Tag: sculpture
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The Spirit of Detroit
2 Woodward Avenue Detroit, Michigan This stunning sculpture is the best-known piece of public art in Detroit. It’s location and presentation was well thought out. The backdrop was designed by the architectural firm of Harley, Ellington and Day, also responsible for the Veterans Memorial Building in Detroit. The sculpture itself is by Detroit area sculptor…
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Ethereal Bodies
San Francisco General Hospital 1001 Potrero Avenue Potrero Hill Parking entry on 22nd Street Titled Ethereal Bodies, this piece, done in 2015, is by Cliff Garten. It consists of nine undulating stainless steel sculptures lit by multicolored LED lights. The installation’s stainless steel rods range in height from 14 to 22 feet tall. The surface…
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Healing Hearts
San Francisco General Hospital 1001 Potrero Avenue Potrero Hill The pieces were all created by sculptor Tom Otterness who was born 1952 in Wichita, Kansas. He is a prolific public art sculptor who has been creating whimsical satirical pieces since the 1970s. * Otterness employs the “lost wax” process to cast his bronze figures, which range from…
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Moscone Park
Moscone Park 1800 Chestnut Street Marina District This Leatherback Sea Turtle and the Pink Short Spined Starfish in the playground of Moscone Park were gifts to the San Francisco Arts Commission from the Friends of Moscone Park These bronze sculptures were the work of Jonathan Roberson Beery. Jonathan Beery is a California native and studied…
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Shadow Kingdom
16th at Missouri Potrero Hill The plaque at the site reads: This artwork is inspired by the history of Mission Bay, a 5,000 year-old tidal marsh that was once the habitat of a rich array of flora and fauna. Growth of the city in the 19th century brought shipyards, warehouses and railroads and this part…
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Monarch
1600 Owens Mission Bay, San Francisco Cliff Garten Studio is internationally recognized for creating integrated public art projects which collaborate with urban design, architecture, landscape architecture and engineering to challenge the assumptions of how public places are built and used. Through a diversity of materials, methods and scale, the studio is committed to exploiting the…
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Anima by Jim Sanborn
1700 Owens Street Mission Bay, San Francisco This piece, in Mission Bay, is titled Anima, and is by American Sculptor Jim Sanborn (1945 – ). Sanborn is best known for creating the encrypted Kryptos sculpture at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, a piece of work that has captured the imagination of cryptologists around the world for years. He…
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Boulder Man
951 Chicago Avenue Oak Park, Chicago On the piers flanking the entry to Frank Lloyd Wrights 1898 architectural studio in Oak Park, Illinois, sit these two pieces, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and executed by Richard Bock. “Boulder Man” is the most valuable of Richard Bock’s work. He originally designed and modeled the piece to…
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Standing Lincoln
Off N. Lake Shore Drive near W. North Avenue Chicago This is one of the two sculptures in Lincoln Park that were bequeathed to Chicago upon the death of lumberman Eli Bates. This 12 foot tall figure known as the “Standing Lincoln” was the first of Saint-Gaudens’ statues of Lincoln. He received the commission for…
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Shakespeare in Chicago
N. Lincoln Parkway West and W. Belden Avenue Chicago According to the Chicago Parks Department: “When Samuel Johnston, a successful north side businessman, died in 1886, he left a sizeable gift in his will for several charities as well as money for a memorial to William Shakespeare in Lincoln Park. A competition was held to…
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Eli Bates Fountain
This whimsical fountain is known as both the Eli Bates Fountain and “Storks at Play”. Eli Bates was a Chicago lumberman who died in 1881. He bequeathed a fund for the commission of Standing Lincoln, also by Saint-Gaudens, and this fountain, both to be placed in Lincoln Park. Installed in 1887 it was a joint…
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Columbus Circle
Columbus Circle In front of Union Station Washington D.C. The fountain, which was co-created by Lorado Taft and architect Daniel Burnham, was influenced by a fountain designed by Frederick MacMonnies that was displayed at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. MacMonnies work depicted a figure of Columbia sitting on a ship with a…
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Fountain of Time
6000 Cottage Grove Avenue Chicago, Illinois Fountain of Time, or simply Time, is a 126 foot long sculpture by Lorado Taft, within Washington Park in Chicago, Illinois. The sculpture was inspired by Henry Austin Dobson’s poem, “Paradox of Time”. “Time goes, you say? Ah no, Alas, time stays, we go”. The sculpture includes Father Time, hooded…
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Fountain of the Great Lakes
Nichols Bridgeway Off E. Jackson and South Michigan Avenue Chicago Fountain of the Great Lakes or Spirit of the Great Lakes Fountain is an allegorical sculpture by Lorado Taft at the Art Institute of Chicago. The fountain was moved to this spot in the 1960s. Created between 1907-1913, the bronze fountain depicts five women arranged…
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Eternal Silence
The Eternal Silence, (also called Eternal Silence or Statue of Death) marks the grave of Dexter Graves, who led a group of thirteen families that moved from Ohio to Chicago in 1831, making them some of Chicago’s earliest settlers. Graves died in 1844, seventy-five years before the creation of the statue, and sixteen years before Graceland…
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Adam’s Memorial
Section E Rock Creek Cemetery Washington D.C. I visit the Adams Memorial whenever I am in Washington D.C. This hauntingly beautiful sculpture is one I can never tire of. It is by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The Smithsonian probably writes about it best: Marion Hooper “Clover” Adams, wife of the writer Henry Adams, committed suicide in…
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The Marquette Building
The Marquette Building 140 South Dearborn Chicago These four bronze plaques sit above the entry doors of the Marquette Building in Chicago. They were done in 1895 by Henry MacNeil (1866-1947). At the time MacNeil shared a studio in the building with painter Charles F. Browne. Louis Jolliet and Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, were…
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The Lost Art of Leo Lentelli
San Francisco Main Library Now the Asian Art Museum Sometime between 1915 and 1917, Leo Lentelli was commissioned to design five large sculptures for the facade of the Main Public Library, now the Asian Art Museum. In a March 1918 article titled “An Expression of Decorative Sculpture – Leo Lentelli,” published in The Architect and…
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The Art and Architecture of San Francisco’s Universalist Church
1187 Franklin The modern portion the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco was built in the 1960s and designed by Charles Warren Callister of the architectural firm of Callister, Payne, and Rosse. The church is a grand display of architectural beauty in its simplest form. The highlight of the Church is the elegant and historic…
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Hell Mouth on Golden Gate Avenue
The corner of Franklin and Golden Gate This interpretation of the Pallazo Zuccari on the Spanish Steps in Rome, Italy once graced the front entry to San Francisco Italian restaurant Vivande. Vivande was the run by Chef Carlo Middione. Middione lost his sense of taste and smell in an auto accident in Spring of 2007 and…
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The Knot
Santiago de Cuba 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…
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Clouds in the Mountains
Santiago de Cuba 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…
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Rain in the Mountains
Santiago de Cuba 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…
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S. T. by Mario Trenard
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…
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Jose Maria Heredia – One of Cuba’s Great Poets
Traffic Circle at Avenue Manduley and Calle 11 Santiago de Cuba According to Cuba Facts Jose Marie Heredia y Heredia was born in Santiago de Cuba on December 31 1803, and lived a short thirty-five years, spending most of his adult life in exile. In 1818 he enrolled in the University of Havana as a law…
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Jose Marti by Alberto Lescay
Santiago de Cuba José Julián Martí Pérez (January 28, 1853 – May 19, 1895) is a Cuban national hero. Martí is considered one of the great turn-of-the-century Latin American intellectuals. His written works consist of a series of poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and even a children’s magazine. He wrote for numerous Latin American…
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Art at the Merchant Exchange Building
465 California Street Financial District As you enter the lobby from the California Street side of the Merchant’s Exchange Building you will be greeted by many of San Francisco’s founders. These ceramic/clay sculptures are each about 36″ x 24″ and were sculpted by Mark Jaeger of Marin County. Mark was born in San Francisco and…
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The Lone Sailor
Golden Gate Bridge Vista Point Marine County Side This statue, in the center of Vista Point on the Marin County side of the Golden Gate Bridge, is a replica of the U.S. Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. by Stanley Bleifield The Lone Sailor, represents a sailor’s last view of the West Coast as he…
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Rosa La Bayamesa
Holquín, Cuba This statue is of Rosa Maria Castellanos,(1834-1907) created by Santiago de Cuba sculptor Antonio Lescay. Rosa La Bayamesa was a 36 year old daughter of slaves, a nurse and organizer of field hospitals during the Ten Years’ War, which was the beginning of the attempt for Cuba to escape Spanish rule. Bayamesa refers to the…
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Aplique da Parete
535 Mission Aplique da Parete – Gordon Huether – 2014 This piece is a pattern of dichroic and mirrored glass mounted to a stone backing. The piece extends through the lobby to the exterior. This and The Band are intended to enliven Shaw Alley. Shaw Alley is a public right-of-way that has been closed to…