Mona Caron – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Mona Caron in Noe Valley

Posted by Cindy on May 27, 2013

May 272013

3871 24th Street
Noe Valley

These two murals sit on the two sides of a parking lot on 24th Street

They are by Mona Caron who has been in this website many, many times.

According to Caron’s website:
The mural comprises two paintings that face each other over a small park and parking lot in the Noe Valley neighborhood. As a tie-in to the weekly farmer’s market that is held there, both murals feature giant botanical illustrations of vegetables and their leaves and blossoms. A scroll-like ribbon weaves around the vegetables. Wherever the ribbon is larger and appears closer, there are views of the neighborhood depicted within it. On the Eastern wall, these views show scenes from Noe Valley’s past (late 1930’s) and a positive future vision. On the western wall, there are two views of the present: one of the upper, Western part of 24th Street (Noe Valley), and one of the adjacent Mission District part of the same street.

Utility Boxes get Dressed Up

Posted by Cindy on January 18, 2013

Jan 182013

Duboce and Church
Castro

Mona Caron, who created the adjacent Bicycle Coalition mural on the back of the Safeway has added new touches to the Muni utility boxes on the sidewalk. On one side of the boxes, bicyclists entering the Wiggle are greeted by an illustrated flowing banner that lists the names of the streets that make up the route. On the other side, pedestrians are treated with a window to a re-imagined intersection featuring an uncovered Sans Souci Creek (which once roughly followed the path of the Wiggle).

The title of this box is Manifestation Station.

This photo, from Mona Caron’s website, shows exactly how the box was meant to be viewed.

Update: There was fire in this particular utility box, and the utility company has replaced it with a plain unpainted box, Mona’s beautiful creation is not to return. But you can enjoy her video about it here:

Cross the street, and you get lovely depictions of “weeds” sprouting from the ground. “They may be tiny yet they push through concrete. They are everywhere and yet unseen. But the more they get stepped on, the stronger they grow back.”…Mona Caron

Mona Caron has several murals throughout San Francisco.

These boxes are part of the Church and Duboce Track Improvement Project by the SFMTA

For a great day spent learning about the area and the mural check out ThinkWalks, if you don’t have time to actually take a walk, they have a wonderful full color description of the mural with facts, trivia, and lots of bits of San Francisco History in their store.

The Apexer and Mona Caron Collaborate on Market Street

Posted by Cindy on December 24, 2012

Dec 242012

1100 Market Street
Mid Market

This piece is by Ricardo Rickey, also known as the Apexer. The flower is courtesy of Mona Caron. Both Mona Caron and the Apexer have several murals around San Francisco.

The mural is on the outside of a pop-up store called the Trailhead. Sprouting from the community-conscious and creatively driven minds at The Luggage Store, this new six-month-long pop-up shop includes an itsy-bitsy parklet of purchasable seedlings from the Tenderloin National Forest, mouth-watering pastries and sips by the folks at Farm:Table, art installations, and a denim-dominated workspace-slash-store managed by Holy Stitch! Denim Social Club.

This is the back of the store, where sadly the mural has been tagged.

S.F. Bicycle Coalition Mural

Posted by Cindy 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.

Mona Caron Brings You a Garden

Posted by Cindy on October 13, 2011

Oct 132011

Noe Valley/Castro

Corner of Church and 22nd Streets

Botanical Mural by Mona Caron

This mural is immense. It is impossible to capture it in one photo and have any idea of what is being portrayed, so I have chosen to shoot it and show it to you in sections. Mona Caron has shown up several times in this website. This mural features greatly magnified botanical illustrations of locally occurring, small wild plants, both native species and non-native, invasive weeds.

This is a real eye catcher, the massive scale of the plants and insects is just spectacular.

The mural was painted in 2006. Ms. Caron received sponsorship from counterPulse as well as a $5000 grant for materials from San Francisco Beautiful and another grant from San Francisco’s Neighborhood Challenge Grant Program

Noe Valley — Market Street Railway Mural

Posted by Cindy on October 12, 2011

Oct 122011

Noe Valley

Eureka Valley

Market Street Railway by Mona Caron

300 Church Street near 15th

38′ X 12′

This is Mona Caron’s own description of this wonderful mural.

The Market Street Railway mural shows a 180-degree bird’s-eye view of San Francisco’s Market Street through time.

The connecting theme of the mural is the historic Market Street Railway: streetcars from the 1920’s are shown traveling the whole length of the mural, passing through different eras and historic events, from their heyday in the 1920’s, through many changes in the traffic composition of Market Street over the years, into the present, and into the future.

The mural seeks to showcase a wide range of uses that Market Street as a public space has been able to accommodate over the years. Examples shown include normal daily life in different eras, a formal parade, a mass demonstration, a free-form celebration, a violent police riot (all based on real events). This is meant as a tribute to the urban center as a place uniquely conducive to both individual and collective expression, a place where history is made and politics become visible. It is also an homage to San Francisco in particular, as a place where people keep inventing new ways of utilizing the streets they share, which is what makes this a vibrant and engaging place to live.

The last section of the mural is a fantasy of what Market Street might look like in the future, with day lighted creeks, new transit modes, repurposed buildings, etcetera.”

I love the clean Venetian canals in this last panel. The mural is dedicated to Dave Pharr, streetcar mechanic and preservationist. This is his obituary, he passed away in 2003.

David L. Pharr, who played a key role in the restoration and operation of the vintage streetcars that run on San Francisco’s Market Street, died Sunday of heart failure at the California Pacific Medical Center. Mr. Pharr, who lived in San Francisco, was 70.

Mr. Pharr was a self-taught expert on the interior workings of electric streetcars, trolley buses and diesel transit vehicles, and he applied it to restoring cable cars and streetcars in partnership with the city’s Municipal Railway.

Windows into the Tenderloin

Posted by Cindy on July 14, 2011

Jul 142011

Windows into The Tenderloin – San Francisco

Mona Caron

Wandering the Tenderloin area of San Francisco you will come upon this mural on the corner of Jones and Golden Gate by Swiss born, San Francisco based, artist Mona Caron.

The project was spearheaded by the North of Market/Tenderloin Community Benefit District. The design was inspired by research and meetings with neighborhood residents, communities and organizations over the summer and fall of ’08. The mural was painted in ’09, and dedicated in March 2010.

Standing on Golden Gate Avenue, this part of the mural shows a view looking North from Market and Jones Streets. This is one of the entry points to San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, and it is the location of the mural itself. It is sort of a documentary, showing how the artist found the area while she was working on the project. The ghost-like buildings that rise up into the sky represent the “ghosts of the past”, and each shows a building or a thing that actually used to exist in the location it is drifting from. Starting with the first one on the left, that was the Panorama, a 19th century place of Entertainment. Apparently, there were several in the neighborhood, they consisted of round or dodecagonal buildings that housed 360 degree murals that people paid to view. The large ghost in the right hand panel is the Paramount theater, an art deco building that was torn down in 1965.

This is a nod to the southeast Asian community of the Tenderloin.

On the Jones side of the building, the mural was painted right to left, so I will show the panels in that order.

This is another “ghost”. The reference is to the Black Hawk Jazz Club that was at the corner of Turk and Hyde Streets from 1946 to 1963, it has its own absolutely amazing history, with all the greats having played there at one time or another.

The wisp of smoke is coming from a saxaphonist, it ends up becoming the “ghost” hawk.

This parking lot still exists, and the painted sign on the brick wall is one of my favorites. It belonged to the Hollywood Billiards parlor. The tag in the far right hand corner is also, still on that building.

The front of that brick building now is covered with the Fear Head Mural.

The actual Hollywood Billiards Mural

This is the fantasy panel. It is an exact copy of the one next to it, only this time, what the artists and locals would like it to look like. Apparently, the artist was often asked why she was painting the same thing twice, and she told them the idea behind it and asked them what they would like it to be, she incorporated these ideas into this panel.

This is a garden. The “seeds” are small tiles, painted by children at the Boys and Girls Club across the street.

It is difficult to photograph in places like this, the amount of people walking by coupled with the enormous amount of cars that go through that intersection all make it hard to do this piece of work justice. The details are just unbelievable, and the work is truly some of the very best. I encourage you to visit Mona Caron’s website. There you will find very, very close up photos, as well as some much better overall shots. Also, take the time to go through the panels, she gives such a wonderful history of the Tenderloin.