The Tenderloin – Police Department

 First Person Plural by Anders Barth  Fired Clay Glaze

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(Lenda) Anders Barth has another piece of ceramic work on the Richmond District fire department.

First Person Plural is an 8 x 24 foot, hand-carved and glazed tile mural on the Jones Street wall of the Tenderloin Police Station. The entire mural is comprised of 188 large tiles and numerous, smaller brick forms. Silhouettes of thirty-five people of different ages and races are depicted at work and play. Interspersed between them are animals typically found in the Tenderloin neighborhood—cats, dogs, pigeons and seagulls. The whole is framed by a formal border of gray tile in a repeated pattern of the ‘eternal wave’. Bisecting the rectangle is a column of unglazed red bricks. Some of the bricks have a smooth surfaces, while others are imprinted with different personal pronouns representing the range of ways in which people define themselves—I, we, me, you, us, them, etc…. At the base and top of the column are deep blue tiles filled with white stars. The four corners of the mural are highlighted with tiles containing the familiar 7-pointed star of the Police badge set against a field of blue.

According to artist Anders Barth, “First Person Plural” refers to the interconnectedness of the people and animals that live, work, walk and travel through the Tenderloin every day. Each component of the mural seeks to directly or symbolically celebrate the individuals and community that define the Tenderloin. The details of the carved relief figures capture personal gestures and specific activities like playing ball, walking arm-in arm, shopping, dancing, etc. Each figure is recognizable as an individual while simultaneously serving as a universal type in which we can see ourselves. Only one figure is based on a real person, a neighborhood and Task Force icon, the late Police Sergeant Kenny Sugrue. He is depicted in uniform riding his bike in the lower left-hand corner of the mural.

Anders Barth spent considerable time in the Tenderloin, observing and talking to people. As an outsider, she sought to identify a defining characteristic for this culturally eclectic and rapidly changing neighborhood. She decided that the people themselves, in their great variety, were its most recognizable asset. Each person has a relationship to the others that can be described by a pairing of pronouns: I-Them, She-He, We-You. Each person is part of the whole, and is needed to make the whole, just as many bricks are needed to make a wall, and stars make up the sky.

The motifs found in the mural are drawn from the surrounding architecture of the Tenderloin. The red brick creates an aesthetic link to nearby Father Boeddeker Park. The geometric pattern of the ‘eternal wave’, symbolizing the ebb and flow of life, can be found on several buildings in the area, most notably at the first home of the Tenderloin Police Task Force, the Hibernia Bank building on Jones Street. (Now an abandoned building)

The art at Tenderloin Police Station was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission for the San Francisco Police Department. The commission is a result of the city’s percent for art ordinance, which provides for an art allocation of 2% of the cost of construction of new or renovated city structures.