Poetry – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

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 wall.

Photo Courtesy of SFAC

Spiral of Gratitude

Let us turn together in this circle of remembrance as the light shines through our words.
And we lift our gaze toward the sky to honor the men and women who risk their lives in the line of duty.
See their courage gleaming through the glass, spilling through the words of our love.
Band with us to celebrate the beloved behind every star.
Draw on their courage, their strength, their honesty.
Let us raise our heads together into this spiral of memory
to honor the sacrifice that ripples through time, through the generations.
Never do we have the gift of goodbye.
The only choice is to carry on, make our peace.
An object in motion keeps moving forward.
The voices of the fallen echo every day,
their reflection mirrored in the warmth of a smile,
the glint of an eye, the tilt of a head.
The time spent together was too short
and the missing long.
They are the fallen
and we must not fall.
We can move back or forward, upwards or down, but we cannot remain still.
We must rise to protect, as they did.
In their honor we must persist,
turn our pain into compassion,
never forget the man, woman, child they were,
and lift our heads as we ascend toward the light.

While it is difficult to determine the exact cost of the project from public documents, it is clear that is exceeded its $700,000 budget.

Iris Jazz Club

Posted by Cindy on April 22, 2015

Apr 222015

Music: breathing of statues.
Perhaps
Silence of paintings.
You language where all language ends.
You time standing vertically
On the motion of mortal hearts.

by poet Rainer Maria Rilke

IRIS Jazz Club is a cultural complex located in front of in the city of Santiago de Cuba. The space, originally a cafeteria, was turned into a jazz club with the specific purpose of promoting jazz in the area.

Santiago de Cuba is celebrating their 500th year in 2015. These bronze panels were the work of Santiago born artist Alberto Lescay’s Caguayo foundation to mark this celebration. The program costs 125,400 Cuba Pesos or approximately $5000US.
A group of about 20 Cuban and German visual artists work with Lescay on the project.
*
*

Passage of Remembrance

Posted by Cindy on April 6, 2015

Apr 062015

Memorial Court
Civic Center

In 1932 when the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building were built the project was supposed to include a memorial to veterans. The project ran out of money, and one was never made.

However, during this time the octagonal lawn in the Memorial Court has held earth from lands where Americans fought and died. This stone octagon, now encloses the earth. The Memorial has been designed so that it can be opened to accept newly consecrated earth from battlefields of the future.

In 1935 that War Memorial Complex architect Arthur Brown, Jr., recommended landscape architect Thomas D. Church be engaged to complete the Memorial Court. Church, a world renowned landscape architect, know for his gardens reflecting the Beaux-Arts tradition completed the design in 1936. His drawings reference a “future memorial” to be added in the octagonal area of the Memorial Court.

Soils from World War I battlefields were consigned there at the time of its completion. A similar ceremony depositing soils from World War II battlefields took place following the 1945 signing of the United Nations Charter in the Veterans Building. And in 1988, veterans groups held a ceremony interring battlefield soils from Austria, Belgium, Cambodia, China, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Guam, Italy, Laos, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Prior to beginning construction of the San Francisco Veterans Memorial, the soil from the center of the octagonal area of the Memorial Court was carefully removed and safeguarded.

The Young Dead Soldiers, a poem also used at the Presidio Cemetery Overlook, is a fitting poem for this spot.

The project artist was Susan Narduli of Narduli Studio. The project was completed October 2014 with $2.5 million of private donations.

Twelve Beauties

Posted by Cindy on October 20, 2014

Oct 202014

İçəri Şəhər
Old City or Inner City
Baku Azerbaijan

This sculpture by Nail Alakbarov cuts along the edges of İçəri Şəhər. The description that accompanies the sculpture far better explains the situation than I ever can…

This composition represents a sculptural image of seven armudi glasses standing on top of each other. Armudi is the name of traditional Azerbaijanian glass used for drinking tea, it can be translated as “pear-shaped” since it resembles a pear. On the other hand such shape could be associated with the contour of a female body. Thus the glasses also symbolize seven beauties from a similarly named masterpiece written by Nizami Gencevi.

The sculpture is installed in Icheri Sheher among ancient architecture. The aim of this project is to combine a national aspect with the international. As the people of the era of globalization tend to say: “Think global, act local”. In other words the artist provides contemporary art that is cosmo political by definition with a national content. Being a representative of local artistic intelligentsia, the artist is trying to express his concerns about the loss of cultural identity in the countries that have already faced globalization. Though the work is a piece of contemporary art, it still demonstrates a prevailing Eastern-centric vector.

Historical Background

In Azerbaijan, where tea-drinking is widespread, tea is regarded as a symbol of hospitality and respect to guests. Serving tea before the main course is an old tradition. It is a customary to drink tea not from porcelain cups but from special pear-shaped glasses that are called armudu. Their shape resembles a pear with slightly smaller top than the bottom distinguished by a narrow “waistline”.

There are numerous interpretations why these glasses have such an unusual form: it is easy to handle, it resembles a shape of a woman’s body, etc. As a matter of fact, the reason is quite simple: the tea in the bottom section of the glass cools down slower than in the upper one, keeping the temperature of the tea same. Determined by its functionality and beautiful shape armudu is definitely a perfection in terms of design. Every Azerbaijani city, no matter how big or small, has a tea-house. Tea houses play an important role in the social life of the citizens, people discuss news, read newspapers, make plans, play backgammon, maintain relations. Tea is also a very important aspect of the Azerbaijani engagement process. Parents of the bride show their respond to the groom by serving him a tea, if they serve it with sugar it means “yes”, if without – it means “no”.

This project was sponsored by YARAT! which was founded in 2011 by Aida Mahmudova, YARAT! is a non-commercial, private organisation dedicated to the promotion and nurturing of Azeri Contemporary art nationally and internationally.

Nail Alakbarov graduated from the A.Azimzade School of Art and continued his master’s degree at the Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Art.

He continued his education at the national French art school École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts and in 2012, Alakbarov received his master’s on cinematography at the Lumière University in Lyon.

For More information on travel in Baku read go to PassportandBaggage.com

The Young Dead Soldiers

Posted by Cindy on October 24, 2013

Oct 242013

Presidio
Bay Ridge Trail
Presidio Cemetery Overlook

Dedicated on Veterans Day 2009, the Presidio cemetery overlook honors the service and sacrifices of America’s soldiers. A wooded section of the Bay Area Ridge Trail leads to the overlook, which is a perfect place for quiet contemplation.

The cemetery overlook offers one of San Francisco’s most stunning views of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay and the Marin Headlands. The carvings are part of “The Young Dead Soldiers,” a poem by Archibald MacLeish, who served as an artillery officer in World War I.

The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:
Who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night,
And when the clock counts.
They say: We were young. We have died.
REMEMBER US.
They say: We have done what we could,
But until it is finished it is not done.
They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished,
No one can know what our lives gave.
They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,
They will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for,
Peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,
It is you who must say this.
We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died;
REMEMBER US.

by Archibald MacLeish,
1892-1982, American Poet

The overlook is part of the Presidio Trust and was designed by their in-house landscape architect Rania Reyes. The stone is a quartzite from Montana (Chief Cliff Quarry). The company that did the engraving is Acme Memorial.

The overlook is the fourth of eight overlooks planned as part of the Presidio Trails, Bikeways and Overlook Campaign. It was made possible through a generous gift from Robert and Kathy Burke. It was cited as one of 2012’s Notable Developments in Landscape Architecture by the Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Bret Harte at the Bohemian Club

Posted by Cindy on August 6, 2013

Aug 062013

624 Taylor Street
Nob Hill

The artist, Jo Mora, created and donated the sculpture to the Bohemian Club of which he and Bret Harte were members. In 1933, when the old Bohemian Club was torn down, the memorial was removed and reinstalled on the new club in 1934,

Francis Bret Harte (August 25, 1836 – May 6, 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.

The plaque which is on the Post Street side of the club depicts 15 characters from Harte’s works.

The characters represented come from a handful of stories and a poem that established Harte’s reputation. He wrote these while living in San Francisco during the gold rush: Tennessee’s Partner, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, M’Liss and The Luck of Roaring Camp. Through his poem “Plain Language from Truthful James,” Harte created a wily Chinaman who outwits his Anglo gambling opponents shown on the far right as the Heathen Chinee.

Jo Mora has been in this site many times you can read all about his life and other works here.

Are Years What? #7 of 8

Posted by Cindy on July 18, 2013

Jul 182013

Crissy Field

Are Years What? (for Marianne Moore) – 1967

“Are Years What (for Marianne Moore)”, is the first sculpture Mr. di Suvero made entirely with steel I-beams. Its main feature is a steel V-shaped angle that hangs and swings freely in space, counteracting the solidity of its two vertical and four sprawling diagonal beams. (The tall beam from which it hangs—itself held in place by thin cables—is 40 feet long.)

Are Years What is part of the Hirshhorn Museum Collection.

What Are Years?
By Marianne Moore

What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt,—
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourages others
and in its defeat, stirs

the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.

So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.

A Heroine is Honored

Posted by Cindy on November 25, 2012

Nov 252012

1199 Mason at Washington
Chinatown

This is the entry to the Betty Ong Recreation Center in Chinatown. Betty Ann Ong was a flight attendant on American Airlines, Flight 11, the first airplane to become hijacked on September 11, 2001. Shortly after the hijacking began, Betty chose to be involved and make a difference by taking action to notify the American Airlines ground crew of the hijacking situation on board the airplane. Amid horrific danger, she stayed on the telephone for 25 minutes, relaying vital information that eventually led to the closing of airspace by the FAA for the first time in United States history.

In memory of Betty, the Betty Ann Ong Foundation, a not for profit public charity, was established to continue her legacy. The advocacy of the Betty Ann Ong Foundation serves to educate children to the positive benefits of lifelong physical activity and healthy eating habits and to provide opportunities for children to experience the great outdoors so that they can grow to become healthy, strong and productive individuals.

For the center’s entrance lobby, Chinese-born Shan Shan Sheng created a suspension sculpture that uses language to speak to the unique Chinese American experience in San Francisco and the California landscape. Active Memory is cascade of red Chinese calligraphy that showers visitors upon entry. The artist handmade the glass characters so that they look handwritten. The sculpture’s form, vertical flows of narrative, was inspired by traditional Chinese landscape paintings, which are often inscribed with poems. The sculpture itself is comprised of five poems, two of which are by renowned poets Bai Juyi (772-846) and Li Bai (701-762) of the Tang Dynasty and a poem by Su Shi (1036-1101) of the Song Dynasty. The other poems include an early twentieth-century poem by an anonymous immigrant about his experience on Angel Island and the last by the Artist, with key words describing the lives of Chinese immigrants in the Bay Area, Words such as “gold rush”, “railroad track”, and “computer” invoke the memory of travel, labor and the transformation of America.

Strands 1/2, Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi (772‐846)

唐白居易《賦得古原草送別》離離原上草,一歲一枯榮。野火燒不盡,春風吹又生。

“Grasses on the Ancient Plain: A Farewell Song”

The grass is spreading out across the plain,
In spring it comes and by fall it goes.
Wild fire cannot destroy it all;
When spring winds blow it surges back again.

Strand 3, Tang Dynasty poet, Li Bai (701‐762) 唐李白《送孟浩然之廣陵》

孤帆遠影碧空盡,惟見長江天際流。

“A Farewell To Meng Haoran On His Way To Yangzhou”

Under the blue sky, your lonely sail turns into a silhouette, Only the long river rolls on its way to heaven.

Strands 4/ 5, Song Dynasty poet, Su Shi (1036‐1101)

宋蘇軾《水調歌頭》明月幾時有,把酒問青天。但願人長久,千里共嬋娟。

“Thinking of You”

With a cup of wine in hand, I look at the sky

and wonder when the moon first appeared.
May we all be blessed with long life.
We can still share the beauty of the moon together even if we are thousand miles apart.

Strands 6/7, Anonymous poem from the book Island: Poetry and History of Immigrants on Angel Island, 1920‐1940, by Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim and Judy Yung

天使島牆詩
木屋拘留幾十天,所囚墨例致牽連,可惜英雄無用武,只聽音來策祖鞭

Detained in this wooden house for several tens of days.
It is all because of the Mexican exclusion law which implicates me.
It’s a pity that even if a hero has no way to exercising his prowess here.
The only thing we can do to get us out of this place fast is to wait for the call.

Translator’s note No. 1: 策[ce]:take; snap. 祖鞭[zu bian]:be in front; in lead; stay on top. 策祖鞭(take Zu’s whip) in general means doing something in the lead.]

Translator’s note No. 2: The translator modified the wording in the last two lines of the English translation to provide clearer meaning.

Strand 8, Keywords related to Chinese immigrants history in the San Francisco Bay Area by the Artist

淘金火車鐵路半導體數碼電腦網路舊金山

Gold rush, train, railroad track, Semi conductor, digital age, computer, network, San Francisco

Shan Shan Sheng grew up during the Cultural Revolution. In 1982 she came to the US to pursue her academic and artistic interests by attending Mount Holyoke College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where she earned her first MFA. She then went on to Harvard as an artist-in-residence for two years. She now lives in San Francisco.

Evan Bissell captures Artists on the Streets of SF

Posted by Cindy on September 1, 2012

Sep 012012

Folsom and 17th
Mission District

“I write to organize my thoughts.
I spit poems because it feels empowering
to know there is a room full of people there to listen.”

This is Luara Venturi, a local spoken word poet, as depicted by Evan Bissell.

The Intersection for the Arts’ show “Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere* youth, imagination and transformation” took place in 2008. Bissell’s paintings of young artists from Youth Speaks were put around the city as a teaser for the show. The site for each was chosen by the subject, the location being one with some personal meaning to the poet. In this case, Venturi chose the former address of Youth Speaks which used to be housed nearby.

Evan has other pieces around San Francisco depicting fellow artists. Bissell is a 2005 graduate of Wesleyan University with a double major in Painting and American Studies with an Ethnic Studies concentration. He was trained in 2011 as a circle keeper by Sujatha Baliga.

If you would like to hear Luara read her poem, you can do so at this webpage.

Arnold Genthe’s Photography at CCSF Chinatown Campus

Posted by Cindy on August 28, 2012

Aug 282012

Washington and Kearny
Chinatown

Diligence is the path

Up the mountain of knowledge

Hard work is the boat

Across the endless sea of learning

This is the Washington street side of the new Chinatown campus of San Francisco City College. This particular window is the library. The archival photograph is by San Franciscan Arnold Genthe. This young immigrant girl in traditional Chinese dress gazing out at the city is the cover photograph for the book Genthe’s Photographs of San Francisco’s Old Chinatown.

She is framed by a couplet, in English and in Chinese calligraphy, metaphorically extolling the cultural virtues diligence and hard work as the “path up the mountain of knowledge and the boat across the endless sea of learning.” For years this poem has been displayed on the student bulletin board at the Filbert campus, but no one is quite sure of its origin.

Genthe’s autobiography, As I Remember (1936), is the chief source of information about his life. In it, Genthe recounts a cosmopolitan upbringing in Berlin, Frankfurt, Korbach, and Hamburg. His father, Hermann Genthe, was a professor of Latin and Greek and, later in life, founded and served as director of a gymnasium or preparatory school.

Under his father’s tutelage, young Arnold grew up well versed in topics from poetry to classical literature

In 1895 he accepted an offer to tutor the young son of Baron F. Heinrich von Schroeder when the family moved to San Francisco. Thus began a new life for Genthe in America.

Genthe’s first photographs were made while in the employ of the von Schroeders to illustrate his letters home.

Genthe became involved in photography at a crucial juncture in the history of the medium. The introduction of the hand-held camera and easier methods for development and printing encouraged many people to try photography.

Genthe opened his first portrait photography studio in San Francisco in 1898 and became very active in the city’s cultural and social milieu. At the socially prominent Bohemian Club, he mingled with artists, writers, theater people, community and business leaders, and entertained famous out-of-town visitors. Through contacts at the illustrated weekly The Wave, he met Frank Norris, Jack London, and Mary Austen.

Even as the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906 destroyed Genthe’s studio, equipment, books, and art collection, he used a borrowed camera to document the events as they unfolded. Genthe and Ashton Stevens, drama critic for the San Francisco Examiner, toured the ruins with visiting celebrity Sarah Bernhardt.

Intrigued by San Francisco’s Chinatown, he shot a series of photographs documenting life there before the destruction of the city in 1906. About 200 photographs in the series survive.

SOMA – Poetry Sculpture Garden

Posted by Cindy on February 7, 2012

Feb 072012

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 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.”

Photo Credit: the artist and Gallery Paule Anglim

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 was unable to find entire thing, 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?”

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.

UPDATE September 2018. As of this date, the only portion of the art installation remaining is Big Bertha. The fountain and the poetry wall are gone.

The reasons are explained in this San Francisco Chronicle article, that author agrees with me that it was a shame to do what they did to this public space.

Embarcadero Interpretive Signage and Walkway

Posted by Cindy on January 28, 2000

Jan 282000

The Embarcadero

Waterfront Transportation Project Historic and Interpretive Signage Program

This interpretive signage program was created in 1996 and covers 2.5 miles of the Embarcadero. The project includes 22, 13 foot high posts, vertical history stations and bronze inlays. these metal black-and-white-striped pylons are imprinted with photographs, stories, poetry in several languages and drawings commemorating the waterfront’s historical significance.

They are a collaboration between historian Nancy Leigh Olmstead and artist Michael Manwaring.

This was funded by a grant from Americans for the Arts, and California State’s Transportation Enhancement Activities

Poetry of Pier 14

Posted by Cindy on January 19, 2000

Jan 192000

Pier 14
Waterfront/Embarcadero

This 637-foot-long pedestrian span opened in 2006. It is the newest recreational pier on the San Francisco waterfront.

The reason it exists is the breakwater on which it rests, a shield for ferries from winter storms; the design, by ROMA Design group was to top the pier with a 15-foot-wide corridor of concrete framed by long thin rails of horizontal steel.

This $2.3 Million was done in two phases.

Phase I construction was completed in 2004, and included building a 115-foot pier extension to connect the breakwater to the Embarcadero Promenade, a 30-foot diameter terminus at the outer

end, entry railings, and a portal structure with a rollup gate.

The playful swivel chairs, designed by ROMA Design Group and the Port, were fabricated by Eclipse Design, who also fabricated all 1300 feet of the Pier’s railing. These items were done in 2005 under Phase II.

Along the way you can read the Sailor’s Song (From Death’s Jest Book, Act I) by Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849)

TO sea, to sea! The calm is o’er
The wanton water leaps in sport
And rattles down the pebbly shore
The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort,
And unseen mermaids’ pearly song
Comes bubbling up, the weeds among.
Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar:

To sea, to sea! the calm is over.
To sea, to sea! our wide-winged bark
Shall billowy cleave its sunny way,
And with its shadow, fleet and dark,
Break the caved Tritons’ azure day,
Like mighty eagle soaring light
O’er antelopes on Alpine height.
The anchor heaves, the ship swings free,
The sails swell full. To sea, to sea!