patterns and then laser cut the resulting cartographic data onto eight aluminum panels. Lining the South Van Ness sidewalk of the 1500 Mission Street project, these functional sculptures have arrow-shaped holes and rectangular notches, which both help mitigate the wind and add poetry to the urban landscape. Ms. Wagner is a Professor of Studio Art, as well as the Dean of the Fine Arts Division at Mills College.

The eight panels were manufactured by Gizmo SF.

This is just one of several pieces of artwork at 1500 Mission Street.

The Project Sponsor is required to provide public art valued at 1% of the construction cost of the building. The Site Permit indicated a construction cost of $200,000,000, so the Project Sponsor must spend at least $2,000,000 on the art program. The Project Sponsor has dedicated a budget of $2,206,968 which equals approximately 1.1% of the total construction cost.

Red Gothic

Posted by Cindy on March 28, 2018

Mar 282018

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 San Francisco. Aristides Burton Demetrios (1932- ) was born and raised in Massachusetts. His father, George Demetrios, was a classical sculptor, trained by Bourdelle, a student of Rodin. His mother, Virginia Lee Burton was the renowned author and illustrator of children’s books, including Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and The Little House, for which she won the Caldecott prize. After graduating from Harvard College, Mr. Demetrios spent three years as an officer in the Navy. In 1963, he won his first national sculpture competition when his proposed design was selected for a major fountain commission on the campus of Stanford University (The White Memorial Fountain: “Mem Claw” ). Shortly thereafter, he was chosen to be the sculptor for a public art commission in Sacramento in front of the County Courthouse; subsequently, he was selected by David and Lucille Packard to design and fabricate the sculpture to grace the entry to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

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The Park the People Built.

Alice Aycock at the SFPL

Posted by Cindy on March 18, 2018

Mar 182018

San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin Street
5th Floor

1996 Aluminum and structural steel with painted steel sheathing, approximately 24′ high x 32′ long x 20′ wide

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 sheds fragments of false or imaginary stairs.

A second element, the Cyclone fragment, is suspended in the adjacent atrium and functions as a ghost projection of the spiral stair. If the stairs suggest knowledge unfolding, the Cyclone symbolizes knowledge in its most dynamic and transitional state. For the artist, her work in the library is the culmination of years of ongoing dialogue with the architect James Ingo Freed.

Alice Aycock Aycock was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on November 20, 1946. She studied at Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1968. She subsequently moved to New York City and obtained her Master of Arts in 1971 from Hunter College, where she was taught and supervised by sculptor and conceptual artist Robert Morris.

Rain in the Mountains

Posted by Cindy on March 10, 2016

Mar 102016

Santiago de Cuba

Lluvia en la Cordellera – Rain in the Mountains by Rene Negrin 2010

In December of 2010, the city of Santiago de Cuba held its first Rene Valdes Cedeño Public Sculpture Symposium, an homage to an artist and teacher who authored works as important as the Cuba’s Abel Santamaria Monument.

Sponsored by the Caguayo Foundation and the Advisory Council for the Development of Public Sculptures and Monuments, the symposium seeks to promote sculpting in marble and metals.

The second Symposium was held in November of 2013. This sculpture is a result of the first symposium.

Rene Negrin was born September 28, 1949. He is a consulting Professor of Artes Plasticas at the Superior Institute of Art in Cuba.

In this situation Artes Plasticas is not necessarily a literal translation to Plastic Art. The term has also been applied more broadly to all the visual (non-literary, non-musical) arts (such as painting, sculpture, film and photography).

Negrin studied at the National School of Art, the Superior Institute of Art and has a master of art with a specialty in sculpture.

He is a member of the Writers and Artists Guild of Cuba and the Association of Artes Plasticas.

Germinal*

Posted by Cindy on April 22, 2015

Apr 222015

Eulises Niebla born in 1963 in Matanzas Cuba, studied at the Escuela Provincial de arte in Matanzas, Cuba from 1975-1979, He then went on to the Escuela Nacional de Arte (ENA) Havana from 1980-1984 and then to the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA). in Havana from 1984-1989

A contemporary Cuban artist Niebla works with industrial materials to create geometric three-dimensional objects, which are then painted in bright colours. These objects have been likened to the forms in children’s playgrounds and belong to an established constructivist tradition in Latin America that pushes the boundaries of the art object and encourages the spectator to participate in the work.

The Caguayo Foundation, created in 1995 is responsible for much of the public art in Santiago de Cuba through an annual symposium. This piece was part of the 2010 symposium.

The piece was titled Germinal, however, that has no meaning. It is possible that it was a typo, as often happens in these situations, it could be titled Germinar, which means to germinate.

Arco

Posted by Cindy on April 22, 2015

Apr 222015

Arco by Jose Villa Soberon

In December of 2010, the city of Santiago de Cuba held its first Rene Valdes Cedeño Public Sculpture Symposium. Sponsored by the Caguayo Foundation and the Advisory Council for the Development of Public Sculptures and Monuments, the symposium seeks to promote sculpting in marble and metals. Arco was a result of the 2013 Symposium, the pieces that came out of the project are put around Santiago de Cuba.

Jose Villa has two pieces in Havana that have been in this website before and that you can read about here.

Santiago de Cuba native José Ramón Villa Soberón ( September 2, 1950) is particularly known for his public sculptures around Havana. He studied at the Escuela Nacional de Arte (The National School of Art) in Havana, Cuba and the Academy of Plastic Arts in Prague. He is a professor at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana.

Are Years What? #7 of 8

Posted by Cindy on July 18, 2013

Jul 182013

Crissy Field

Are Years What? (for Marianne Moore) – 1967

“Are Years What (for Marianne Moore)”, is the first sculpture Mr. di Suvero made entirely with steel I-beams. Its main feature is a steel V-shaped angle that hangs and swings freely in space, counteracting the solidity of its two vertical and four sprawling diagonal beams. (The tall beam from which it hangs—itself held in place by thin cables—is 40 feet long.)

Are Years What is part of the Hirshhorn Museum Collection.

What Are Years?
By Marianne Moore

What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt,—
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourages others
and in its defeat, stirs

the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.

So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.

Dreamcatcher first in a series of 8

Posted by Cindy on July 10, 2013

Jul 102013

Crissy Field

In light of the closing of SFMOMA for its expansion, the museum is placing art “all around town”.

This exhibit of EIGHT of Mark Di Suvero’s massive metal sculptures is the first of the series. As much as I love and respect the curators of the SFMOMA, I have always felt that they never quite understood the subtleties of culling an exhibit down to its finer points.

This retrospective is no different. It is the opinion of this writer, that large sculpture should either overwhelm its environment so that it becomes the focal point, or is overwhelmed by its environment so that the eye focuses on the piece. In the case of this exhibit the sculptures not only compete with the background of road construction, but with each other.

None-the-less, local boy makes good is the point of this exhibit and it is well worth the visit if you are given the opportunity.

This piece is titled Dreamcatcher. Dreamcatcher is 55 feet high and normally resides at Storm King in New York. The piece was done from 2005 to 2012. There are four unusually high and symmetrical tilting beams joined at the top, where they blossom into an interlocked array of cut-out steel circles. Held horizontally to a stainless steel spire in the middle and above the circles is a giant hand of four splayed similar beams, joined at one end, which blow freely in the wind, “catching dreams”.

Storm King is one of America’s finest outdoor art galleries, and a space where large sculpture is given its true due by the vast open spaces that surround each piece.

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 baseball field, children’s play areas, and a small community garden. Open since 1940 the park was in need of a complete renovation. This renovation, a three year project, was funded to the tune of $14 million through the 2008 Clean and Safe Neighborhood Parks Bond.

Fire, Air, Earth and Water

Posted by Cindy on October 18, 2012

Oct 182012

Helen Willis Park
Broadway and Larkin

These columns, titled Fire, Air, Earth and Water were done in 2004 by San Francisco resident, Amy Blackstone. Amy has several pieces around the Bay Area.

Excerpt from a March 6, 2004 SF Chronicle piece about Amy Blackstone: “I love gardens. To me, especially in an urban setting, a garden is kind of magical and the gateway is kind of a trumpet announcement.” Gates are one of Blackstone’s specialties.

These pieces are made with steel, fiberglass and patina. The pipes were donated by Naylor Pipe Company. They were commissioned by the SFAC for the Rec and Park Department in the 2006-07 budget for $36,000.