Search Results : sowers

Solar Totems

 Posted by on January 22, 2018
Jan 222018
 

Glen Park Canyon Rec Center

Charles Shower Solar Totems

This unique installation is by Charles Sowers. Three reclaimed redwoods receive the “writing” of the sun as its rays are focused by a spherical lens to lightly burn into the wood.  As the sun moves across the sky, the burn becomes a line; preserving a record of sunshine periodically broken by fog or cloudy skies.  The lens is advanced a small distance each day to create a distinct daily line.  After one year the heliograph mechanism is transferred to the next log.  In this way, a work is completed on site and becomes a sculptural archive of the specific atmospheric conditions of the site.

Solar art by Charles Sowers Glenn ParkThe piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission at a cost of $92,000 and was installed in 2017.

Solar Totems by Charles Sower

According to the artist, ”Taken together, the three transformed logs turn the plaza into a kind of civic solar and atmospheric observatory, artistically expanding our understanding of place and connecting us to our environment through that understanding.”

Charles Sowers graduated from Oberlin College in 1989 with a degree in Anthropology.  He presently works as an exhibit developer for the Exploratorium.  While not working at the Exploratorium he is creating a vast array of very interesting artworks, a few that have been featured on this website before.

Watching the Wind at the Randall Museum

 Posted by on September 6, 2012
Sep 062012
 

Randall Museum
199 Museum Way
Castro

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The plaque that accompanies the piece reads:

Charles Sowers is an artist whose practice links art and science.  Here wind currents activate over 500 aluminum arrows to reveal the ever-changing ways the wind interacts with the building and its environment.  “My work presents actual physical phenomena, often of striking visual beauty, that draw people into careful noticing and interaction”

This piece is from the Collection of the City and County of San Francisco commissioned by the SFAC for the Randall Museum Funded by the Public Utilities Company.

According to a February 21, 2012 S.F. Chronicle article 

The new exhibit took four years to make, required dozens of prototypes and tests, and ultimately uses 612 individually balanced aluminum arrows spaced 1 foot apart on architectural facade material covering the side of a local museum.

I spent over a year-and-a-half designing and testing wind arrow designs,” he said. “I first prototyped arrow designs in paper. Then I made a prototype panel fitted with six different arrow designs and mounted it on-site for a year of testing.

“I also mounted arrows outside my apartment at Baker Beach, which was great for the intense wind. And I even held them outside my car window. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to mount them on the building.”

Sowers also spent considerable time hand-balancing each arrow, studying the possibilities using computer-aided drafting software. “Balance was a big part of the design,” he said. “Important, and tedious. I balanced every one, working in groups of 25 arrows. My shoulders ached.”
He also had to decide whether the “V” of the arrow’s wings should slope toward the wall or away. “I learned that the V sloping out caught the wind and made it vibrate or oscillate. It was not behaving correctly, so they are sloped inward.”

Sowers, who is 45 and earned his bachelor’s degree in anthropology at Oberlin College – where he studied physics early on – has long been fascinated with the tapestry of nature, whether the swirling of fog, the formation of ice, the unexpected rippling in a mud puddle, or the effects of water and wind on sand.

The Randall Museum was the inspiration of Josephine D. Randall. Ms. Randall received her Masters degree in zoology from Stanford University in 1910. By 1915, she had organized one of the first Girl Scout troops in the United States as well as one of the first Camp Fire Girl troops. She went on to become San Francisco’s first Superintendent of Recreation, a position she held for a quarter of a century. In 1948 she received an honorary Doctorate from the University of California. Under her direction, the San Francisco Recreation Department achieved national recognition as one of the most outstanding services of its kind.

One of Ms. Randall’s long-term goals was the establishment of a museum for children. In 1937 her vision came to fruition. Simply called the “Junior Museum,” it originally opened in the city’s old jail on Ocean Avenue. In 1947, Ms. Randall shepherded a $12,000,000 bond issue for recreation capital projects, including a new museum. In 1951, the museum opened in its current facilities on a 16-acre park over looking San Francisco Bay and was renamed the Josephine D. Randall Junior Museum in honor of its founder.

 

Marina Green – Phillip Burton

 Posted by on October 30, 2011
Oct 302011
 
Marina Green
Phillip Burton Bronze
Phillip Burton (June 1, 1926 – April 10, 1983) was a United States Representative from California. He was instrumental in creating the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Burton was one of the first members of Congress to acknowledge the need for AIDS research and introduce an AIDS bill.

Not far from this sculpture is the “Sky Mirror”

The color of the sky varies depending on the density of the atmosphere. Sunlight from the horizon travels through about 38 times more air than light streaming down from the zenith. Sky Mirror allows visitors to compare patches of sky from different altitudes, revealing the surprising range of shades and hues in what often seems a uniformly blue dome.

Charles Sowers had long been looking for a way to create a device that would compare the variations in color at different areas of the sky. Neuroscientist Richard Brown suggested placing one mirror on top of another with an angling feature. Charles created a prototype using lego motors and then later created the finished exhibit that you see here.  This is part of Outdoor Exhibits for the Exploratorium.
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