La Principessa Errante 365

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, February 24, 2012

2012-02-24T06:28:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Park

This is the Pool of Enchantment, and I am sure it is because of the turtles, but it is my most lasting memory of the de Young from my childhood. This pool sat between the two circular stairway entries to the old de Young Museum. You could sit on the sides in the sun and people (or turtle) watch all day.

The pool is now on the east side of the entryway, and looks to need of a little gardening.

The Pool of Enchantment actually preceded the Museum by a few years. Donor Marie Becker, widow of banker Bernard Adolph Becker, originally proposed using her $42,000 bequest to rebuild the Sweeny Observatory on Strawberry Hill. The park commission rejected this proposal but struck a compromise and applied the funds to create the Pool of Enchantment in 1917. M. Earl Cummings (who has appeared in this blog before) sculpted the Native American boy playing a flute and the two mountain lions in the center. Architect Herbert A. Schmidt designed the carved granite stonework.

This work consists of four parts, the young man playing a reed flute, the cats listening, the island of vegetation, and the pool (The Pool of Enchantment).

The animals are lifelike bronze statues of native California mountain lions. The young man does not look like any particular person or ethnic group, portraying the better nature common to all humanity. Since the sculpture was first placed in 1894, the ferns and reeds have had to be replanted, but the original boulders and turtle-sunning rocks remain the same.

M. Earl Cummings (given name Melvin Earl Cummings) was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on August 13, 1876. As a teenager Cummings was apprenticed to a wood carver in decorating the Mormon Temple. After moving to San Francisco in 1896, he won a scholarship to the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art where he was a pupil of Douglas Tilden. His benefactress, Mrs. Phoebe Hearst enabled his further study in Paris with Mercie at Ecole des Beaux Arts. Returning to San Francisco, he exhibited regularly at the Bohemian Club while sharing a studio with his close friend and sculptor Arthur Putnam. He taught sculpture at the Mark Hopkins until 1915 and also was instructor of modeling at University of California Berkeley from 1904-16. He did numerous portrait busts, statues, and public monuments and served on the San Francisco Park Commission for 32 years.

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, February 23, 2012

2012-02-23T06:18:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Park

Roman Gladiator - 1881 by Geef

In Commemoration

of the

Inauguration

of the

California Midwinter International

Exposition

On this spot the first shovelful of earth was turned

with ceremonies on August 24th 1893.

(That first spade of shovel was turned by President William Howard Taft)

After the popular 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, many American cities planned similar expositions to highlight progressive business ideas. Golden Gate Park became the setting for a hastily assembled fair, the first such west of the Mississippi. With a theme of "California: Cornucopia of the World", the Midwinter Fair, as it is commonly called showcased the ideal climate and abundance of the state. It opened on January 27, 1894, during the depths of winter.

Michael H. de Young, publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper and the fair's instigator, had been a director and a national commissioner at large for Chicago's Exposition. As president and director general of San Francisco's fair, he hoped the event would help offset the financial panic of 1893 then in full swing. On July 9, 1893, the fair committee met with park commissioners. Park Superintendent John McLaren objected to handing over his newly created park to a profit making venture; he had intended the park to be a haven from just such things. But the highly political and willful de Young got his way. Ground was broken on August 24, 1893, and construction took just five months. The fair was delayed for 26 days, however, because a sever snowstorm delayed rail cars delivering the exhibits from Chicago. (The recycling of exhibitions saved time and expense.) When the fair opened, 77,248 people attended on the first day, and the seven-month term saw 2,219,150 visitors, a triumph. The fair closed on July 4, 1894.

Known as the Sunset City, the 160-acre exposition site boasted 180 structures representing all of California's counties, 4 other states, the Arizona Territory, and 18 foreign nations. No one architectural style predominated at it had in Chicago, but rather an eclectic approach echoed California's multicultural population.

The above was excerpted from: San Francisco's Golden Gate Park: A Thousand and Seventeen Acres of Stories by Chris Pollock and Erica Katz.

The Smithsonian puts the artist of this piece as Georges Geef, however, I could find no such person. There is however a famous Belgian Geefs family with six boys, all of whom were sculptors, the most famous were Joseph, Jean and Guillume, the other names remain a mystery.

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, February 22, 2012

2012-02-22T06:07:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Park

Copies of Sphinx by Arthur Putnam - 1912

These sit to the right of the entry to the new de Young Museum. The plaque on them reads: This pair of concrete sphinxes replaces the original black granite sculptures commissioned from Arthur Putnam for the entrance to the Egyptian revival Fine Arts Building of the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894. At the fair's end, this building served as the first incarnation of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum. Sometime between 1905 and 1912, the granite sphinxes were removed. New concrete sphinxes based on Putnam's initial plaster moquettes were placed at the site. The building was demolished in 1929, but the sphinxes remained. During the construction of the new de Young, the museum's conservators repositioned the statues on new bases and restored them to their original appearance based on documentary photographs.

As far as the originals, they disappeared sometime after the 1906 earthquake. Stories abound about the fate of the originals, and even the original material. Some say they were granite, and others say they were bronze and melted down. Another memory is that one was stolen and the other destroyed. In any event, the current concrete pieces, similar in concept to the original ones, were created in 1903 and installed in 1928.

Arthur Putnam (September 6, 1873–1930) was an American sculptor from the turn of the 20th century who is recognized for his bronzes of wild animals and public monuments. He was a well-known Californian and enjoyed a national reputation as well. Putnam was regarded as an artistic genius in San Francisco and his life was chronicled in the San Francisco and East Bay newspapers.

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, February 21, 2012

2012-02-21T06:12:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Park

Music Concourse

Poeme de la Vigne by Gustave Doré

Cast in Bronze 1882

This piece takes my breath away every time I see it. It sits outside the deYoung Museum and the plaque attached reads: Gustave Doré created this vase for French winemakers, who exhibited it at the 1878 Paris World's Fair. It represents an allegory of the annual wine vintage, taking the shape of a colossal wine vessel decorated with figures associated with the rites of Bacchus (the Roman god of wine). The revelers include cupids, satyrs and bacchantes, who protect the grape vines from pests. The foundry shipped this bronze version of the vase to Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and then to San Francisco for the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition. M.H. deYoung purchased the vase at the fair's end and later donated it to the de Young Museum.

Paul Gustave Doré was an Alsacian artist who specialized in book illustrations. Born in Strasbourg, France, on January 6, 1832, he began his artistic career in Paris when he was only 15 years old. His drawings and illustrations were groundbreaking and very popular, although he never won the acclaim of the artistic elite in France. In his later years, he spent much time in London, where he also opened a very popular gallery. He died on January 23, 1883, at the age of 51.

Doré is probably most famous for his depictions of numerous scenes from the Bible, but he also produced illustrations for many other books, including Milton, Dante, La Fontaine, Don Quixote and one of my favorites Baron Munchhausen.

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, February 20, 2012

2012-02-20T06:58:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Park

This is Major General Henry Wager Halleck. His sculptor was Carl H. Conrads. Halleck was general-in chief of armies in the US from 1862- 1864. He then became Secretary of State and helped frame the California Constitution.

The statue was a gift of Halleck's chief-of-staff General George W. Cullum and is located on JFK Drive near the tennis courts.

Halleck was responsible for erecting the Montgomery Block a financial district office building. The Montgomery block was touted as one of the first fireproof buildings, which proved true when it survived the '06 quake and fire. However, it fell to developers in the 1960's and was replaced with the Transamerica Pyramid.

Conrads, born in Germany and emigrated to the U.S. in 1860, served in the Union Army before settling in Hartford Connecticut. He is responsible for the sculpture of Alexander Hamilton in Central Park, and others at West Point and Washington D.C..

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, February 19, 2012

2012-02-19T07:23:00.001-08:00

Golden Gate Park

The James Abram Garfield Monument sits on a prominent berm southeast of the Conservatory of Flowers. (Check out my article on the Conservatory). According to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park by Chris Pollock and Erica Katz, this monument, the park's oldest, memorializes the 20th president of the United States. Garfield was tragically shot with two bullets on July 2, 1881, in a Washington D.C. railroad station by disturbed federal office seeker Charles J. Guiteau. Garfield died on September 18, 1881, at a cottage on the New Jersey shore. The statue's cornerstone laid on August 24, 1884, contains a box filled with collectibles, including a copper plate inscribed with the names of those who built the monument, photos, coins, and a bible. The cenotaph was sculpted in Munich by San Franciscan Frank Happersberger, a native of Dutch Flat, CA, who also sculpted the giant Pioneer Monument next to the city's main library. Columbia, the female symbol of the United States, sits on the base, shrouded and holding a broken sword, symbolizing Garfield's assassination. A bronze plaque (missing) shows the president taking the oath of office; it is one of three plaques mounted on the tricolor granite pedestal, made by G. Griffith of Penryn, CA. Two other plaques flank the sides of the pedestal; both are framed with draped flags and palm fronds topped by an eagle with outstretched wings. The cost for the monument was $28,000; the sculpted parts were cast at the foundry of Charles Lenz in Nurmberg, Germany. The monument was unveiled July 4, 1885.

I am sharing with Sundays In My City.

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, February 18, 2012

2012-02-18T07:46:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Park

Francis Scott Key by William Wetmore Story

Francis Scott Key

Author of the National Song

The Star Spangled Banner

This Monument is Erected

James Lick

Of San Francisco California

A.D. 1887

This monument to Francis Scott Key was commissioned by San Francisco businessman James Lick, who donated $60,000 for the sculpture. Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner after witnessing the shelling of Fort McHenry on September 13, 1814. James Lick was also in Baltimore during the shelling, which is most likely the reason for the bequest.

The travertine monument was executed by sculptor William W. Story in Rome in 1885–87. Recently renovated at a cost of $140,000, the monument is located on the music concourse in Golden Gate Park.

William Wetmore Story studied law at Harvard in 1840. Abandoning the law, he devoted himself to sculpture, and after 1850 lived in Rome where he was intimate with the Brownings and English poet and writer, Walter Savage Landor. His works include a statue of Dahlia as a young woman which is in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, February 17, 2012

2012-02-17T06:23:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Park

The Apple Cider Press by Thomas Shields Clark

This 1892 Bronze sculpture was originally exhibited at the Midwinter International Exposition in 1894. The Apple Cider Bronze bears some resemblance to Douglas Tilden's Mechanics Monument located on Market street in that it bears tribute to the value of hard work. However, this purchase and contribution by DeYoung was apparently inspired by art rather than memorial, since the only cider industry of note in the San Francisco Bay Area is Martinelli's (1868) located in Watsonville, down the peninsula.

This statue was originally a drinking fountain with a cup attached by a chain, and some say it ran with cider instead of water.

Thomas Shields Clark graduated from Princeton University in 1882. He was a pupil of the Art Students League, New York, and of the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, under J. L. Grime; later he entered the atelier of Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, and, becoming interested in sculpture, he worked for a while under Henri Chapu.

As a sculptor, he received a medal of honor in Madrid for his The Cider Press.

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, February 1, 2012

2012-02-16T06:17:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Park

Our National Past Time by Douglas Tilden - 1889

Presented

to the Golden Gate Park

by a friend of the sculptor

as a tribute to his

energy, industry and ability

Cruet Fondeur, Paris
(John Cruet was a moldmaker in Paris, he also worked with Rodin. Fondeur means owner of the foundry)

Tilden originally displayed the piece as part of the American Exhibit at the Paris International Exposition, where it was extremely well received. It is widely recognized as the single most famous and classic baseball figural art piece ever created. As a result of its popularity at the time, a very small number of replicas was ordered by Tiffany's. While the exact number of Tiffany replica's produced is uncertain (possibly as few as four), only three have ever surfaced (two are 34 inches in height, the other 21 inches), one of which is on permanent exhibit in the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2006 a newly minted small replica sold for over $18,000.

Tilden, who has been in this blog before, remained a recluse for most of his life and died in 1935. In 1987, many of Tilden's personal artworks were discovered in an abandoned storage facility.

The original base, made of sandstone at the turn of the century, was too badly worn to be refurbished. The new base is made of mahogany granite with a carved-raised panel and gold leaf lettering was done in November, 1998.

Our National Past Time is on JFK Drive across the street from the Conservatory of Flowers.

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, February 15, 2012

2012-02-15T07:32:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Park

This is the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park. It is flanked by the new Academy of Sciences and our New DeYoung Museum.

A view of the DeYoung

Two important things you should know about Golden Gate Park. It is bigger than Central Park and it was NOT designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.

Golden Gate Park is 1017 acres, Central Park is 843 acres. Golden Gate Park was designed primarily by Botanist John McClaren and Engineer William Hammond Hall, Central Park WAS designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.

The next couple of weeks I will be introducing you to the statues of Golden Gate Park. Most of them used to be cleverly hidden in inconspicuous locations because John McLaren, the gardener who tended Golden Gate Park for more than 50 years, did not care for statues. In fact, he hated them so much, it is rumored that he took the one that sculptor Earl Cummings created of McLaren himself and hid it in the stables, where it was not discovered until after his death in 1943.

According to the Golden Gate Park superintendent William Hammond Hall "The value of a park consists of its being a park, and not a catch-all for almost anything which misguided people may wish up." Hall considered the park to be a place to enjoy nature without the trappings of the city, a place that did not include a lot of structures, particularly ones that did not contribute to the true park experience. Yet in an 1873 report to park commissioners about the state of the park, Hall noted, "Some classes of park scenery are fitting settings for works of art, such as statues, monuments, and architectural decoration."

The statues often move like chess pieces on a board, I am sure due to vandalism more than anything, most of the statues have been relocated over the past several years to central locations. Most can be found, either on John F. Kennedy Drive, or here in the Music Concourse.

Dedicated

to the City of San Francisco

by citizens of German descent

of California

in this year Nineteen Hundred and One

Renovated and rededicated

in the year 2001

by the

United German American societies

of San Francisco and Vicinity

Schiller is holding a scroll, and Goethe is holding the wreath. The bronze figures stand on a pedestal of red Missouri granite. The artist was Ernest Friedrick August Reitschel.

Rietschel was born in Pulsnitz, Saxony. At an early age he became an art student at Dresden, and subsequently a pupil of Rauch in Berlin. He there gained an art studentship, and studied in Rome in 1827-28. After returning to Saxony, he soon brought himself into notice by creating a colossal statue of Frederick Augustus, King of Saxony. He was elected a member of the academy of Dresden, and became one of the chief sculptors of his country. In 1832 he was elected to the Dresden professorship of sculpture, and had many foreign orders of merit conferred on him by the governments of different countries. He died in Dresden in 1861.

The original Goethe–Schiller Monument is in Weimar, Germany. It incorporates Ernst Rietschel's 1857 bronze double statue of Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832) and Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), who are probably the two most revered figures in German literature.

Four exact copies of Rietschel's statue were subsequently commissioned by German-Americans in the United States for Goethe–Schiller monuments in San Francisco (1901), Cleveland (1907), Milwaukee (1908), and Syracuse (1911).

The Tenderloin, San Francisco, February 14, 2012

2012-02-14T06:06:00.000-08:00

The Tenderloin

Ellis and Jones

This triptych is by The Luggage Store, they have been in this blog before.

According to their website:

"...three new murals depicting humans and its relationship with the increasingly robotized culture. It is about living in a time when science is searching for ways to create human traits in robots but in the meantime with all the excess of technology we are losing some of our human senses.

It is also touching the subject of human diversity and its rights to belong to a society or being alienated by it. It all intertwines and also questioning; who are aliens, who are humans, and who decides where you belong and what you are?"

I couldn't agree more.

T.W. Five's website has a wonderful layout of the work in progress.

View Larger Map

The Tenderloin, San Francisco, February 13, 2012

2012-02-13T06:05:00.000-08:00

The Tenderloin

This was done by Laserpunch and RattleCan Blasters. With a name like that you know that it is a group of aerosol muralists. But I was so taken by the sweetness and hope of this mural I just had to post it.

According to their websites Monday May 21, 2001 post: "Camer1 got to paint this for the Boy & Girls Club here in San Francisco. He was joined by San Francisco 49ers very own Vernon Davis and taught him a few techniques. "

According to their site "Laserpunch and the Rattlecan Blasters consists of 2 graffiti artists, Camer1 from San Francisco, CA and Fasm from Modesto, CA. The Duo teams up frequently to paint church youth rooms and do art shows. We've traveled to several states to use our rattlecan skills on commissioned murals. "

The Tenderloin, San Francisco, February 12, 2012

2012-02-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

The Tenderloin

569 Ellis Street

Pieces of San Francisco Mural Project - 2008 -Created by youth from Glide Memorial, Youth With a Mission, Golden Gate YMCA and Hamilton Family Center in collaboration with Amnesty International.

This mural is in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, on the street side of the organization of "Youth with a Mission" on Ellis Street. This area in San Francisco is notorious for its problems with drugs sales and a as center for homelessness in the city. However the Tenderloin is also known for the intense community efforts to improve the area by providing opportunities for student outreach, care and education. The Amnesty International San Francisco office has coordinated this mural as a venue for students to empower themselves and beautify their own living space.

Approximately 40 youth were involved in the creation of the mural. Students from 1st grade thru high school and from various after school and summer programs came together to paint their own piece of the San Francisco Cityscape.

The mural is eight feet by six and a half feet. The San Francisco cityscape at the bottom of the mural is a silhouette below the sky. The sky has been tessellated with puzzle pieces. Each person taking part of the mural got their own puzzle "piece" to illustrate their part of San Francisco. To the right of the mural are names of all the artists involved.

Financial District, San Francisco, February 11, 2012

2012-02-11T08:30:00.000-08:00

Financial District

600 California Street

Guardian by Bruce Beasley - Bronze - 1992

Made possible by the 1% for Public Art Program

This sits at the top of the stairs of a public space that you enter through Kent Roberts' Bridges.

Bruce Beasley has a Bachelor of Arts Degree from UC Berkeley. I was going to give you a background on him but his website does it in such a wonderfully humorous way that I will leave it to you to go see how he got where he is today.

There are also several articles about him on his website. He is a versatile artist, and had a 45 year retrospective in 2005, so his work has grown and changed, making traveling through his website worth it.

Financial District, San Francisco, February 10, 2012

2012-02-10T06:18:00.000-08:00

Financial District

600 California Street

Three Bridges by Kent Roberts - 1992

Public Art made possible by the 1% for Public Art Program

Kent Roberts has appeared in this blog before. There is something about the whimsy of his work that really appeals to me. His website has lots of pictures, but not much about motivation.

He has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico and a BFA and MFA from San Francisco Art Institute and he works at SFMOMA.

This piece is one of the entries into a public space in the downtown area. The two top pictures are from different entries, the third is looking down from the plaza back to California Street.

View Larger Map

Market Street, San Francisco, February 8, 2012

2012-02-09T06:31:00.000-08:00

514 Market Street

Waterfall Walls by Elyn Zimmerman

This Public Art was provided by the 1% for Public Art Program

This view is actually walking from Stevenson Street towards Market Street, which affords the nicest view.

When viewing Elyn Zimmermans web page you realize instantly this artists loves large pieces of stone.

Like so many fountains in public spaces, this one was not working the day I took these photos.

This is the view from Market Street. The piece was Commissioned by the developer Tishman/Speyer and the San Francisco Arts Commission, in 1991.

It is a wonderful respite from a hectic area of town, and a great place to enjoy the sun with your bag lunch.

View Larger Map

SOMA, San Francisco, February 8, 2012

2012-02-08T06:04:00.000-08:00

SOMA

Financial District

215 Fremont Street

Urban Grit by Gordon Huether

Glass Panels - Art made possible by the 1% for Public Arts Program

I found this interesting little bit about the artist from Gary Brady-Herndon's August 28, 2002 article in SF Gate.

Perched high above the banks of the Napa River, a stone's throw from the Oxbow area of the city of Napa and the newly christened Copia, the American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, stands the home of one of the Napa Valley's more colorful -- and successful -- artists, Gordon Huether.

While Huether's home may overlook what some might call paradise, visitors won't find a garret-secluded, starving artist whose main pastime is contemplating the mysteries of the universe while seeking vainly to snag a spark of inspiration. On the contrary, Huether exudes a near volatile, urban guerrilla persona, driven by a life-imitating-art compulsion that fuels his creative passion.

"There's no distinction between my art and my life. It's not a Monday-through-Friday, 8-to-5 endeavor. It's a 24/7 state of being. That means I'm always creating, observing, processing, distilling and expressing. So my home -- where I live -- holds a higher, different standard for me," Huether said.

According to Huether's publisher:

"These 12 separate abstract artworks in glass, are encased in a 50-ft. long steel railing at the public entrance of the new Charles Schwab & Co. building in downtown San Francisco. The artwork is comprised of 12 panels of double-paned glass, each four feet long and three feet high.

Artist Gordon Huether designed the series of pieces from close-up photographs he took of urban streetscapes, manipulated through computer graphics programs to expose "the beauty found in ordinary, everyday things." Combining etched and fused techniques, each panel interprets a photo from a series created by Huether of such common urban sights as cracks in sidewalks and peeled paint on walls and gates."

I am thrilled to see that art is becoming part of architecture, rather than an addendum.

View Larger Map

SOMA, San Francisco, February 7, 2012

2012-02-07T06:16:00.000-08:00

SOMA

Financial District

199 Fremont Street

Poetry Sculpture Garden

The plaque on the side of the wall explains the area like this:

199 Fremont poetry/sculpture garden is a unique collaborative piece that combines the talents of Robert Hass, a world famous poet, and Paul Kos, a world-class sculptor.

The garden is composed of three major elements:

A large installation of the plaza's Sierra granite as a sculptural form
Sculptor Kos's setting of Poet Hass' words in the wall of the plaza.
In the place of a fountain, a small, witty set of faucets, sited quietly in the back of the plaza and designed to drip - or "tick like a clock" in a way that makes a sort of rhyme with Hass' words - which evoke the times of day and times of year, and the passage of time in a busy downtown plaza.

The sculptural design for the 130' X 22' sculptural wall plays a kind of hide and seek with visual expectation.

The plaza is configured with rough granite seating stones with plantings of birch trees, mountain shrubs and flowers meant to be suggestive of the Sierra Mountains.

The center of interest in the plaza is a massive 86-ton boulder Kos found in Soda Springs. This "Big Bertha" boulder casts its own reflection...somewhat like an impressionist painting as the reflecting brushstrokes are comprised of smaller boulders and sliced pavers.

Behind the large boulder Kos' minimalist fountain is one of the smallest of any in a display of public art. Housed like a small grotto with a small reflecting pool, the fountain functions as a witty small clock, a recollection of the way time is measured out; an evocation of gardens and leisure to be had elsewhere than in a busy city. It is a subtle reminder of how precious water is to the life of California

The combination of fountain, clock, grotto and pool ticks off seconds for Hass' time-based words: when? NOW why? "DAYS ELAPSE" Or, as Hass' punning, half hidden inscription has it "DAISY LAPS".

The whole installation - the granite stone, the faucet/clock and the sculptural setting of the poem, peeking out between birch leaves and the midday sun, manages to convey something of the life of the city, something of the regional roots of its building materials, the post-modern playfulness of its early twenty-first century artist, and to provide a warm escape into an idea of a garden, or a back country meadow in the middle of the busy city."

About the artists

One of America's greatest know poets, Robert Hass, a former Poet Laureate of the United States, a professor of English at UC Berkeley, is also a native San Franciscan.
Paul Kos, an acclaimed sculptor in the conceptual and minimalist tradition, has undertaken many public art projects in the Bay Area - from a stained glass window, fashioned from color television sets in the shape of a Gothic arch in an underground chapel in the Napa Valley to a relief at the the State Archive Building in Sacramento.

The poem is difficult to read with the trees - I could not find the entire thing on line, but here is a snippet for your pleasure:

"An echo wandered through here what? an echo wandered through hear it? there was morning and later/there was evening days elapse what? a reck oh! wan where are we going this city of stone and/hills and sudden vistas and people rushing to their various appointments what points the way?"

Photo Credit: the artist and Gallery Paule Anglim

Big Bertha by Paul Kos

The site also includes the Marine Electric Building, which houses a child care center and Town Hall Restaurant.

The Landscape Architect on the project was Antonia Bava, who coincidentally was a professor of mine at UC Berkeley.

View Larger Map

The Tenderloin, San Francisco, February 6, 2012

2012-02-06T06:31:00.000-08:00

The Tenderloin

191 Golden Gate Avenue

The corner of the mural reads:

"The Gifts you take are equal to the gifts you make." 2009 Precita Eyes Muralists

Funded by Community Challenge Grants Program and San Francisco Clean City Coaliton

Special Thanks to Tenderloin Community Benefit District, Tenderloin Health, San Franciso Arts Commission.

Precita Eyes Website had this to say about the mural -

"The Gift You Take is Equal to the Gift You Make" celebrates the gifts that the community brings and receives in the Tenderloin neighborhood including diversity, varied backgrounds, and rich cultural heritages and experiences. The "SS New Tenderloin" breaches the turbulent ocean and arrives from distant lands, bringing the various people who will make the neighborhood their home. As the children leave the ship, they join others, and grab the rope (a common Tenderloin practice) to traverse the streets. They head for "National Family Night Out", a scene of fun, art and entertainment for all. As they cross the space, they approach neighborhood landmarks such as the Hibernia Bank, and the Cadillac Hotel with its portrait of community leaders, Kathy and Leroy Looper.

At National Family Night Out in the Tenderloin, children's art is everywhere, and its spirit carries over to the classroom. In the school room our heroes, the teachers encourage and guide children of all ethnicities. In the background, the roses signify the color and added life that will come by adding more gardens and greenery to the neighborhood. The Black Hawk Jazz Club is a tribute to the past and the musicians are a nod to the current efforts to revitalize the music and art in the neighborhood.

The mural also honors the gifts that the community receives, and shows the residents, workers and activists breaking the chains of containment to demonstrate for the needs of the neighborhood. In this Tenderloin, there are health services, affordable housing (such as the Essex Hotel), work opportunities, a clean and safe environment, interactions among neighbors, services offered to all, and "Community not Containment". All of these gifts become available as the sun shines in the Tenderloin.

View Larger Map

View Larger Map

I am sharing on Monday Murals

SOMA, San Francisco, February 5, 2012

2012-02-05T07:18:00.000-08:00

SOMA

Teen Center

10th Street between Market and Mission

This mural is called Linking Hand Veil - it is acrylic and by Ball-Nogues Studio. It is public art work created by the 1% for Public Art Program

According to their website Benjamin Ball grew up in Colorado and Iowa where his mother's involvement in theatre proved influential. While studying for his degree at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Ball logged stints at Gehry Partners and Shirdel Zago Kipnis. Upon graduation, he sought work as a set and production designer for films (including the Matrix series) as well as music videos and commercials with such influential directors as Mark Romanek and Tony Scott. His experience ranges from work on the Disney Concert Hall and small residential commissions for boutique firms to complex medical structures and event design. In his current collaboration with Gaston Nogues, Ball is exploring the intersection of architecture, art and product design through physical modeling and the use of digital and more traditional forms of production.

Gaston Nogues was born and raised in Buenos Aires before moving to Los Angeles at age 12. Frequently accompanying his father to his job as an aerospace engineer, Nogues acquired a fascination with the hands-on process of building. An honors graduate in architecture from SCI-Arc, he moved directly from school into a position at Gehry Partners where he worked in product design and production and became a specialist in creative fabrication. He remained there until 2005 except for a one-year stint in 1996 as an assistant curator at a fine arts publishing house, Gemini GEL. In his current collaboration with Benjamin Ball, Nogues is focused on fabricating what they visualize; on process as it relates to the built object. In his spare time, Nogues builds custom automobiles.

This is their explanation of the piece: Screen is an opportunity to blend imagery of the universal symbol of the human hand with techniques borrowed from glass jewelry making. We use the hand image to evoke hard work, cooperation, coexistence, and tolerance. To achieve this we will call on our experience with cutting edge digital design and fabrication technologies. It is our aim to make a work that is inspiring to teens and a composition through the use of color and intricacy that can be appreciated by the casual passersby from the sidewalk.

The “catenary” is a basic form in nature: a chain suspended from two points will always make this shape. Long necklaces are catenaries. Screen, which is directly behind the storefront glass, is like hundreds of chain necklaces with individual links made of hands made with colored translucent plastic. The chains will continually transform the color of sunlight coming into the Teen Center. The work will provide privacy for people within the Center from the busy sidewalk while allowing views of the street from within. Hundreds of different hand shapes link together to make up the chains: sometimes the hands have an open palm, sometimes the fingers are stretched outward, sometimes the fingers curl as if to gently hold an object, sometimes the hands grasp one another. Combining the logic of animation with sculpture, the shape of each individual hand is derived from video footage. Arrayed in sequences, the hands produce the impression of human gestures.

I am afraid the windows were more dirty than I thought.

Financial District, San Francisco, February 4, 2012

2012-02-04T06:50:00.000-08:00

SOMA

Financial District

49 Stevenson

Escalieta 1 by Manuel Neri - Marble - 1985

This is public art created by the 1% Public Art Program

Manuel Neri (born April 12, 1930) is an American sculptor, painter, and printmaker and a notable member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.

Neri was born in Sanger, California, to immigrant parents who had fled Mexico during political unrest following the Mexican Revolution. He began attending college at San Francisco City College in 1950, initially studying to be an electrical engineer. After taking a class in ceramics, he was inspired to become an artist. He continued his education at California College of Arts and Crafts and at California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). Neri studied under Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff, taking up abstract expressionism under their influence, but later turning toward figurative art along with them.

In the late 1950s, he was a member of the artist-run cooperative gallery, the Six Gallery, along with Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, and Jay DeFeo. In 1959, Neri became an original member of Bruce Conner's Rat Bastard Protective Association.

Neri taught sculpture and ceramics at California School of Fine Arts from 1959–1965 and was on the faculty of the University of California, Davis from 1965-1999

This is the back, I liked the way it juxtaposed the skyscraper in the distance

This piece sits in front of Yank Sing Restaurant. If you have the chance, stop in for some of the best dim sum in the city.

The Tenderloin, San Francisco, February 3, 2012

2012-02-03T06:23:00.000-08:00

The Tenderloin

San Francisco Police Department

301 Eddy Street

First Person Plural by Anders Barth Fired Clay Glaze

(Lenda) Anders Barth has been in this blog before with her ceramic work on a 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.

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.

The Tenderloin, San Francisco, February 2, 2012

2012-02-02T06:47:00.000-08:00

The Tenderloin

Hemlock and Larkin

This was done in 2009 as part of Precita Eyes Urban Youth Arts Program. It was in conjunction with Larkin Street Youth Services.

The Tenderloin, San Francisco, February 1, 2012

2012-02-01T06:07:00.000-08:00

The Tenderloin

Bush and Polk

1399 Bush Street

Trolleys by Bruce Hasson

This artwork includes 56 cast aluminum balustrades and a balcony. Four designs based on the human form and images from transportation, interspersed on the top three floors of the garage. These pieces art part of the San Francisco Arts Commission Collection.

Bruce's website says he lives and works in San Francisco, and that is about as personal as he gets. But his work is intriguing and worth the time to visit his site.

The Tenderloin, San Francisco January 31, 2012

2012-01-31T06:25:00.000-08:00

Cedar Alley

The Tenderloin

Untitled by Lango

Lango has appeared numerous times in this blog - you can read about him here.

On the opposite wall are these two pieces. I really could not find anything out about them, but I thought I would share them with you.

While the sign says T & D Auto Repair, this is now a place to get hydroponic supplies.

SOMA, San Francisco, January 30, 2012

2012-01-30T07:41:00.000-08:00

SOMA

8th and Natoma Streets

Labyrinth - Habitat 1999

Johanna Poethig with Episcopal Community Services

Ceramic and paint

Commissioned by the San Francisco Art Commission - Arts in Community Program.

Johanna Poethig has been in this blog many, many times. This mural is on the side of one of the Training Centers for Episcopal Community Services - The Cannon Kip Community House.

According to Johanna's website this is what the mural is about:

In every culture and on every continent the labyrinth is one of the oldest and most universal symbols. Some of these existing labyrinths, such as the ones at Val Camonica (North of Italy), Kom Ombo (Egypt), as well as various sites in North and South America and Asia, date from 1800 to 1500 B.C. Built on sacred locations, they possess magical powers and various symbolic meanings.

The labyrinth both creates and protects the center, and allows entry only on the correct terms. Entry is thus a step on the path of knowledge. The Hopi Indians, the labyrinth form on which this design is based, called the labyrinth the ‘Mother Earth’ symbol, and liken it to their own underground sanctuaries, the Kivas. It was from here the Hopi emerged from the preceding world. ‘All the lines and passages within the maze form the universal plan of the Creator, which a person must follow on the Road of Life.’

The title of this mural is based on a labyrinth scratched onto a painted pillar 2000 years ago, in the house of Lucretius, a classic author( Pompeii before ad 79), with the text: Labyrinthus, hic habitat Minotauros.
This project will involved residents of Canon Kip in writing and tile glazing workshops in the creation of “Labyrinth - Habitat”. The writing workshops engaged participants in thinking about their own life paths in relationship to the ancient and universal form of the labyrinth. Finished text was then be transferred and fired onto tile. These tile became part of the mural which is a combination of paint and ceramic.

I feel the blood running through my body.

It's hard to be a whole being when your past is so fractured.

When I look at where I've come from it its amazing I turned out as good as I've Done.

Episcopal Community Services of San Francisco helps homeless and very low-income people obtain the housing, jobs, shelter and essential services.

I'm sharing on Mural Mondays, check out other murals around the country.

The Tenderloin, San Francisco January 29, 2012

2012-01-29T07:28:00.000-08:00

The Tenderloin

259 Myrtle Street

Louder Harder by Ben Eine

Ben Eine has been in this blog before, I recently found a very interesting interview with him that you can read here.

I thought I would also include the interesting things that were going up along the wall after the fact. Eine's work is just about letters, all the rest is added later by other artists.

TheTenderloin, San Francisco, January 28, 2012

2012-01-28T06:25:00.000-08:00

100 Block of Fern Street

The Tenderloin

Dray has been in this blog before, and is a really terrific guy. In researching this piece I found a lovely article about him from his days in Las Vegas.

Dray did this mural pro bono in hopes that the alley would attract more muralists. Fern Alley is a part of a recently launched quarterly art walk called LoPo (Lower Polk) Art Walk. The alley is blocked off and artists display their art right there in the alley. All of the local galleries participate as well as some merchants.

If you are interested in the LoPo Art Walk you can follow them on Facebook.

Civic Center, San Francisco, January 27, 2012

2012-01-27T06:34:00.000-08:00

Civic Center

San Francisco's Pioneer Monument, created by F.H. Happersberger was dedicated to The City by James Lick in 1894. Previously located at Marshall Square, near the intersection of Hyde and Grove, it marked the site of the Old City Hall, destroyed by fire in the earthquake of 1906. During the renovation of the new San Francisco Library there were plans to relocate it, preservationists opposed this relocation, wishing to retain the marker as the last tie to the vanished city hall. It now sits between the new Asian Art Museum and the new San Francisco Library.

Native Americans opposed the move for a different reason: its demeaning portrayal of native peoples. The Victorian monument, an elaborate series of cast iron figures and bas-reliefs, commemorates the early settlers of California. On a central pedestal, Eureka stands with her shield, 30 feet in the air, in front of the State bear. Around the pedestal's circumference are inscribed the names of the founders: Lick, Fremont, Drake, Serra, Sutter -- stretching from 1648 to 1850.

On four lower pedestals, arranged around the column, are life-size and larger figures from California history. Two classically draped goddesses on opposite pedestals represent Agriculture and Commerce, one with a cornucopia and the other, an oar symbolizing the shipping trade. At the other two points are "'49" -- a trio of prospectors panning for gold -- and "Early Days," a triumvirate of Mexican vaquero, Franciscan padre, and submissively seated Indian.

There is an interesting article on the Albion Monitor regarding the controversy of this monument.

Civic Center, San Francisco, January 26, 2012

2012-01-26T07:27:00.000-08:00

Civic Center

Simon Bolivar

a 1984 “Gift from Venezuela to the People of San Francisco.”

Simón Bolívar, was a Venezuelan military and political leader. Together with José de San Martín, he played a key role in Hispanic-Spanish America's successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire, and is today considered one of the most influential politicians in Latin American history.

"With the passing of time your glory shall by exalted like the boundless shade of the setting sun"

Choquehuanca

Simon Bolivar, the liberator, was born in Caracas, Venezuela on July 24, 1783 and died in Santa Marta Columbia, on December 17, 1830. His remains were returned to Caracas on December 17, 1842 for re-interment in the national pantheon.

The names of all the countries Bolivar liberated.

Simon Bolivar

Liberator of: Columbia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Venezuela and founder of Bolivia

He led the victorious army from Caracas to Potosi engagin in the conclusive battles

Boyaca, August 7, 1819

Carabob, June 24, 1821

Pichincha, May 24, 1822

Junin, August 6, 1824

Ayacucho, December 9, 1824

The President of Venezuela Dr Jaimie Lusinchi dedicated this monument on December 6, 1984.

This is a copy of a sculpture done by Adamo Tadolina in the 19th century. (The original is in Plaza del la Constitucion in Lima, Peru) It was cast by Victor Hugo Barrenchea-Villega. Miriam Gandica Mora was the engineer for the base. It is owned by the City of San Francisco and administered by the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Tadolini, was the grandson of the sculptor Tadolini Petronio. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna. In 1813, Tadolini traveled to Italy and attended the Accademia in Rome. There he made a plaster statue "Ajax cursing the gods", with this he won a place as an assistant in Canova's studio.

Civic Center, San Francisco, January 25, 2012

2012-01-25T05:58:00.000-08:00

Civic Center

San Francisco Public Library

Double L Excentric Gyratory by George Rickey - 1982

the plaque reads - A gift from an immigrant Carl Djerassi to his adopted City. Dedicated by San Francisco Arts Commission May 1997.

George Rickey was an American kinetic sculptor born on June 6, 1907 in South Bend, Indiana. When Rickey was a child, his father, an executive with Singer Sewing Machine Company, moved the family to Helensburgh, Scotland. Rickey was educated at Glenalmond College and received a degree in History from Balliol College, Oxford. He spent a short time traveling Europe and studied art in Paris. He then returned to the United States and began teaching at the Groton School. He died at his home in Saint Paul, Minnesota on July 17, 2002 at the age of 95.

George Rickey's work has appeared in this blog before here.

Carl Djerassi is an Austrian-American chemist, novelist, and playwright best known for his contribution to the development of the first oral contraceptive pill. In 1959 Djerassi became a professor of chemistry at Stanford University and the president of Syntex Laboratories in Mexico City and Palo Alto, California. The Syntex connection made Djerassi a rich man. He bought a large tract of land in Woodside, California, started a cattle ranch, and built up a large art collection. He started a new company, Zoecon, which focused on pest control without insecticides, using modified insect growth hormones to stop insects from metamorphosing from the larval stage to the pupal and adult stages. He sold Zoecon to Occidental Petroleum.

Civic Center, San Francisco, January 24, 2012

2012-01-24T06:07:00.000-08:00

San Francisco City Hall

Ashurbanipal by sculptor Fred Parhad sits on the sidewalk of the Asian Art Museum, facing the San Francisco Library. The sculpture shows Asurbanipal wearing a short tunic and holds a lion cub in his right arm. The figure stands on a concrete base, with bronze plaque and rosettes. The statue shows the king grasping a lion cub and holding a clay tablet which bears this dedication in cuneiform:

Peace unto heaven and earth

Peace unto countries and cities

Peace unto the dwellers in all lands

Ashurbanipal was an Assyrian king, the son of Esarhaddon and the last great king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (668 BC – c. 627 BC). He established the first systematically organized library in the ancient Middle East, the Library of Ashurbanipal, which survives in part today at Nineveh.

Akkadian cuneinform and Aramaic

The Inscription reads: The Assyrians formed one of the earliest great empires in the world. Their civilization dates from 2700 B.C. with the important cultural centers at Ashur and Nineveh north of modern Baghdad. Beginning as a river civilization in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates, the empire spread east and west to touch the lives of all Near Eastern people.

This is a statue of Ashurbanipal, one of the great kings of Assyria. A noted patron of the arts, he helped to build a culture that inspired nations from Persia to the Mediterranean Sea. The bas-reliefs in his palace are among the finest examples of ancient sculpture. Ashurbanipal ruled during the 7th century B.C. At a time when both Egypt and Babylon were under the Assyrian banner. Ashurbanipal had a personal love of learning which prompted him to collect existing knowledge of the known world in cuneiform tablets. His capital, Nineveh is distinguished for its vast collection, recorded as the world’s first great library.

The language of the Assyrians, Aramaic was spoken by Christ and widely used throughout the Near East by Israelites, Arabs, Persians and others for centuries. It remained the spoken and written language of the Assyrians down to the present time. Their empire lasted 1000 years until the fall of Nineveh in 612 B.C.

During the ensuing centuries of chaotic political struggle, first between the Persians and Romans, and later between Christians and Muslims, the Assyrians sought refuge in the difficult mountainous terrain of their ancient empire where succeeding governments and warring armies passed them by.

Among the first converts to Christianity, they preserved and transmitted the culture of classical Greece to the Moors who advanced it during the Dark Ages in Europe. Assyrians authored exquisite religious literature and spread Christianity to the Asiatic east as far as India and to China where their alphabet remained in use by the ruling houses until the early 20th century.

In the First World War two-thirds of the Assyrians perished in the fighting. Displacement cost them their homes, wealth and any hope for a secure homeland. Many survivors left to begin life again in other countries. Today there are Assyrians in Europe, Australia, South America, India and the United States

Assyrians have kept their identity and language without political organization or any of the institutions of national security, passing their heritage on to new generations through the strength of family ties and a spirit of community which is deeply felt. Their rich cultural heritage binds Assyrians worldwide to each other. Their contribution to civilization will continue to enrich world culture.

This is the statue presented to the City of San Francisco by the Assyrian people in the 210th year of America’s sovereignty.

Presented to the City of San Francisco

the Assyrian Foundation for the Arts

through donations of

American Assyrian Association of San Francisco

Assyrian American National Federation

It goes on to list all the benefactors.

The sculptor Fred Parhad was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1947. His mother, Bella Toma was born in Iran, His father, Dr. Luther Parhad, was born in Iraq where his grandfather Dr. Baba Parhad had taken the family after the massacres in Northern Iran at the close of World War I. His early years were spent in Iraq, Iran and Kuwait where his father served as the national Director of Health.

His interest in sculpture began early and continued through college at UC Berkeley, though he did not make it a career choice until 1976 when he moved to New York City.

The Tenderloin, San Francisco January 23, 2012

2012-01-23T07:50:00.000-08:00

The Tenderloin

Larkin and Cedar

This is “Flores del Tehuan-derloin” by Jet Martínez. The mural was commissioned by the SF Arts Commission project StreetSmARTS. It is done in the style of embroidery created by the Tehuanan women of Oaxaca, Mexico.

This is what Jet said on his Facebook page about the work:

A mural based on Oaxacan embroidery designs. These patterns were assimilated by the Oaxacans from Chinese silk embroidery popular with the Spanish rulers of the time. Currently, some of the most beautiful textiles of the type are being made by the "muxeres" ( Transvestite men) in Juchitan.
If you know anything about the tenderloin, there are strong Oaxacan, Chinese and Trannie populations there. My hope was to give appreciation not only to the art of emboidery, but to how folk art unifies seemingly different cultures.

Jet Martinez has been in the blog before here.

Hat tip to my colleague Faern at Untapped Cities

I am posting this on a Monday Mural Meme sponsored by Oakland Daily City check it out here.

SOMA, San Francisco - January 22, 2012

2012-01-22T07:35:00.000-08:00

SOMA

One Hawthorne

“Landmark” consists of a large grid of colorful panels 145 ft. high and 12 ft. wide. The panels are coated with porcelain enamel using a photographic imaging process, which accurately reproduced and enlarged a detailed series of 30” x 23” color drawings created by Robert Hudson. One Hawthorne tapped Valerie Wade, gallery director at Crown Point Press, its across-the-street neighbor, to assist in concept development for the public art. The entire process took about one year, with KVO Industries, based in Santa Rosa, California, fabricating each porcelain enamel panel and overseeing the installation.

As lovely as it is, I do feel it will always be overshadowed by the buildings own advertising.

For the last four decades, Robert Hudson has been known for his large-scale welded-steel and poly-chromed steel and bronze sculptures. The San Francisco Bay area artist has also produced a large body of paintings and drawings during his distinguished career. Hudson's work is based in the assemblage sculpture and Funk movements in California during the late 1950s and 1960s He holds both an BFA and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Funk and Assemblage sculpture are sculptural techniques of organizing or composing into a unified whole a group of unrelated and often fragmentary or discarded objects.

Financial District, San Francisco, January 21, 2012

2012-01-21T06:53:00.000-08:00

Financial District

425 Battery Street

The General Harrison by Curtis Hollenback and Topher Delany

The financial district of San Francisco was built on mudflats. At one time, the muddy shoreline came up to Montgomery Street. The mudflats were riddled with hulls of abandoned ships left by their crews when they headed for the gold in the California hills. These ships were often used as hotels, jails, stores, and warehouses. In 2001, one of these ships, the General Harrison, was uncovered at the corner of Clay and Battery Streets; today the Elephant & Castle Pub sits atop the remains of the hull.

The Oakland-based archaeology firm Archeo-Tec was allowed to painstakingly uncover the ship and document its findings. As development of the site was imminent, the developers commissioned a work to commemorate the finding. Topher Delany worked with the archaeologists to find accurate drawings of the skeleton of the hull. Based on the drawings and photographs, Topher worked with colleague Curtis Hollenback to design and build a piece of public artwork that could be mounted on the side of the new 4-story building. Repeating the design of the outline of the ship, the sculpture is a 60-foot, flatted hull made of copper with supporting ribs that attach to a stainless steel grid and frame.

On the street level, the sidewalk is designed with copper nails collected from the hull. An inlaid metal strip outlines the curved starboard edge of the ship, disappearing into the base of the building. The portside is under the building, and the bow extends onto the Battery Street sidewalk.

I found this amazing photo on Archeo-Tecs website.

Foundry Square, San Francisco, January 20, 2012

2012-01-20T06:35:00.000-08:00

Howard at First Street

Foundry Square

SOMA

Not Out of the Woods Yet by Richard Deacon

2003

In 2003 Kenneth Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote:

"Deacon's "Not Out Of The Woods Yet" (2003) nests muscularly in a tight spot behind columns at the entrance to 500 Howard St., on the intersection's northwest corner.

The Bay Area has so far seen Deacon's work in depth only once, in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's 1987 show "A Quiet Revolution: British Sculpture Since 1965."

Much of his sculpture turns on matters such as when an enclosure must count as an object or as architecture. He makes viewers sense connections between physical feelings and inner dispositions to use certain words in describing them.

"Not Out Of The Woods Yet," fabricated on commission, strikes the hurried glance as a network of stocky aluminum struts. But try to describe it in detail and it becomes a puzzle frustrating to eye and mind alike.

Six identical elements make up the work, all composed of fat, gleaming hexagonal metal beams. Their surfaces wink with an embossed tread-plate pattern.

The silvery aluminum draws light into the canopied space, which lies in shadow at least half the day.

The sculpture's three bottom elements--one upright, two upended--notch together as if leaning to accommodate one another.

Three more, inverted, sit above, making the upper half a mirror image of the lower.

Where each bottom element rests on the ground, its footprint is an irregular nine-sided polygon, for which we have no ready name.

End-on, one of these structures at ground level resembles a simplified steam locomotive cowcatcher.

The top perimeter of each one plots the same eccentric figure, in the same orientation, enclosing a smaller or larger area. Thick, sloping struts connect top and bottom perimeters.

No strut springs from a corner, apparently upsetting an expectation one did not know one had, making the whole structure strangely hard to comprehend.

These simple facts prove startlingly difficult to sort out, though only their own complexity conceals them.

Deacon's piece passes a crucial test of public sculpture: One leaves it curious to know how hard it will be to hold in memory and how easy to grasp when next seen"

Richard Deacon was born in Bangor, Wales and educated at Plymouth College. He then studied at the Somerset College of Art in Taunton, St Martin's School of Art in London and the Royal College of Art, also in London. He left the Royal College in 1977, and went on to study part time at the Chelsea School of Art. His work is breathtaking and broad, visit his website, while a tad difficult to maneuver through it will give you a bigger picture of his work.

SOMA, Foundry Square, San Francisco January 19, 2012

2012-01-19T06:16:00.000-08:00

Howard at First Street

Foundry Square

SOMA

Untitled by Joel Shapiro

1996-1999

In 2003 Kenneth Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote:

"Shapiro's renown rests on his having turned the vocabulary of minimal sculpture back toward figuration about 30 years ago.

He took square wood beams, favorite forms of his older contemporary Carl Andre, and made structures of them that could be read as stick figures.

Shapiro then abbreviated and exaggerated his work's figural qualities so that they come and go depending on the viewer's position and on his determination to see them.

Built-in aspects of "bad fit"--apparent right angles that turn out to be oblique, slight off-square rotations--read expressively from one viewpoint, and willfully abstract from another.

Large scale has defeated Shapiro on occasion, making his work look like small ideas inflated rather than like products of enlarged thinking.

Standing 24 feet high, the Foundry Square piece is an unusually good example.

Its plaza setting touches off an apt association to the work of Alberto Giacometti, for whom urban crossings symbolized the modern world's banishment of humanity from all common spaces. Much of Shapiro's best sculpture updates the drama of emotional versus physical distance central to Giacometti's mature work.

As the public focal point of a corporate work environment, the Shapiro also monumentalizes the perilous balancing act that sums up so many employees' experiences of office politics"

Joel Shapiro grew up in Sunnyside, Queens, New York. When he was twenty two he lived in India for two years while in the Peace Corps. He received a B.A. in 1964 and an M.A. in 1969 from New York University. He lives with his artist wife, Ellen Phelan, in New York City.

SOMA, San Francisco - January 18, 2012

2012-01-18T06:06:00.000-08:00

Howard at First Street

Foundry Square

SOMA

Time Signature

Richard Deutsch

Richard Deutsch has been in this blog many times. This piece has it's own video on Richard's website, and I highly recommend that you go and view it. The film is a work of art unto itself, and I could not do justice to the process that you are shown, but I will try to summarize the intent of the piece.

He mentions that they wanted to use a light colored metal for the reflective properties and to interact with the glass. The area that the sculpture is in is called Foundry Square. The owner, Peter Donahue, opened the foundry in 1851. Crucibles, a vital part of metal pouring, were the shapes that inspired Deutsch. He was further inspired by music and was setting a tempo for a musical composition, attempting some sort of lyrical movement.

Peter Donahue has even been in this blog before with his contributions to the City of San Francisco.

Market Street, San Francisco, January 17, 2012

2012-01-17T07:58:00.000-08:00

870 Market Street

Samuels Clock

Purchased by Albert Samuels in 1915, (the year of the Pan Pacific Exhibition) the Samuel’s clock was originally in front of Samuels Jewelry Store at 5th & Market Streets.

In 1943 Mr. Samuels purchased the property at 856 Market and moved his company. The clock was moved to its present location and remained in operation until August 1967, when it was placed in storage during the construction of BART. Because of conflict with the Market Street beautification and tree-planting scheme, the clock almost didn't make it back, but after strongly expressed public opinion, the clock was reinstalled in October 1970. Albert S. Samuels died July 9, 1973. The business was sold a few years later. The clock was granted landmark status December 1975.

Mystery writer Dashiell Hammett once worked for Samuels Jewelers writing advertising copy. Hammett used the clock in Samuels ads and referred to it in at least one of his mystery stories.

One of the finest street clocks in America

Erected by

The Albert S. Samuels Co.

Dedicated to the public of San Francisco

Insured by Lloyds of London

Any person damaging same will be prosecuted

Market Street, January 16, 2012

2012-01-16T07:04:00.000-08:00

720 Market Street

Angel by Stephen de Staebler

Kenneth Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote this in 2002 "Several years ago a winged bronze figure by Bay Area's sculptor Stephen de Staebler appeared without fanfare, nestled against a building facade on Market Street.

Looking gnawed by time, as de Stabler's figures typically do, it reads as an elegy for the waning of humanism, in the symbolic form of a ruined angel. By not overreaching in scale, content or its bid for attention, the piece achieves an improbable grandeur "

To read more about Mr. De Staebler's life and work you can read a previous post about him in this blog.

Today is Martin Luther King Day. I, and a colleague of mine, wrote two very different articles about the Martin Luther King Monument in San Francisco for Untapped Cities, please go have a look.

Restaurant Row, San Francisco, January 15, 2012

2012-01-15T06:57:00.000-08:00

50 Third Street

Ducca Restaurant Courtyard

Westin Hotel

Museum Row

This piece is titled Maori Column and is by Alan Shepp. It was done in 1985.

Shepp, along with his artist wife, lives in Napa California. He has a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art, and an MFA from the University of Washington.

He is a multimedia artist who creates large scale sculpture and public art.

There is not a lot of information out there, either about this artist or this piece, but his website has some really gorgeous work on it.

Museum Row, San Francisco, January 14, 2012

2012-01-14T07:40:00.000-08:00

50 Third Street

Ducca Restaurant Walkway

Museum Row

Fat Dancer

Rain Mountain

Figure Emerging

These three figures are by Isamu Noguchi. Noguchi ranks up there as one of my all time favorite sculptors, but I must admit, this is not my favorite medium for him.

Books have been written about this gentleman, and I have read a goodly portion of them, for this reason, to narrow down his biography to something that would work for the average blog reader I have simply copied what wikipedia has to say.

(November 17, 1904 – December 30, 1988) Isamu Noguchi was a prominent Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces, some of which are still manufactured and sold.

In 1947, Noguchi began a collaboration with the Herman Miller company, when he joined with George Nelson, Paul László and Charles Eames to produce a catalog containing what is often considered to be the most influential body of modern furniture ever produced, including the iconic Noguchi table which remains in production today. His work lives on around the world and at the Noguchi Museum in New York City.

The Noguchi Table

Paper Lamps by Noguchi

Museum Row, San Francisco January 13, 2012

2012-01-13T06:25:00.000-08:00

50 Third Street

Ducca Restaurant Walkway

Museum Row

These are in the walkway between Ducca Restaurant and the Jewish Museum. They are titled Stream of Vessels, done in 1997 by David Nash of charred oak.

David Nash is a British sculptor based in Blaenau Ffestiniog. He is known for works in wood and shaping living trees. His large wood sculptures are sometimes carved or partially burned to produce blackening. His main tools for these sculptures are a chainsaw and axe to carve the wood and a blowtorch to char the wood.

He attended Brighton College from 1959 to 1963, then Kingston College of Art from 1963 to 1967 and the Chelsea School of Art as a postgraduate from 1969 to 1970.

Museum Row, San Francisco January 12, 2011

2012-01-12T07:46:00.000-08:00

50 Third Street

Ducca Restaurant walkway

Museum Row

Attached to the Westin Hotel is Ducca Restaurant. They have an open walkway between 3rd street and the Jewish Museum. In that walkway is seating and dining. Throughout that area is art.

This piece is "Les Funambules" by Charles Ginnever, done in Bronze in 1991.

Ginnever is an American sculptor. He was born in San Mateo, California, in 1931. In 1957, he received his BA from the San Francisco Art Institute and received his MFA from Cornell University in 1959. He started working with canvas and steel scraps painted with bright patterns. The movement toward Minimalism saw the use of color fade and he focused on steel shapes consisting of triangles and trapezoids that cause his work to change shape as the viewer moves around it.

Outdoor restaurant seating

Castro, San Francisco, January 11, 2012

2012-01-11T06:05:00.000-08:00

Castro/Duboce Avenue/Nob Hill

Back of

2020 Market Street

This mural, sponsored by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, is by Mona Caron. She has been in this blog many times before. This 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 blog "the mural celebrates and enriches the car-free public space created by the new Duboce Avenue Bikeway-the first time cars have been excluded from a San Francisco street to make room for bikes and pedestrians. The mural emphasizes the special role in the city of the bikeway itself: 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."

I am linking with the View From Right Here and SOOC

Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco, January 10, 2012

2012-01-10T06:27:00.000-08:00

Yerba Buena Gardens

Childrens Museum side of Howard Street

Urge by Chico Macmurtrie

This has always been one of my favorite sculptures in San Francisco. There is something so lifelike and yet so robotic about the figure. The sculptor works in a team that he formed in 1992, called Amorphic Robot Works. They are a group of artists, engineers and technicians. Some of their work is based on the concept of moving robotic figures, and yet other pieces are haunting and so diverse to belay any attempt to categorize it.

This piece also gives credit to others - Engineer: Dave Fleming - Fabrication/Sculptural Crew: Andrew Forrest, Mark9, Vicente Contredas, Bruce Milligan, Juan Martines - Project Manager: Todd Blair

Chico MacMurtrie was born in New Mexico in 1961 and lives in San Francisco. He holds a B.F.A. from the University of Arizona and an M.F.A. in New Forms and Concepts from the University of California at Los Angeles.

The craftsmanship on this piece is just exquisite. It's background against the trees makes it a little hard for me to show you how exquisite.

Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco, January 9, 2012

2012-01-09T06:29:00.000-08:00

Yerba Buena Center

San Francisco

Deep Gradient/Suspect Terrain

(Seasons of the Sea 'Adrift)

John Roloff

with NGA Industries and Wes-Co Industries

1993

The accompanying plaque says:

This glass ship is an art work that refers to the natural and geological history of California. Sediment gathered from the ocean floor four miles off the coast of San Francisco was placed inside in 1993. This sediment contains diverse mineral and organic matter extracted from the landscape by the rivers that flow to the sea through the Golden Gate. The greenhouse environment of the ship interacts subtly with these materials producing ongoing natural cycles of growth, decay and rebirth.

According to John Roloff's website:

John Roloff is a visual artist who works conceptually with site, process and natural systems. He is known primarily for his outdoor kiln/furnace projects done from the late 1970’s to the early 1990’s as well as other large-scale environmental and gallery installations investigating geologic and natural phenomena. Based on a background in science, his work engages poetic and site-specific relationships between material, concept and performance in the domains of geology, ecology, architecture, ceramics, industry and mining, metabolic systems and history. He studied geology at UC Davis, Davis, CA with Professor Eldridge Moores and others during the formative days of plate tectonics in the mid-1960’s. Subsequently, he studied art with Bob Arneson and William T. Wiley also at UC Davis in the late 1960’s. He is currently Chair of the Sculpture/Ceramics Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.

I must say his website holds an amazing collection of very diversified and fascinating works. I also think it was exceptionally nice of him to give credit to the two companies that helped him build and assemble this piece, that is not done often enough.

For a history of Yerba Buena Gardens please read my article at Untapped Cities.

Mission District, San Francisco January 8, 2012

2012-01-08T06:59:00.000-08:00

Mission District

Sycamore Street at 623 Valencia

This mural goes along the top of the Community Thrift Store. The mural is actually on Sycamore Street.
Done by a school group they developed a mural design that emphasized the social as opposed to the currency value of objects, settling on a clothesline motif to represent the borderland between public and private. Someone from the group blogged about the entire concept and this is what they said "The group voted to limit the parameters of design and color scheme to ensure a consistency in the final product. However, individual style will always assert itself, as reflected in the variety of rendering approaches used in the different objects. For comparison purposes: the boombox is by Mei-Tsung, the sock monkey & coffee grinder are by America, the lamp is by Suzie Bucholz, Lucy van Pelt Pez dispenser by Tom (mostly), salt shaker & cassette tape by Erin, nightshirt by Seija (who did very careful preparatory drawings), mixer by Brooke. "

San Francisco, Around Town, January 7, 2012

2012-01-07T07:30:00.000-08:00

San Francisco

Around Town

Market and 6th Street

Hemlock Alley

Caledonia Street, The Mission

These are by Michael Kershnar. If you think these are beautiful you should go to his website and look at his paintings, they are really gorgeous.

Here is a great article about his experiences and influence.

SOMA, San Francisco - January 6, 2012

2012-01-06T07:46:00.000-08:00

1 AM Gallery

SOMA

Howard and Sixth Street

1 AM Gallery always has graffiti done on its walls to celebrate their newest art installation inside. The installation this month is "When We Were Kids". The background to this is lettering, but I thought the cartoon characters were worth a shout out.

Here is the overall mural taken from across the street.

1 AM Gallery has been in this blog many times before. Check out their work around town as well as previous work on this wall.

The Tenderloin, San Francisco, January 5, 2012

2012-01-05T06:23:00.000-08:00

The Tenderloin

Hemlock Street at Polk

Zombie Michael

The artist on this is Ezra Li Eismont. It was in support of his solo exhibition at Space Gallery, “Now I Lay me down to Sleep”

This is the gallery description of the exhibition. Now! I Lay Me Down To Sleep.

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

Guide me through the starry night

And wake me with the morning light

Thank you for another Day,

A chance to learn, a chance to play.

Paintings exploring the darker side of media manipulation of the minds of the masses. An ode to John Carpenter.

Ezra is an Oakland, California painter, designer and DJ. He earned his BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in 1997. His blog has a very thorough bio and photos of other works. Ezra has also appeared in this blog before with a mural in the Mission District.

I found this little excerpt on his blog, I think it explains a lot about this series. "I am interested in how mythologies are reflected in media, how threads of mythologies intertwine. Who are our heroes? Our enemies? Whom do we learn to look up to, whom do we learn to despise? What cultivates our self control and mastery? Fear or Love? How are mythologies used to help define our decision making process? How are mythologies used to reinforce stereotypes? What images do we find offensive? What images do we find attractive? How do images shape and mold our consciousness? I’ve got more questions than answers."

SOMA, San Francisco - January 4, 2012

2012-01-04T05:50:00.000-08:00

Financial District/SOMA

595 Market

at Stevenson and 2nd Street

Totem Phoenix by Dan Dykes

There is no information available that I could find about the artist or this piece. The piece is registered with the Smithsonian, but that is the extent of the information out there. According to the Smithsonian site the piece was done in 1988, is stainless steel and weighs one ton.

I did find this on a website that has one of his pieces for sale.

Dan is a site-sensitive sculptor who works in a variety of media, including stone, bronze and stainless steel. His work synthesizes various forms of nature, fusing diverse images to capture the vibrancy of life. He is a recognized master of metal fabrication and has travelled nationally teaching for the International Sculpture Conference. Educated at the University of Oregon, his large, totem-like pieces can be found in many collections, including the City of Walnut Creek, CA, the City of Palm Desert, CA, Scripps Medical Center, La Jolla, CA and Boserup Development, Oxnard, CA.

Mid-Market, San Francisco January 3, 2012

2012-01-03T07:28:00.000-08:00

Monadnock Building

685 Market Street

San Francisco

This building has a fascinating history, and their website does a nice job of laying it out. They also describe the murals. Here is what their website says.

The twenty-four foot barrel-vaulted atrium lobby has outstanding Tiepolo-inspired trompe l'oeil murals, featuring famous people from the city's past, by the Evans and Brown Co.

The theme of this mural is "San Francisco Renaissance." It is painted in the Renaissance Baroque style trompe l'oeil (which means to fool the eye) and chosen because the facade of this building was inspired by that period. That is why all these San Francisco and California characters are dressed in such costumes.

East Wall

On the east wall, to the far left, the man holding the newspaper is Dr. Walter Lum. He founded the Chinese Times, managed it for thirty-five years, and became a leading civil rights advocate for the Chinese by the 1970s.

The next figure, in red, is Supervisor Harvey Milk, the camera shop owner who rose to become the nation's most powerful advocate for gay rights. Supervisor Milk and Mayor George Moscone (not depicted) were both assassinated in their City Hall offices in 1978.

The blonde lady is Lotta Crabtree. A popular actress, singer and comedian during the Gold Rush years, it was Lotta who in 1875 donated the fountain you see across the street from the Monadnock Building. This was modeled after a prop from one of her plays. (The fountain has appeared in this blog here)

In the green tunic is a very young looking Bernard Maybeck. He was the architect responsible for designing the Palace of Fine Arts (1915) and numerous other landmark buildings in the Bay Area, including part of the UC Berkeley campus and the First Church of Christ Scientist, also in Berkeley.

The lady in pink is Isadora Duncan. Born in San Francisco in 1875, Miss Duncan achieved international fame in Europe as the founder of modern dance. She was a dazzling figure who danced in flowing robes and bare feet.

The last adult, in black, is Mary Ellen Pleasant, or Mammy Pleasant, as she was popularly known. She was, by legend, a mysterious and powerful figure behind the scenes during the Civil War years of San Francisco, as she championed the cause of blacks all across the nation.

The children, Max and Chloe, are the son and daughter of Don Baker, a former Eastdil Realty developer who engaged the services of artists Mark Evans and Charlie Brown during the building's renovation.

On the opposite wall, we have just four figures with names. The boy on the far left and the lady on the far right playing the mandolin are nameless or generic.

Second from the left, the tall man in blue is the great public benefactor and San Francisco mayor (1895), Adolph Sutro. Initially gaining wealth and fame from his mining techniques and investments in his own Comstock Silver Mines of Nevada, Sutro at one time possessed 1/12th of the land in San Francisco.

The man in the yellow vest is John Muir. A prolific writer and explorer who successfully campaigned for the preservation of forests, Muir is often referred to as the inspirational father of the national park system.

The next figure, in glasses and what looks like a Robin Hood hat, is Herbert Law. A patent medicine king of the 1890's, and a former owner of the Fairmont Hotel, Law was the developer who placed this building here in 1906.

The last portrait with a name is opera singer Luisa Tetrazzini, one of Italy's greatest coloratura sopranos. In 1910, on Christmas Eve, she sang "The Last Rose of Summer" to over a quarter million people right across the street at Lotta's Fountain.

This is the ceiling panel. The mural company Evans and Brown, has an extensive body of work that can be found on their website.

I am sharing on Global Tuesday

SOMA, San Francisco - January 2, 2012

2012-01-02T07:55:00.000-08:00

SOMA

Langton Street

Between Folsom and Howard

This lovely mural was done to hopefully stop the graffiti that had been occurring on the door. The artist is Deborah Yoon and according website she is a self taught multimedia artist who considers both San Francisco and New York home. She works primarily with pen, sumi-e, paint, and has experimented with steel. Deborah received a bachelors of Fine Art and Art History at New York University.

As you can see by the comments the owner of the house saw this post. I asked him for some further information and here is what he had to say "The house is a residential live/work space, "Langton Labs", where a dozen or so folks live together and use our big common space to build art and technology projects, host events, and so on.

Our friend Deborah painted the mural a few months ago and it is quite lovely. It was indeed on top of some ugly tagging, though we'd been meaning to do SOMETHING there for a while."

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T07:21:00.000-08:00

Mid Market, San Francisco December 31, 2011

2011-12-31T07:45:00.000-08:00

1061 Market Street

San Francisco

This little piece has got to just make you smile. It is by the Rainbow Warrior, Ernest Doty.

According to his Facebook page he is from Albuquerque, New Mexico and presently lives in Oakland.

His website doesn't mention his rainbow work, but here is an interview with him regarding the work he has done in Albuquerque.

Here is an excerpt from the article about his motivation. "About three or four years ago ... I was feeling really depressed and I had this notion that if I went out and painted a rainbow, maybe someone would see it and feel what I was feeling or feel anything as intensely as I was. The first one I did, I just literally dumped the paint over the side of a pretty ugly, abandoned, alleyway building. It came out OK but not like any of the ones I’m doing now."

What do you say to the people who don’t like your rainbows?
I painted it for anyone who wants a moment to themselves, or a moment to remember or imagine. To the people that have responded negatively, I challenge them to come and look at it. Don’t look at it on your TV or online or in a newspaper; come see it. Don’t look at it knowing it’s graffiti. Just look at it for what it is. Who can hate rainbows? The rainbow [itself] is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, all you have to do is look for it.

2011-12-30T08:40:00.000-08:00

Japantown

Webster Street, San Francisco

There is a plaque near this fan - or Sensu - and this is what it reads:

The Japantown Sensu (fan) is a modern interpretation of traditional Japanese forms blended with the unique Japanese American culture that has existed, persisted and grown in San Francisco’s Nihonmachi since 1906.

Invented in Japan 1300 years ago, the sensu is a palette for artists, an instrument of dance and drama, a graceful and practical part of everyday life. It is an important link to our Japanese culture and continues to be used in the Japanese American community.

Elements of the Design
The design of the Sensu incorporates key elements from Japantown:

• Peace Pagoda – Designed by Yoshiro Taniguchi, the Pagoda was donated by the people of Osaka,
San Francisco's Sister City, in 1968.
• Origami Fountain – One of the two sculptures inspired by Japanese paper folding, designed by Ruth
Asawa. ((Found on this blog here))
• Mountain stream motif – Architect Rai Okamoto designed this pattern as the setting for the Buchanan
Mall.

The four seasons are represented by traditional Japanese plant motifs:
• Sakura – The springtime cherry blossom is a symbol of the beauty and impermanence of life.
• Ayame (Shobu) – The summer iris flower symbolizes feminine beauty, its leaves masculine strength and
courage.
• Momiji – The autumn maple leaves evoke the flow of time.
• Matsu – The evergreen pine symbolizes strength and longevity.

Original concept and Sensu design by Tony Kaz Naganuma, Grace Horikiri and Karen Kai of NDD Creative, Japanese calligraphy by Mutsuyo Horikiri, former principal of Kinmon Gakuen Japanese Language School.

I have driven past this fan so many, many times, and never realized it had so much meaning. It sits under a pedestrian overpass, so the light is not very good, but I hope you will enjoy the few photographs I was able to capture. Click on the photos to see them larger.

Japantown, San Francisco December 29, 2011

2011-12-29T08:02:00.000-08:00

Japantown

Post Street

San Francisco

This sculpture is part of the California Japantown Landmarks Project. It is made of bronze and stone, stands 9 feet high, and weighs 1000 pounds. The sculpture is by Louis Quaintance and Eugene Daub. It was installed in San Francisco's Japantown in 2005.

The landmark was funded by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program with additional resources from Proposition 40 historical and cultural heritage preservation funds.

The story behind the monument:

"From the late 1800s Japantowns began to emerge in California's port towns and agricultural areas where Japanese immigrants helped build the state's economy through fishing, farming and other businesses. By the 1930s, as many as forty Japantowns existed throughout the state. The forced evacuation of Japanese Americans during World War II, and later, urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s, greatly impacted the fate of these unique historic districts. This common landmark resides in three of the remaining japantowns in San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles. It pays tribute to the contributions of Californians of Japanese ancestry and is dedicated to Japantowns that today exist only in memories."

On the first panel is inscribed:
Footsteps lead to destiny, poem by Janice Mirikitani:
We dance honoring ancestors/who claim our home,/and freedom to pursue our dreams./Our voices carve a path for justice:/Equal rights for all./We prevail./Our future harvested from generations./From my life/opens countless lives./The Journey continues...

This panel reads:

A journey detained
Interned by injustice
What lies before us?

There is also a list of all the internment camps.

The third panel reads:

Sojourners
Visionaries open hands to the earth
Harvest hope for a future in America

Western Addition, December 28, 2011

2011-12-28T07:13:00.000-08:00

Western Addition

San Francisco

Geary and Fillmore Streets

This is Geary Street in San Francisco. On the left is Japantown and on the right is the Western Addition.

The Fillmore street overpass has stretches of blue glass on either side. This installation is titled 3 Shades of Blue by Mildred Howard.

The piece is a "Tribute to the music the continues to define the Fillmore" It is 20 blue glass panes inscribed with a poem by poet laureate Quincy Troupe - Shades of Blue for a Blue Bridge for Mildred Howard, Joe Rudolph and Yori Wada.

three shades of blue
evoke minnie's can do,
soo chow's, yori wada

jimbo's bop city
john lee's boom boom room,
history riffing blue matzoh balls,
fried chicken, soba

the jigoku club inside
j town, bold rebels jamming
cross from black town, udon,
grits, barbecue

cherry blossoms blooming
in lady day's hair, greens and fat back,
sashimi staining kimonos

you walking filmore,
crossing geary with duke,
street cars running over ghost-tracks,
pigfeet in vinegar

indigo-blue & white
red satin, sticky fingers handling
chop sticks, hot cornbread,
sweet potato pie

Mildred Howard has been in this blog before. She is an artist that best uses words as her medium. The mixed cultures of this area are well represented in the poem. The neighborhood has a long history of struggle not only between cultures, but between the city and it's residents as well as the visions that everyone has versus reality. There have been books written about this strife, suffice it to say I think the poem sums it up very, very well.

Due to the light, it was almost impossible to get a good shot of the etched words, here is a small sampling.

Walking across the Fillmore overpass.

Potrero Hill, San Francisco, December 27, 2011

2011-12-27T07:29:00.000-08:00

16th and Bryant

Potrero Hill, San Francisco

This fun mural at 16th and Bryant is by Rigo. Rigo has been in this blog several times, and if you are a regular reader you will start recognizing his style. This was apparently done in 1997.

2011-12-26T08:03:00.000-08:00

Mission District

20th and Bryant

San Francisco

Across from the Deli-up Cafe that I wrote about on the 19th, is Sirron's work at Norm's market. Here are all the photos for your enjoyment.

December 25, 2011

2011-12-25T08:30:00.000-08:00

Annual Snowman Installation

Cornerstone

Sonoma, California

SOMA, San Francisco - December 24, 2011

2011-12-24T07:25:00.000-08:00

SOMA

Filipino Education Center

824 Harrison Street

As you can see this giant mural is on a playground behind a chain link fence. It was impossible for me to shoot it in one piece, so I am including the flyer for the celebration of its unveiling so you can see it without the fence lines.

Tuloy po Kayo, is Filipino for “welcome.” The mural was designed by internationally-acclaimed muralist Cece Carpio, and painted with Miguel Bounce Perez and other volunteer artists, the mural represents the Filipino community’s shared experiences, history, and culture.

To prepare for this mural, Carpio led an arts workshop with Bessie Carmichael students, ( the elementary school in the neighborhood) where the children created drawings on themes of self-identity, family, and community. Using the children’s input as her guide, Carpio led a community meeting at the Bayanihan Center ( neighboring Filipino Center) to gather more feedback and flesh out ideas. Once a final sketch was in hand, community members came back once more – this time, to paint their mural on the wall with a celebratory paint day.

The final work includes several layers of meaning. In the center, a “balangay” (boat) and “araw” (sun) convey the significance of the Filipino peoples’ ancient sea faring ways and the overseas journey of immigration to the US. Cleverly, the poles of the balangay form a star-shape – when viewed with the two star-shaped parol lanterns at each end of the mural, the stars and sun evoke the Filipino flag. The parol lanterns themselves are important symbols of light and blessings, evoking holiday traditions widely celebrated among Filipinos. In SOMA, the annual Parol Festival brings thousands to Jessie Square each December. Against a foreground of waves and a background of sky, the mural includes many children and family groups, playing traditional games or strolling down city streets. Throughout, the composition creates links between San Francisco’s busy city life and memories of Filipino landscapes.

Miguel Perez received a BFA in Communication Design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and currently works as a freelance designer and muralist. He is co-founder of Pueblo Nuevo Gallery, a community art space in Berkeley, California.

This is how Cece describes herself on her own website. From the islands of the Philippines to the streets of Brooklyn, Cece Carpio paints people and places on the edges of survival. Using acrylic, ink, aerosol and installations, her work tells stories of immigration, ancestry, resistance and resilience. She documents evolving traditions by combining folkloric forms, bold portraits and natural elements with urban art techniques. She has produced and exhibited work in the Philippines, Fiji Islands, Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Italy, Norway and throughout the United States. She can often be found collaborating with her crew, Trust Your Struggle, teaching, and traveling around the world in pursuit of the perfect wall.

SOMA, San Francisco - December 23, 2011

2011-12-23T06:32:00.000-08:00

SOMA

1420 Harrison Street

This magnificent and show stopping mural is by Victor Reyes.

Reyes has been painting since the early 90s, and has shown extensively around the world in cities and countries such as Bosnia, Germany, Switzerland, Taipei, Japan, and Miami. Reyes is inspired by his peers, including a community of new California artists "The Seventh Letter," who play an integral role in the development and motivation for his body of work. Reyes, who has no formal art training, moved to San Francisco in 1998 and took a variety of jobs for rent money - he's a freelance illustrator now.

Reyes has a website, but there isn't much on it. I found this fascinating article about a project he has been working on for a few years now on SF Gate.

SOMA, San Francisco - December 22, 2011

2011-12-22T06:33:00.000-08:00

SOMA

501 Minna Street at 6th

This set of small mosaic murals are part of the ArtSpan's South of Market Youth and Public Art Project.

Lead artist, Johanna Poethig who has been in this blog numerous times is director for the Inner City Public Art Projects for Youth, a program of San Francisco's South of Market Cultural Center and Artspan. They have completed a body of ceramic public art works installed throughout downtown San Francisco

These are a result of the Stop, Look, Listen to Me program which operates on $32,000 from the city's Neighborhood Beautification Fund, and has the support of the Art Commission and private benefactors.

SOMA, San Francisco - December 21, 2011

2011-12-21T06:08:00.000-08:00

SOMA

Langton Street

Mac Dre was a rapper, born in Oakland, lived in Vallejo, convicted of murder and killed by a bullet from a passing car in Kansas City. His bio on Wikipedia is really rather interesting. If you are interested in his music style this is fascinating reading as well.

The artists on this mural are ICP Crew (Inner City Phame). “The first graffiti I saw when I was a kid growing up in the Mission was the Chicano writing on our walls,” says Twick, ICP veteran and original member of the group of close-knit friends, founded by Il Charo (then named Jes 446) back in 1988. “We called it Cholo writing, because that’s what it was. The walls decorated the names of the gang members of the neighborhood.”

“I fell in love with the art form right away and wanted to duplicate what the writers in New York were doing,” Twick recalls. Along the way Twick found a mentor in Antie 67, who introduced to him the values and elements of hip-hop culture – from the craft of lettering to break dancing and emceeing. It was an apprenticeship. Like many other kids, Twick felt pulled into an exciting and creative underground world, one that for the most part, kept him out of the real trouble. “I didn’t choose my destiny my destiny chose me,” he says.

"Soon enough more and more crews popped up, a unique Bay Area style developed and an ever-evolving ICP made a name for itself on the walls across the city. “We dubbed the style we do Phunk,” Twick explains, “meaning, knowing the foundation of a letter and creating from that: stretching it here and there, adding connections – some arrows and a few bends in the right places with a shadow or a 3d.” Funkified calligraphy is readable, unlike widlstyle, which has helped ICP garner a large audience of appreciators and street notoriety."

The quotes above are from a May 2010 article in the Bay Guardian.

SOMA, San Francisco - December 20, 2011

2011-12-20T06:49:00.000-08:00

SOMA

10th and Bryant

This mural is by Rigo. He has been in this blog both here and here. This piece was done in 1996.

SOMA, San Francisco - December 19, 2011

2011-12-19T07:39:00.000-08:00

354 5th Street

This work is by Sirron Norris. Born in Cleveland, Ohio he graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, eventually settling down in San Francisco in 1997. Sirron worked as a production artist in the video game industry while he perfected his skill set as a fine artist. In 1999, Sirron quickly gained notoriety from his first showing at The Luggage Store.

Sirron was the recipient of the prestigious Wattis Artist in Residence from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2002. It was during that residency that he coined the term “Cartoon Literalism” as a description of his work. The term emphasizes the use of cartoons as a vehicle to express life.

His rather extensive body of work, and a complete bio can be found on his website.

20th and Bryant Streets
San Francisco

I am sharing at The Creative Exchange

SOMA, San Francisco - December 18, 2011

2011-12-18T07:29:00.000-08:00

SOMA

6th Street and Jessie

This series of murals is by Lango. Lango has been in this blog many times, and I am a big fan of his work. You can see his other works here. This is is a rough part of town, so I am not sure how or why this wall was chosen, but they are really just gorgeous.

I am sharing on Sundays in My City and SOOC

Parkside, San Francisco December 17, 2011

2011-12-17T07:30:00.000-08:00

Taraval Police Station

2345 24th Avenue

Parkside Neighborhood, San Francisco

This gorgeous building is the Taraval Police Station. It was built in 1924 and designed by Martin Rist. 1996 brought a complete restoration and renovation.

This piece is over the door to the community room at the police station. It is by Scott Donahue. Scott has a BFA from Philadelphia college of art and an MFA from UC Davis. He has taught at UC Berkely, UC Davis and California College for the Arts.

The piece is titled Kate, Allen, Javier, Ting-Ting, Sloanie and done in 1996 of concrete, fiberglass and steel. The artist described his work "The sculptures and surround niche were made to match the color and texture of this historic police station across the street from a tot lot at McCoppin Square Park. I made my sculptures fully three-dimensional and lively to contrast the existing Greco/Roman style low relief artwork over the front door of the police station."

His website shows a large body of work, all over the world.

I'm sharing on the View from Right Here

Ocean View, San Francisco December 16, 2011

2011-12-16T06:32:00.000-08:00

Ocean View Public Library

345 Randolph, San Francisco

The front of the Ocean View library is adorned with two marvelous sculptures on either side of the door. It was done out of cast Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete with integral color.

The left panel shows a young tree, with landmarks of the old Oceanview District, some still standing and some now gone, in the background.

The artists are husband and wife team Mark Roller and Colette Crutcher. According to Colette's website it was made under the auspices of the San Francisco Arts Commission for the new branch library in the Oceanview District, at Randolph and Ramsell St., near the southern boundary of the city. Neighbors from the area had petitioned the City for a new library in this sadly neglected community. They wanted aspects of the history of their neighborhood to be included in the artwork. Colette and Mark have been in this blog before and will be featured in the future as well. Not only are they friends of mine, but they are a vital part of the public art scene in San Francisco.

The panel on the right features a mature tree and a representation of the present/future of the District. Both trees bear fruit adorned with letters and symbols representing the languages and traditions of world culture

The round circles are letters from various alphabets around the world, the one on top is Thai, the one on the bottom is cyrilic.

Ocean View Branch Library was the 15th branch established in the San Francisco Public Library system. The first Ocean View Branch Library opened in 1903 on Broad Street near the corner of Capitol Avenue. The new Ocean View Branch Library, at 345 Randolph Street, was opened on June 7, 2000. It was the first branch building to be built in San Francisco since 1969. The San Francisco Bureau of Architecture designed the two-story building. The cost of the building was $2.5 million. Private funds were raised for the equipment and furniture within the branch.

Ingleside, San Francisco - December 15, 2011

2011-12-15T06:09:00.000-08:00

Ingleside

San Francisco City College

Ocean Avenue

This is titled Up-Tight #1 by Jaques Overhoff. Mr. Overhoff has been in this blog before with a piece on SF City College campus. Up-Tight #1 is painted concrete. The name was to symbolize the stabilizing effects of the tension cables. That made absolutely no sense to me until I found an earlier photo of the piece.

Obviously some restoration is in order for this piece that was installed in 1977.

Ingleside, San Francisco - December 14, 2011

2011-12-14T06:11:00.000-08:00

Ingleside

San Francisco City College

Ocean Avenue Campus

Sentinels by Aristides Demetrios

Mr. Demetrios has been in this blog before with his aeloian harp. This piece of welded bronze plates is titled sentinels and was done in 1973. It is suffering from age and has some sever damage at the seams due to water intrusion. I know it is on the list of items to be repaired by the SF Arts commission, the repairs have not yet taken place.

Financial District, San Francisco December 13, 2011

2011-12-13T06:26:00.000-08:00

Lotta's Fountain

Market Street at Geary and Kearney

Lotta's fountain is probably one of the best known landmarks and pieces of public art in the city. It is also the oldest surviving monument in San Francisco, Lotta's fountain was donated by singer/dancer Charlotte Mignon (Lotta) Crabtree in 1875. Lotta began her career as a young girl performing for miners in the gold country and went on to become one of America's most popular stage performers. The fountain was cast in Philadelphia, shipped to San Francisco on an 18,000 mile sea journey around Cape Horn reassembled and presented to the citizens of San Francisco.

After the 1906 earthquake, the fountain, which was one of the few remaining structures downtown, became a meeting point for many people trying to reassemble their families. The city holds a ceremony here every April 18th at 5:12 a.m., the moment of the mainshock, attended by earthquake survivors and dignitaries.

In 1998 the fountain went through a complete restoration. The iron had corroded so badly from the inside out, that the fountain had become a danger. It took four months and $160,000.

Chicken Tetrazzini was named after Luisa Tetrazzini, the famous Italian coloratura soprano opera singer. In those days it was common for chefs at great hotels to name their dishes after celebrities. It is not known for sure, who and where the dish was named, but as a San Franciscan I am partial to the story that Palace Hotel Chef Ernest Arbogast created Chicken Tetrazzini in 1904 when Tetrazzini sang to great acclaim in San Francisco and was featured in daily articles in the San Francisco Chronicle. Or maybe Arbogast gave the dish its official name after the 1908 New York debut when Tetrazzini had a second triumph in San Francisco.

Another possibility is that the dish was premiered after Tetrazzini gave her famous outdoor Christmas Eve concert in 1910 before an estimated quarter of a million people at Lotta’s Fountain. That concert came about when two New York impresarios began feuding over which controlled her New York opera contract. When they attempted to get an injunction to prevent her singing in any theater until their legal squabble was settled, Tetrazzini, who loved the worshipful audiences in San Francisco, headed to the City vowing to sing in the streets if she had to. Although no injunction was issued, she carried out her promise with the open air concert that has become legendary.

I am sharing on Communal Global and Our World Tuesday

SOMA, San Francisco - December 12, 2011

2011-12-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

631 Folsom Street

SOMA

These giant pieces of carrara marble are by Richard Deutsch. Deutsch has been in this blog before and I recommend you visit his website. He is a very accomplished artist with work all over the world.

This piece is titled Fragmented. The day I was there the fountain was not running, but Deutsch's website has some really gorgeous photos of the fountain while it is working.

Tenderloin, San Francisco December 11, 2011

2011-12-11T07:24:00.000-08:00

Tenderloin

420 Taylor Street

Mural by C.J. Fitzgerald

Diane Winters is a tile restoration artist. She recently emailed me about this mural that she was instrumental in restoring. I had never seen it before, and was thrilled to get a chance to photograph it and learn a little bit of San Francisco history, I was completely unaware of.

The mural sits on the side of a parking garage, little did I know the building also housed Radio City. The NBC Radio City building in San Francisco was not owned by NBC. It was built for NBC and owned by a San Francisco investor, a dentist named Dr. Barrett. The basement and most of the ground floor were used as a public parking garage operated by Dr. Barrett. The upper four floors were used for broadcasting. Rumor has it that Dr. Barrett believed that radio was a passing fad, so he had the framework of his building designed to allow easy conversion of the rest of the building into a parking garage.

NBC moved into Radio City in 1942. It moved out when the twenty-five year lease expired in 1967. The building was a white elephant from the day NBC moved in. It contained ten studios, plus a news studio. Every studio except news had its own control room

The building is an Art Deco marvel and if you are interested in reading more of its architecture and history here is a great link.

The mural, which contains over 2,500 tiles, measures 16 X 40 feet and begins over the doorway, on the second floor making it very hard for me to bring you really terrific photos. Notice the hand on a radio dial.

Diane's email had this to say "As a side note, 22 of the current tiles were made by me to replicate tiles damaged during renovations begun in 2000. Impact from the interior side of the facade wall caused a portion of the hand and adjacent radio waves to fall off the building, fortunately landing on that "canopy" over the entrance and not on pedestrians. I used the broken pieces and a photograph, plus glaze and blackline technique tests over the course of two years to recreate them. I had to match more than 18 glaze colors just in that small section. ...there were 126 colors total (I don't even want to try to imagine counting and keeping straight that many)."

Thank you Diane for her "heads up."

I sadly, could find nothing about about C.J. Fitzgerald the original designer of the mural.

View Larger Map

.

SOMA, San Francisco - December 10, 2011

2011-12-10T07:37:00.000-08:00

SOMA

560 Mission Street

Annular Eclipse

George Rickey

George Rickey built his career combining fundamental elements of nature and physics in the creation of his sculpture. His works include a broad vocabulary of geometric shapes and multiple devices for moving the elements in his sculpture, such as gimbals, pendulums and rotors. Ricky constantly experiments with mechanical systems, but as he wrote in 1991, the drama in his sculpture “is in the movement, not the structure. The means must disappear.”

While I am beginning to find kinetic sculptures over done in the modern landscape, I love the parklet that this one sits in.

The Landscape Architect on this project was Christian Lemon while at the firm Hart Howerton.

I'm sharing on SOOC

SOMA, San Francisco - December 9, 2011

2011-12-09T06:55:00.000-08:00

SOMA

100 First Street

2nd Floor

Scattered across downtown San Francisco are almost seventy semi-secret spaces, privately owned but open to the public. Subject to the fine print of a little-known pact between the city and business, these POPOS (Privately Owned Public Open Spaces) allow alluring vistas of San Francisco and access to its intimate interiors. This little gem is up a flight of exterior stairs off Mission Street.

This black granite and glass piece is titled Waterwall by John Luebtow. Over the past 30 years, John Luebtow has become one of the most respected names in contemporary glass sculpture. He holds a BA from California Lutheran College, and two distinct MFAs from UCLA (one in ceramics and one in glass).

Luebtow has devoted much of his career to teaching in Los Angeles. His website shows off his amazing work.

This area is really rather lovely, there is a delicatessen on the plaza level, should you wish to stop in for a nice outdoor lunch, there are also public restrooms available, last time I looked.

Market Street, San Francisco December 8, 2011

2011-12-08T09:02:00.000-08:00

Market at Bush and Battery

Mechanic Monument

Douglas Tilden

This sculpture by Douglas Tilden was one of three major art works for the Market Street Beautification Project at the turn of the 20th century. It was funded with a bequest of $25,000 from James Mervyn Donahue, the son of the late Peter Donahue, who in 1850 started the state's first ironworks and machine shop, established the first gas company for street lighting in the city in 1852, and later initiated the first streetcar line.

Commissioned to create a monument for the Donahues, Tilden had difficulty finding an idea. Taking a walk on Mission Street, he passed an open-air machine shop and spotted a sweat-drenched, muscular man operating a "punch press" machine. Thinking of how Donahue began his empire, he envisioned an oversized version of a punch press in bronze, with five men struggling to operate it. The Donahues were skeptical when seeing his sketches, but Mayor Phelan, who had been a great patron of Tilden, insisted that the sculptor have freedom of expression to create an enduring monument that would be a tribute to all those who had toiled to make the Peter Donahue fortune - it would be a greater tribute."

The Mechanics, was unveiled in 1901. The immodesty of his design set tongues wagging; fortunately, the lobby to make pants for the sculpture failed.

I found this amazing photograph taken after the 1906 earthquake.

I'm sharing today on And Then She Snapped and Fabulous Fridays

Financial District, San Francisco December 7, 2011

2011-12-07T06:11:00.000-08:00

Financial District

One Bush Plaza

Woman in Bronze

Marcello Mascherini

1959

Marcello Mascherini was an Italian sculptor, born in Padua, who lived from 1906 to 1983. While an extremely famous sculptor in his time, little is written about him today. Marcello Mascherini was a prolific sculptor who made an impact on Italian art. Mascherini’s sculptures are on display in Rome at Palazzo Montecitorio where they have rested since after his death in 1969.

This particular sculpture was mentioned in Life Magazine's "Life Guide - Art in Buildings" in 1963.

Financial District, San Francisco December 6, 2011

2011-12-06T06:15:00.000-08:00

Financial District

One Bush Plaza

Crown Zellerbach Building

This beautiful and timeless fountain was made in 1959.

It was a creation of artist David Tolerton. Tolerton was born in 1907 and died of natural causes at 93. His father came to the Bay area in 1915 and owned an art gallery on Sutter Street in San Francisco.

Tolerton studied philosophy at Stanford University from 1926 until 1928, then attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he also taught. He also studied ironworking in France, Spain, Italy and Germany.

His work was almost exclusively in metal, but apparently he spent some time working in abstract sculpture while living in Big Sur.

In addition to two Bay Area fountains, Tolerton's works are displayed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Denver Museum of Art and the Oakland Museum.

Potrero Hill, San Francisco, December 5, 2011

2011-12-05T06:28:00.000-08:00

Potrero Hill

17th and Alabama

Sometimes murals catch you, not for their quality but for their whimsy. Take a look at the close up pictures. This mural is by Javier Manrique, a multidisciplinary artist who has shown all over the world. This mural is on the wall of Project Artaud where Manrique lives.

I am sharing today on The Creative Exchange