Love and Marriage San Francisco Style

 Posted by on February 14, 2014
Feb 142014
 

City Hall
South Light Court

Heart sculpture at City Hall SF

In 2004, San Francisco General Hospital  launched Hearts in San Francisco to generate revenue to support its  numerous programs.  This heart, in City Hall’s South light court, was part of that program.  Designed by Deborah Oropallo the  interlocking Heart, titled LOVE + MARRIAGE, was sponsored by Ambassador James Hormel and Timothy Wu.  The heart displays the first names of many of the gay couples married in San Francisco in 2004.

Love + Marriage SF

ARTIST’S THOUGHTS: “I wanted to make a heart that would not just be decorative, but somehow be relevant to what is going on in San Francisco today. The list of same-sex names represents some of the 4,161 gay marriages that took place in 29 days, and has now become an important part of our city’s history. The names were done on my computer and printed onto canvas with a digital permanent pigment printer. At the center of the heart and the literal focal point are the names of Del Martin, 83, and Phyllis Lyon, 79, who were the first couple to get married on Feb 12. The names fade out away from the center like a drop of water in the middle and its ripple effect. I was extremely happy that the heart was appropriately placed on the spot where these marriages took place.”

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Deborah Oropallo is a Bay Area painter and sculptor who has exhibited her work at various museums around the country including the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. and the Whitney Museum in New York City.

Oropallo got her MA and MFA from the University of California, Berkeley

Heart in San Francisco South Light Hall*

Love and Marriage

 

City Hall in Wood

 Posted by on February 6, 2014
Feb 062014
 

City Hall
South Light Court
Civic Center

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This is one of five wooden models that Don Potts did for the 1982 AIA Convention.  The pieces were later purchased by the City and four are now on display in City Hall.  You can read about the first two here. Don was a meticulous artist.  Another renown project, that has since been destroyed was “My First Car”.

Don Potts City Hall Wood Model*

City Hall Wood Model by Don Potts*

City Hall San Francisco*

City Hall Wood Model by Donn Potts

The fourth of these models is of the Hallidie Plaza, a building that houses the San Francisco Chapter of the AIA.

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HALLIDIE PLAZA  by Don Potts

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Don Potts

In researching Don Potts I found this article by Hal Crippen about “My Car”

 

THE FIRST CAR of Don Potts is actually an extraordinary assemblage—a concours d’elegance of one man’s work. The title itself has a sort of parallel to Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout and the objects themselves are resonant with the objects of a now—lost American boyhood—an American Flyer wagon, a soap box derby car, a first bicycle—but here raised to the Nth power of imagination.

At a time when true craftsmanship, and even the idea of it, is fast disappearing in automobiles, and even the very existence of the automobile is called into question, Don Potts has paid a necessary act of homage to the greatest of automobiles. One thinks of Bugattis, Lancia Lambdas, early MGs, birdcage Maserati frames.

The craftsmanship is literally stunning–but it is no more important to know that Potts’s spent six years on this creation than it is to know Michaelangelo’s back bothered him in painting Sistine Chapel. The Potts car is simply there in ultimate perfection. The aim of the craftsman is to reveal rather than to conceal—and thus this Vesalian anatomy of the idea of a car, beautiful in its nakedness.

It is a fantasy of a car—ultimately useless, somehow gut-exciting, doomed and yet with a strange optimism. It is a car for dream riders in dream landscapes.

The entire work consists of the Basic Chassis of wood, the Master Chassis, motorized and radio controlled, and two bodies, one of stainless steel and the other of fabric and steel. The whole work must, for the purpose of classification, be considered as sculpture, but actually it exists beyond classification simply as a work of art. It is not something that one could buy to “decorate” a space. It is, in heroic scale, both a monument and a memorial of an age.

Don Potts My Car

George Moscone

 Posted by on February 4, 2014
Feb 042014
 

City Hall
Mayor’s Balcony
Civic Center

George Moscone by Spero Anargyros

This bronze bust is of the late Mayor George Moscone.  Moscone was assassinated by Dan White along with Harvey Milk in November 1978, a tragedy for the City of San Francisco.  Moscone was our 37th mayor.

The bust was done by my dear friend Spero Anargyros.  Spero has a few works throughout San Francisco, and you can read about them here.

Many people are aware of the highly controversial, but in my opinion, excellent, sculpture of Moscone by Robert Arneson.  The bust that Arneson created was not liked by the powers that be.  The new mayor, Dianne Feinstein, had a letter hand delivered to each Arts Commissioner just before their vote on whether to accept the bust, asking them to reject it, and they did, by a seven-to-three vote. The bust, being shown at Moscone Center, was removed and Robert Arneson returned the thirty-seven thousand dollars he had been paid to do the work.

In December 1994, Spero Anargyros’s sculpture of George Moscone was unveiled.

Moscone by Spero Anargyros

The pedestal reads: San Francisco is an extraordinary city, because its people have learned to live together with one another, to respect each other, and to work with each other for the future of their community.  That’s the strength and beauty of this city – it’s the reason why citizens who live here are the luckiest people in the world.”…a quote from George Moscone.

Harvey Milk

 Posted by on January 30, 2014
Jan 302014
 

City Hall
Supervisors Legislative Chamber
Civic Center

Bust of Harvey Milk

This is the only bust of a supervisor in San Francisco’s City Hall.

Harvey Milk  was the first openly gay person to be elected to public office. Milk won a seat as a San Francisco supervisor in 1977.  He served almost 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor. Milk’s election and assassination were key components of a shift in San Francisco politics.

Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the gay community. In 2002, Milk was called “the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States”

This sculpture was designed by the team of Daub Firmin and  Hendrickson of Berkeley at a cost of $84,000. Rob Firmin said artists tend to avoid busts that show toothy smiles, as Milk’s does. They went for it because, Firmin said, “Harvey Milk’s signature expression was a huge, amused and infectious grin.”

Part of the inspiration for the bust is from a photograph taken by Daniel Nicoletta, who worked in Milk’s Castro Street camera shop and is a co-chair of the memorial committee. His photograph caught Milk’s tie blowing in the San Francisco breeze and the bust includes that detail.

Harvey Milk Sculpture

 

Engraved in the pedestal is a quotation from one of the audiotapes Milk recorded in the event of his assassination, which he openly predicted several times before his death. “I ask for the movement to continue because my election gave young people out there hope. You gotta give ’em hope.”

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Eugene Daub is D & F’s principal sculptor.  He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and taught there. He has been an instructor at the Scottsdale Artists’ School.  He has work in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institute, The British Museum, Ellis Island Museum, as well as many public-sculpture installations across the United States.  He is accomplished in all sculpture modes and in a wide range of more general art.

Rob Firmin, in addition to hands-on art creation, works on concepts, composition, research, model building, and project management.  Firmin holds a double major in history and art history from Denison University. His career and education have ranged across:  realist-figurative sculpture, the formal study of history and art history, to the invention of project management techniques, financial risk reduction, dynamic process control, modeling techniques, and software concepts and design.

Jonah Hendrickson lives in Oakland where he splits his time between sculpture and his real estate business.

Dec 292012
 

San Francisco City HallSan Francisco’s 1906 fire and earthquake not only destroyed much of San Francisco, it also destroyed the dream of many to bring the City Beautiful Movement to large sections of San Francisco.

The City Beautiful Movement began with the “White City,” also known as the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. The Exposition took place in Chicago and was an exercise in light, order and forward thinking.

The shimmering “White City” was a model of early city planning and architectural cohesion. In the Court of Honor all of the buildings had uniform heights, were decorated roughly in the same manner, and painted bright white. The beauty of the main court, the well-planned balance of buildings, water, and open green spaces was a wholly new concept to the visitors of the fair. Dignified, monumental and well run, the White City boasted state-of-the-art sanitation and transportation systems. All of this was in sharp contrast to the grey, urban sprawl of Chicago in 1893.

1893 02 Architecture Spotlight: San Francisco Civic Center Chicago – 1893 World Columbian Exposition – (Photo courtesy of Boston College)

The City Beautiful Movement was a response to failing urban life. An attempt to improve cities through beautification, it was hoped that the solution of social ills would inspire civic loyalty, and make city centers more inviting to the upper classes, in hopes that they would return to them for work and therefore spend money.

The City Beautiful Movement used the language of the Beaux Arts (Fine Arts) Style. This style was named after the art and architecture school of Paris the Ecoles des Beaux Arts and flourished between 1885 and 1920.

The Beaux Arts is a classical style with a full range of Grecian and Roman elements, including columns, arches, vaults and domes.

General defining elements include the following:

Symmetry
Highly ornamented exterior decorations
A single architectural element as the center of the building composition. This could be an over-scaled
archway or a dramatic line of columns.
A dramatic roofline, often with sculptured figures
Monumental steps approaching the entrance
Floor plans that culminate in a single grand room
Axial floor plans so that vistas can be obtained throughout the building

SF City Hall DomeClassic Elements of Beaux Art Architecture.

The City Beautiful Movement began in San Francisco in 1904, when James Duval Phelan, former mayor and president of the “Association for the Improvement and Adornment of San Francisco,” invited Daniel Hudson Burnham to town. Daniel Burnham was the indisputable “Father of City Beautiful.” He was the Director of Works for the Worlds Columbian Exhibition in Chicago and took a leading role in the creation of master plans for a number of cities.

Burnham’s group proposed that a new Civic Center complex be built at the corner of Market and Van Ness with radiating grand boulevards. A landscaped park would begin at the Civic Center and extend to the Golden Gate Park Panhandle. Twin Peaks was to be crowned with a neo-classic library overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The plan created neighborhoods, which would be accessed by a grid pattern, and tied the transportation systems to scenic views. The groups’ plan prescribed careful treatment of the hills and streets and even took into consideration the issues of building costs, maintenance and upkeep.

SF War Memorial BuildingThe War Memorial Veterans Building – San Francisco

War Memorial Opera HouseThe War Memorial Opera House is almost identical to the Veterans Building.

In 1906 the earthquake and fire presented the City Beautiful movement with a blank canvas-with one caveat, the merchants of San Francisco, eager to regenerate commerce, would have the final say as to the direction of future building in San Francisco.

Nevertheless, there was still a significant Beaux Arts influence in a number of buildings that were built after the earthquake, and the Civic Center we know today is one of the finest examples of the movement.

Bill Graham AuditoriumThe Bill Graham Auditorium

The Beaux Arts buildings that create the heart of Civic Center include City Hall and the Exposition Auditorium (now the Bill Graham Auditorium) completed in 1915 in time for the Pan Pacific Exhibition, the War Memorial Opera House and the War Memorial Veterans Building, the Main Library and the State and Old Federal Buildings built in the 1920s and 1930s.

These classic buildings give the San Francisco Civic Center a visual cohesion that should encourage visitors to sit and enjoy this area. Sadly, due to the continued onslaught of vagrancy, the City of San Francisco has destroyed the central park area, Civic Center Plaza, that brings the buildings together.

“The biggest single obstacle to the provision of better public space is the undesirables problem,” wrote William H. Whyte in his 1980 book, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. “They are themselves not too much of a problem. It is the actions taken to combat them that is the problem.”

The Civic Center open space has no benches, and if you are looking for a place to sit, you will find poorly maintained lawns interrupted by sparsely planted annuals. A colonnade of pollarded London Plane trees stands like sentinels over a vast bed of decomposed granite that used to house a reflective pool. While the Asian Art Museum has often placed intriguing and world-class art in the plaza, it is not yet enough to make the average citizen want to visit.

Dealing with the homeless problem in San Francisco has never been one of calm and reason; making the area scream, “go away” has not worked. It is time to find a way to bring vibrancy and humanity back to the area. It is time that the city slowly works its way back to the ideals of the City Beautiful Movement within its own Civic Center.

SF Federal BuildingThe State of California building

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