Mission Bay – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Holographic Entities Reminding of the Universe

Posted by Cindy on May 11, 2021

May 112021

May 2021

Pierpoint Lane between Third Street and Bridgeview Way – San Francisco

Holographic Entities Reminding of the Universe – 2020 – Painted Bronze Artist: Masako Miki

Artists Statement:

Consisting of nine artworks, this installation reflects my interest in ancestral traditions and folklore that speak to the interrelatedness of all beings, animate and inanimate, in the universe. The sculptures are inspired by shapeshifters: ever-evolving entities that continue to reinvent themselves by embracing dualites and celebrating new identities. The tallest, Ichiren-Bozu, is a mythic character that represents consciousness. The upward movement and repetition of form implies growth and prosperity. Traveling down the lane one will also encounter Continuous Eyes, the archetype of the protector: Animated BackScratcher and Umbrella Shapeshifter, deities of aged tools: Plant Shapeshifter, inspired by Burro’s Tail, on of the site’s plantings Moth Shapeshifter, a famous secular ghost from modern Japan, and Animated Moon, a reminder of the natural world My installation invites reflection, encouraging passers-by to consider their own interdependence and uphold the Bay Area’s spirit of diversity, innovation, and resiliency.

Ichiren-Bozu

Masako Miki was born in Osaka, Japan and now lives and works in Berkeley, California.

Animated Moon

1996 Miki graduated from Notre Dame De Namur University in Belmont, California with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Arts, Painting and a minor in Printmaking

Animated BackScratcher and Umbrella Shapeshifter

Continuous Eyes

These pieces are a permanent site-specific sculpture installation commission by Uber Technologies through San Francisco’s 1% for the arts

Orbital

Posted by Cindy on May 7, 2021

May 072021

May 2021 Pierpoint Lane between Third Street and Bridgeview Way Artists Jason Kelly Johnson and Nataly Gattegno – Studio Futureforms Artists Statement: Orbital is a contemporary garden folly, exploring geometric and material exuberance it evokes organic forms found in nature, but also giant robots and futuristic space vehicles. The structure is composed of three coiled legs that spiral towards the sky. The exterior surface is defined by stainless steel origami skins, while the interior space is wrapped by a vortex of colorful tactile shingles. Orbital’s dynamic form evokes an era of rapid change and uncertainty, while also inspiring curiousity and playful Continue Reading

Pathways

Posted by Cindy on October 21, 2019

Oct 212019

Chase Center 500 Terry A Francois Boulevard Adam Eli Fiebelman is a San Francisco based artist who is known best for his stencil and cut paper-based works. His childhood in Albuquerque, New Mexico was spent examining and interacting with the surfaces of the city through making graffiti art. His awareness of the structures we use every day but often overlook has become the subject of his current work: the buildings, doorways, fenced trees, discarded buses and chipped alley walls that fill our cities and map our lives. Through an intricate process of hand-cut stencils and enamel painting, he explores Continue Reading

ATSF Car Ferry Slip

Posted by Cindy on August 5, 2019

Aug 052019

The Atchison and Topeka Car Ferry Slip Between Piers 52 and 50 Mission Bay Built in 1950, not much remains of the ATSF Car Ferry Slip. What does remain consists of a large, fork-shaped pier covered in wood decking. Near the mid-point of the structure is a large, steel-frame freight tower consisting of a pair of smaller metal truss towers, each capped by a pulley wheel. The structure served the fleet of tugs and barges that carried freight cars between the railroad’s main railhead in Richmond and San Francisco. Transport to and from the docks was mostly by rail. Rather Continue Reading

Monarch

Posted by Cindy on December 7, 2016

Dec 072016

1600 Owens Mission Bay, San Francisco Cliff Garten Studio is internationally recognized for creating integrated public art projects which collaborate with urban design, architecture, landscape architecture and engineering to challenge the assumptions of how public places are built and used. Through a diversity of materials, methods and scale, the studio is committed to exploiting the artistic and expressive potential of public spaces and infrastructure in varied urban and natural contexts. Cliff Garten has a Masters of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design and a Masters of Landscape Architecture from Harvard University GSD. He has served as a visiting Continue Reading

Anima by Jim Sanborn

Posted by Cindy on August 24, 2016

Aug 242016

1700 Owens Street Mission Bay, San Francisco This piece, in Mission Bay, is titled Anima, and is by American Sculptor Jim Sanborn (1945 – ). Sanborn is best known for creating the encrypted Kryptos sculpture at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, a piece of work that has captured the imagination of cryptologists around the world for years. He attended Randolph-Macon College, receiving a degree in paleontology, fine arts, and social anthropology in 1968, followed by a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the Pratt Institute in 1971. He taught at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland, and then for nine years was Continue Reading

Overflow X

Posted by Cindy on August 19, 2016

Aug 192016

1500 Owens Street Mission Bay, San Francisco Overflow X is a stainless steel sculpture by Jaume Plensa. Jaume Plensa was born in 1955 in Barcelona, where he studied at the Llotja School of Art and Design and at the Sant Jordi School of Fine Art. He has been a teacher at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and regularly cooperates with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a guest professor. This particular design is not new. Plensa has been utilizing the seated figure created from letters in various installations around the world. They range in Continue Reading

First Responder Plaza – SF

Posted by Cindy on May 4, 2015

May 042015

1245 Third Street Mission Bay The new City and County Public Safety Building houses the police administrative headquarters, a relocated district police station, a new district fire station, San Francisco’s SWAT team and fleet vehicle parking. Part of the design included the First Responder Plaza at the corner on Third Street, designed by artist Paul Kos who was responsible for the Poetry Garden in SOMA. In First Responder Plaza, Paul Kos created a design around three central motifs standing for Police, Fire and Paramedic Services. A bronze bell, a seven point star and a conifer as a natural flag pole. According to Continue Reading

Spiral of Gratitude

Posted by Cindy on April 29, 2015

Apr 292015

Spiral of Gratitude is part of the $3.2 million Percent for Art Program that went into San Francisco’s new Public Safety Building. Spiral of Gratitude, by New York artist Shimon Attie, is a suspended, 17 foot tall 10 foot round glass cylinder that is lit from a skylight above. The cylinder is inscribed with a poem that contains sentiments of survivors based on information gathered in interviews by Margo Perin with the relatives, partners, and co-workers of police officers who were lost in the line of duty. There is also a text in bas relief behind the cylinder on the concrete Continue Reading

Mission Bay – Koret Quad

Posted by Cindy on November 6, 2011

Nov 062011

Mission Bay Mission Bay Koret Quad The Koret Quad is a large green space in the heart of Mission Bay. I have discussed my abhorrence with this part of town before. The quad is only accessible by pedestrians and is so well hidden as to be missed by most people. This is somewhat intentional I assume as Koret Quad it not legally open to the public other than the sidewalks. While you won’t be hounded, they have made it well known so that they can throw you out if you misbehave. One of my favorite outdoor art installations is set Continue Reading

Mission Bay – HEAL

Posted by Cindy on November 5, 2011

Nov 052011

Mission Bay UCSF Campus Heal by Miroslaw Balka Miroslaw Balka was born in Ottwock, Poland, near Warsaw, and continues to live and work there. He turned his family home into a studio. Austere, with a sense of absence and empty space, his work is defined by the people that interact with it. HEAL is a stainless steel structure standing at an angle, on a large concrete square public space. Looking up the word is in reverse and hard to figure out, but looking down, the shadow of the word is projected on the pavement below, moving and changing throughout the Continue Reading

Mission Bay – Ballast

Posted by Cindy on October 29, 2011

Oct 292011

Mission Bay Ballast by Richard Serra Corten Steel One of my absolute favorite mediums for massive outdoor sculpture is Corten Steel. Weathering steel, best-known under the trademark COR-TEN steel and sometimes written without the hyphen as “Corten steel”, is a group of steel alloys which were developed to eliminate the need for painting, and form a stable rust-like appearance if exposed to the weather for several years. “Weathering” means that due to their chemical compositions, these steels exhibit increased resistance to atmospheric corrosion compared to other steels. This is because the steel forms a protective layer on its surface under Continue Reading

Mission Bay – Brought To Light

Posted by Cindy on October 28, 2011

Oct 282011

Mission Bay Brought to Light by Lawrence Weiner Lawrence Weiner grew up in the Bronx and attended Stuyvesant High School, working as a longshoreman in the early mornings before classes. As a young man he hitchhiked to San Francisco and lived among the Beat poets. His earliest work was done in Mill Valley, in 1960. BROUGHT TO LIGHT, grew out of a visit he made in 2009, when Weiner spent time walking the campus and speaking with researchers and others in the community. The work was proposed as “an essential gesture, to be stated here in a colored, light filled Continue Reading

Mission Bay -I’m Alive

Posted by Cindy on October 27, 2011

Oct 272011

Mission Bay 409-499 Illinois I’m Alive by Tony Cragg – 2004 Stainless Steel Tony Cragg was born in liverpool in 1949. He attended Gloucestershire College of Art and Design, Cheltenham College, and the Royal College of Art, London (1973-77). Cragg has lived and worked in Wuppertal, Germany, since 1977. I’m Alive exudes movement and vitality and is the perfect expression of its title. It is simple, serpentine and, despite its highly wrought form and reflective surface, it is very natural. I also love it’s placement, the lawn, just emphasizes all that is right with this piece.

Mission Bay – Doppel Fountain

Posted by Cindy on October 26, 2011

Oct 262011

Mission Bay Doppel Fountain by Shawn Smith In his own words: In 2006, I was commissioned to create a monumental sculpture by SKS Investments/ X-4 Dolphin LLC in San Francisco’s Mission Bay district. I designed a pixilated stainless steel fountain that appears to be frozen in mid-air. The pixilated fountain is made of varying lengths of 2″ square tubing that are lined up vertically and overlapped to create pixels. The tubing remains open at the top and bottom so that from above or below the sculpture, viewers are able to see through the tubing, giving the fountain a feeling of transparency Continue Reading

Mission Bay – Hulls

Posted by Cindy on October 25, 2011

Oct 252011

Mission Bay 500 A. Terry Francois Blvd at Pierpoint Lane * Hulls by Richard Deutsch Hulls commemorates Mission Bay’s waterfront, which is steeped in maritime history. During the 16th century Ohlone Indians, sustained by hunting and fishing, built boats from reeds of the bay’s shallow waters. The 1800’s saw a vibrant industry of wooden schooners and ferryboat builders, which later lead to the fabrication of large metal World War 1 and II submarines and battleships. Born in Los Angles, Richards work is extensive with pieces all over the world, as can be seen on his website

Mission Bay – Where did good architecture go?

Posted by Cindy on April 6, 2011

Apr 062011

Mission Bay - Where did good architecture go?

Mission Bay What happened to architecture? This is not architecture, this is value engineering. These buildings were cliches before they were finished. No one is going to fly hundreds of miles to the great city of San Francisco and snap pictures of these monstrosities, unless of course they are urban planners. I would like to leave the more technical aspects of why this is off the mark to an architect blogger, you can read his succinct points on architecture and then you can contemplate why these building miss in so many ways. The above photo was taken in the newest Continue Reading

Rammaytush

Posted by Cindy on January 26, 2000

Jan 262000

These plaques run along the south side of King Street, between the Caltrain station and AT&T Park. There are 104 of them embedded in the sidewalk. On them are engraved all of the known words of a language called Rammaytush. The Rammaytush language is one of the eight Ohlone languages, historically spoken by the Ramaytush people, indigenous people of California. Historically, the Rammaytush inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean in the area which is now San Francisco and San Mateo Counties. Ramaytush is a dialect or language within the Costanoan branch of Continue Reading