Palega Park
500 Felton
Portola District
In November of 2013 eighty year old Palega Park underwent a $21.2 million Restoration.
The Park’s new clubhouse features a mosaic mural by Kelly Ording commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission through the city’s two-percent-for-art ordinance. Located behind the clubhouse’s portico windows and visible from the street, Windmills pays homage to the Portola’s past as the center of the city’s commercial flower industry. The mural cost $127,400.
According to Ording, “This mural contains four main elements that I found fascinating when researching this neighborhood; the wind, the windmills, the greenhouses and the fertile land. I used these elements to create an image of how this neighborhood may have once looked; calm and peaceful, yet, alive.”
The windmills and greenhouses featured in the mural were once abundant in the Portola District. The mural depicts three types of flowers, which were selected by the artist because of their specific meanings to the area. The California Poppy represents resilience and beauty, the Maltese Cross reflects the diversity of the people who call the neighborhood home, and the Rose recalls a time when the Portola’s many nurseries supplied cut flowers to the city.
Kelly Ording a San Francisco, Bay Area born artist received her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2000
You have so many wonderful mosaics there!