sculpture – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Rolling Reflection

Posted by Cindy on March 29, 2021

Mar 292021

February 2021
1500 Mission Street

This piece sits in what the project calls the forum, it is by Sanaz Maninani.

Sanaz Mazinani is an artist and educator based between San Francisco and Toronto. Mazinani works across the disciplines of photography, social sculpture, and large-scale multimedia installations,

Mazinani holds an undergraduate degree from Ontario College of Art & Design and a master’s degree in fine arts from Stanford University. Her work has appeared in solo exhibitions at institutions including the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the West Vancouver Museum.

This is just one of several pieces of art at 1500 Mission Street.

The Project Sponsor is required to provide public art valued at 1% of the construction cost of the building. The Site Permit indicated a construction cost of $200,000,000, so the Project Sponsor must spend at least $2,000,000 on the art program. The Project Sponsor has dedicated a budget of $2,206,968 which equals approximately 1.1% of the total construction cost.

Refrain by Walter Hood

Posted by Cindy on March 19, 2021

Mar 192021

February 2021
Hunter’s Point/ Bayview

Refrain was produced in 2015 and is made of steel.

Walter Hood is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California. He is also a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and lectures on professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally. He is a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, and 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.

Funding for the piece was proved by the US Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration, the budge was $250,000.

Refrain is a visual response to Frame (a piece further up the hill), created using the same dimensions, the artist views the disk surrounding the rods as pixels that create a picture of the current view at the time of placement. There is considerably more vegetation since the pieces were first installed, so the view is no longer quite as obvious.

Floating Points

Posted by Cindy on February 16, 2021

Feb 162021

February 2021
1500 Mission Street

Shannon Finley, a Berlin- based artist, created this piece that stands by the front door to 1500 Mission, between the glass facade and a 30 foot green wall. It stands 15-foot high and is made of stainless steel, powder-coated matte black.

Comprised of multiple planes set at various angles, the sculpture is intended to act as a companion piece to the building itself — its light mimicking the light of the building’s facade. “Floating Points” is Finley’s first US commission.

Shannon Finley is a sculptor, painter and animator who creates works that reflect a strong interest in geometric abstraction. His works on paper, sculptures, and video animations all evince a hard linearity, with patterns composed of sharp angles and geometric forms.

This is just one of several pieces of art at 1500 Mission Street.

Prevailing Winds

Posted by Cindy on February 9, 2021

Feb 092021

February 2021
1500 Mission Street

“Prevailing Winds” by artist Catherine Wagner . Catherine is a San Francisco-based artist, known best for her conceptual photography. Wagner’s work often involves extensive research and, in this instance, she studied Bay Area wind patterns and then laser cut the resulting cartographic data onto eight aluminum panels. Lining the South Van Ness sidewalk of the 1500 Mission Street project, these functional sculptures have arrow-shaped holes and rectangular notches, which both help mitigate the wind and add poetry to the urban landscape. Ms. Wagner is a Professor of Studio Art, as well as the Dean of the Fine Arts Division at Mills College.

The eight panels were manufactured by Gizmo SF.

This is just one of several pieces of artwork at 1500 Mission Street.

Geneses I at Moscone Center

Posted by Cindy on March 14, 2019

Mar 142019

Geneses I

Christine Corday was born in 1970 in Maryland. Before receiving her B.A. in Communication Arts (1992), she wrote an original research paper which led to an Astrophysics internship at NASA Ames Research Center.

She went on to do graduate work in Cultural Anthropology and the works as a graphic and structural designer for advertising companies. Corday received the Edison Ingenuity Prize in Montreal, Canada and has also won a number of international design awards for her patented glass bottle for the Republic of Tea. In 2000, Corday was selected for a Short Story prize from Francis Ford Coppola’s fiction magazine Zoetrope.

“Geneses” means “many beginnings,” and Corday sees her sculpture as begun but never finished. The finish will be continuously applied by the weather and the hand prints of passersby.

According to the San Francisco Art Commission: GENESES I is the first and unique work from a monumental series inspired by the concept of beginning. Its name is the phonetic fusion of the word in different languages. Its arcing segments are melted and hewn stainless steel supported by a concrete form. The work exhibits a cool planar edge and surface juxtaposed by the sensory examination of the grand-scale heat within its soft and epic melting cut. A heat allowing a material moment cooled or suspended between solid and liquid state, as well as mimicking the temperatures at the surface of the sun, the core of our earth. The work encourages touch, which is intended to provide a moment of respite and an engaged perceptual encounter.

This project is part of San Francisco’s 2% for Art Program. The piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Director of Cultural Affairs for a cost of $1,450,000.

New Life at 77 Van Ness

Posted by Cindy on March 9, 2019

Mar 092019

77 Van Ness
San Francisco

New Life by Paul Gibson

Paul Gibson, born in Los Angeles in 1957, was educated at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, California, in Architecture, and received his BFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Following his passion for arts, he decided to move to New York City and received a full-time painting scholarship at the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York. Paul lived in New York for five years and became a believer in the visual arts and a collector of works on paper.

Gibson moved with his family to San Francisco in 1989, established a studio in Hunters Point and began teaching at the Academy of Art University in the art of drawing.

This is part of San Francisco’s 1% for Art Program.

San Francisco’s “Downtown Plan” adopted in 1985, was developed under the fundamental assumption that significant employment and office development growth would occur. New commercial development would provide new revenue sources to cover a portion of the costs of necessary urban service improvements. Specific programs were created to satisfy needs for additional housing, transit, childcare, open space, and art. The public art requirement created by this plan is commonly known as the “1% for Art” program. This requirement, governed by Section 429 of the Planning Code, provides that construction of a new building or addition of 25,000 square feet or more within the downtown C‐3 district, triggers a requirement that provides public art that equals at least 1% of the total construction cost be provided.

Effective May 2012, in certain projects, all or part of this requirement may be satisfied by either providing accepted art of the resulting 1% valuation on-site or paying such amount to a newly established Public Art Trust Fund (Fund), which is administered by the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Éire by Jerome Connor

Posted by Cindy on October 2, 2018

Oct 022018

Merrion Square
Dublin, Ireland
Eire by Jerome Conner Éire by Jerome Connor

Jerome Connor (February 1874 – August 1943) was born in Coumduff, Annascaul, Ireland. He was the sixth and youngest son of Patrick and Margaret Connor.

The family moved to Holyoake, Massachusetts in the 1890s.

Jerome ran away from home and settled in New York. After trying many trades (foundry-man, professional prize fighter, machinist, sign painter, Japanese intelligence officer in Mexico, and stonecutter) he became a sculptor.

His most notable sculptures are in Washington D.C.: statues of Robert Emmett (a cast of which is in Dublin) and Bishop John Carroll, and the Nuns of the Battlefield tablet.

When the Irish Free State achieved independence in 1922, Connor returned to Ireland

In 1925 he won a prestigious commission from a New York committee to create a monument in Cobh, County Cork to commemorate the lives lost in the sinking of the Lusitania. Sadly, eighteen years later, at the time of his death, the project had not been completed. Connor had become a bankrupt and alcoholic, and died in a Dublin slum at the age of 67. The Lusitania Monument was eventually completed by another artist.

In 1928 Jerome Connor became involved in a proposal to create a memorial to the Kerry poets, which was to commemorate four leading Gaelic poets of the 17th and 18th centuries. He chose a figure of Éire holding a harp seated on a rock, possibly inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem Old Ireland in Leaves of Grass (1861). The unstrung harp was based on the 1621 Cloyne harp in the National Museum. The work went as far as a full-scale replica in wax.

Éire was cast in bronze in Dublin many years after Connor’s death. It was erected in Merrion Square, without a title or an acknowledgment of the sculptor. It has a plaque inscribed “This statue was presented by Joseph Downes and Son Ltd. in Dec. 1976 to commemorate the centenary of the ButterCrust Bakery, Dublin”.

Dudley Carter the GGIE and CCSF

Posted by Cindy on August 7, 2018

Aug 072018

CCSF Campus
Phelan Avenue
Diego Rivera Theater and Conlan Hall

During the second season (1940) of the Golden Gate International Exposition, organizers began the Art in Action program in the Hall of Fine and Decorative Arts. During the 1939 season, the hall had housed the art collections of European and Pacific cultures. The concept was a working art exhibit in which artists of many media, including sculptors, painters, muralists, weavers, stained glass artists, printmakers, potters, and engravers were invited to move their studios into the Hall and create their art while the public watched.

Artists included sculptor Ruth Cravath, mosaic artist Herman Volz, sculptor Frederick Law Olmsted, etchings artist Elizabeth Ginno Winkler, muralist Diego Rivera, and wood carver Dudley C. Carter.

A view of the Hall of Decorative and Fine Arts from the San Francisco Bay. The building served as the Palace of Fine and Decorative Arts during the GGIE and was constructed to serve as one of two hangar buildings built for the San Francisco airport that was planned for the island. (Library of Congress)

This is when Dudley Carter created The Ram. The sculpture, a bighorn mountain ram, was carved in just 30 days from a single redwood log using primitive instruments such as a wood axe.

At the conclusion of the fair, the college architect, Timothy Pfleuger, presented The Ram to Archibald J. Cloud, president emeritus of the college. It was to serve as the symbol of the college mascot.

Timothy Pfleuger was on the GGIE committee, it was his idea for the Art in Action project, and due to his also being the college architect, much of the finished art from Art in Action was always slated to end up at what was then San Francisco Junior College and after the war became City College of San Francisco (CCSF).

For five years The Ram was stored in the men’s gymnasium because of the absence of a place considered appropriate for it. With the acquisition of the west campus The Ram was placed outside, periodically changing locations, and from time to time students would paint it in the campus colors of red and white. Sometimes rival schools would repaint The Ram in their own school colors. In spring of 1983, The Ram was restored by Carter (who was by then 90 years old) with the use of a pickaxe and its original, natural redwood.

The Ram by Dudley C. Carver was originally carved at the GGIE and now stands in Conlan Hall at CCSF

The Goddess of the Forest is another redwood sculpture created by Carter during the GGIE. It was originally 26 feet tall, and had a girth at the base of 21 feet, for many years this piece was located in Golden Gate Park. The sculpture suffered extensive water damage to the lower half before being restored by CCSF Art Department instructor Roger Baird in 1992. It is now only 15 feet tall and stands facing the Diego Rivera mural in the Diego Rivera Theater.

It almost did not make it to CCSF. Difficulties arose in regards to paying for the statue’s move from Golden Gate Park when, then CCSF President Carlos B.Ramirez, decided that the estimated $8,000 moving fee was too high.

The actual moving fee was $3,000 and eventually paid for out of the Student Union’s budget.

Goddess of the Forest originally carved by Dudley C. Carter for the GGIE now stands in the Diego Rivera Theater of CCSF

Goddess of the Forest originally carved by Dudley C. Carter at the GGIE now stands in the Diego Rivera Theater of CCSF

Diego Rivera worked directly across from Carter at the Golden Gate International Exposition and they became friends. Rivera said the following about Carter, “Here in the Fine Arts Building there is a man carving wood. This man was an engineer, an educated and sophisticated man. He lived with the Indians and then he became an artist, and his art for [a while] was like Indian art—only not the same, but a great deal of Indian feeling had passed into him and it came out in his art. Now, what he carves is not Indian anymore, but his own expression—and his own expression now has in it what he has felt and that is right, that is the way art should be. First, the assimilation and then the expression, only why do the artists of this continent think that they should always assimilate the art of Europe. They should go to the other Americans for their enrichment because if they copy Europe it will always be something they cannot feel because after all, they are not Europeans.”

Carter shows up in Rivera’s mural that, while originally painted at the GGIE, was always slated for CCSF.

Dudley Carver depicted in Diego Rivera's mural carving The Ram

Dudley Carter depicted in Diego Rivera’s mural carving The Ram

The third sculpture by Carter is also in Conlan Hall in the first-floor hallway. This is titled The Beast.

The Beast was actually sculpted by Dudley Carter at Porter College at the University of California in Santa Cruz in 1983. The piece was given to City College by Carter on the urging of the then college president, Carlos Ramirez.

Beast by Dudley C. Carter

Born in New Westminister, Canada on May 6, 1898, Dudley Carter was the son of a woodsman. He was six years old when he began helping out in his father’s lumber camp.

Raised among the totem-carving Kwaquit and Tlingit tribes, he took part in their ceremonies. About 1929, he moved to Seattle where he had art lessons at the Cornish School and studied sculpture at the Art Institute.

Moving to California in the mid-1930s, he lived in San Francisco and worked for the Federal Art Project. He later lived in Carmel where he built houses out of trees that he felled himself. He died in 1992 in Bellevue, Washington.

Carter working on The Ram during the GGIE surrounded by wood chips (Bancroft Library)

Carver standing with one of his axes in front of his likeness in the Diego Rivera Mural

Carter standing with one of his axes in front of his likeness in the Diego Rivera Mural (Bancroft Library)

Goddess of the Forest in Golden Gate Park 1951 (SFPL) – Notice the lower portion of the goddess’s legs are still intact. The sculpture now ends just below the feet of the small animal at her knees.

The Whales of the GGIE

Posted by Cindy on July 26, 2018

Jul 262018

Originally created for the Golden Gate International Exhibition
Moved to Steinhart Aquarium
Moved to CCSF
In Storage

Photo from: OpenSFHistory / wnp37.03052.jpg

These whales were in the San Francisco Building at the Golden Gate International Exhibition and were sculpted by Robert Howards.

After the GGIE closed the whales were moved to a prominent place in front of the Steinhart Aquarium in Golden Gate Park

Photo from: OpenSFHistory / wnp27.5859.jpg

Robert Boardman Howard (1896–1983), was a prominent American artist active in Northern California in the first half of the twentieth century. He was celebrated for his graphic art, watercolors, oils, and murals as well as his Art Deco bas-reliefs and his “Modernist” sculptures and mobiles.

Howard was born in New York City on September 20, 1896, to architect John Galen Howard and society belle Mary Bradbury. When he was six years old, the family moved to Northern California. They settled in Berkeley where John G Howard was hired to supervise the erection of the Hearst Memorial Mining Building at the University of California. Robert completed grammar school, but dropped out of Berkeley High School and was tutored privately.

Between 1913 and 1916 he studied at Berkeley’s California School of Arts and Crafts (today’s California College of the Arts). He became acquainted with Alexander Calder in 1915. After graduation, he traveled across the country on a motorcycle to New York City to continue his training at the Art Students League under Kenneth Hayes Miller and F. Luis Mora. He returned to California in 1918, joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and was sent to France. At the end of World War I, he studied in Koblenz and in Paris at the Academie Colarossi and the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere.

Notable work by Howard includes: a bas-relief of a phoenix at Coit Tower, the reliefs at the Paramount Theatre (1931–32; specifically the reliefs on the auditorium walls, stage and ceiling), the 1935 cast-iron bas-relief for the Badger Pass Ski House in Yosemite National Park, four massive murals and assorted sculptures for other G.G.I.E. pavilions, including the Brazil Building, California Building, Western State Building, and Ghirardelli Building, two bas-reliefs in cast stone titled Power and Light, at the Pacific Gas and Electric Mission Substation in San Francisco, the City Club of San Francisco’s grand staircase balusters, the linen-based mural in the Mural Room at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park, the massive bas-reliefs of dancing and musical figures on the exterior of the Berkeley High School Community Theatre, and the 1958 sculpture Hydro-Gyro at the San Jose IBM Research Center.

This sculpture is owned by the San Francisco Arts Commission but is stored on the CCSF campus waiting for restoration and installation. The CCSF administration, the CCSF Works of Art Committee, and other faculty and staff are working with the Arts Commission to arrange funding.

Dolphin from the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939

Posted by Cindy on July 4, 2018

Jul 042018

Presently in storage at Golden Gate Park

This statue is from the Golden Gate International Exposition. It is by Cecilia Bancroft Graham.

Graham was born in San Francisco, on March 2, 1905. She studied at the California School of Fine Arts, graduated from Mills College in Oakland, and studied sculpture with Oscar Thiede in Vienna, Louis de Jean in Paris, and with Carl Milles at Cranbrook Academy in Michigan. She passed away in Carmel, California in 1984.

Photo courtesy of Anne Schnoebelen of the Treasure Island Museum.

The statue was placed around the Fountain in the San Francisco Building. The center whales were by Robert Howards.

The whales sculpture was moved to a fountain in front of the Steinhart Aquarium, now the Academy of Science, in Golden Gate Park. They are no longer there.

The Dolphin is, sadly, badly damaged.

Thank you to the Landscape department of Golden Gate Park for aiding me in finding the statue.

Skydancing

Posted by Cindy on June 28, 2018

Jun 282018

Laguna Honda Hospital
Pavillion Atrium
375 Laguna Honda Boulevard
Forest Hill

This is Skydancing by Takenobu Igarashi they are painted aluminum sculptures, reminiscent of blossoms and suspended from aircraft cables.

Sky Dancing by Japanese artist Igarashi has taught at Chiba University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He collaborated in the foundation of the Faculty of Design at Tama Art University (Kaminoge Campus) to set up the first computerized design education in Japan and was the first Head of the Design Department.

In 1994, he ended his 25 years of design activity and moved to Los Angeles to become a sculptor. After working with marble, he discovered terracotta and wood as his material. He returned to Japan in June 2004.

Representative works are in the permanent collection of over 30 museums worldwide including MoMA. He has been awarded the Commendation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Katsumi Masaru Award, the Mainichi Design Award, the IF Design Award and the Good Design Award for his achievements and activities in the field of graphics and product design.

Igarashi has been an emeritus professor at Tama Art University since April 2015.

The hospital had a $3 million budget for the artwork within the new wing of the hospital, thanks to the 1% for art requirement in San Francisco public buildings.

The budget for the three pieces provided by Takenobu Igarashi was $238,686

Much of the art at Laguna Honda is not accessible to the general public, so only 2 of Igarashi’s 3 pieces appear in this website.

Rabbinoid on Cell Phone

Posted by Cindy on June 11, 2018

Jun 112018

Laguna Honda Hospital
Garden Area
375 Laguna Honda
Forest Hills

This life size bronze is called Rabbinoid on Cell Phone and is by California artist Gerald Heffernon

Gerald Heffernon lives in Winters, California. He has shown at galleries and museums nationally as well as in France, including the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He has been awarded over a dozen public art commissions since 1978, including those for fire stations in San Jose and Sacramento, parks in Sacramento and Denver (both in progress), and the Light Rail Station in Sacramento. Mainly depicting animals, most of his sculptures are made of bronze. He also works with concrete, granite and aluminum and has created suspended sculptures, paintings and other wall-mounted works. He says, “Many of my pieces are whimsical. I like a playful, rather upbeat approach.”

This piece was originally in Stern Grove, placed there in 2005, at a cost of $50,000. Due to vandalism, it was placed in storage for many years, and now resides at Laguna Honda Hospital.

Islais

Posted by Cindy on June 9, 2018

Jun 092018

Islais Creek
3rd Street and Cargo Way
Bayview – Hunters Point

Islais by Cliff Garten Studio is an artwork that is inspired by the history and landscape of Bayview Gateway and Islais Creek.

“I have created sculptures whose gestures and forms are iconic yet formal and free, solid and transparent, because no one history should take precedence over another. The images of the Bay and Islais Creek are a reference point for the sculptures and for the celebration of the Bayview community.”

Islais by Cliff Garten The piece is made of blue polychrome bronze with a stainless steel wrap, referencing the shape of the estuary with its different outlets before Islais Creek became a single channel, and suggests how rivers like that grow around the communities and change their form.

The solid form is a bronze casting with a blue patina, and the transparent form is comprised of 1/2” stainless steel rods.

The sculpture suggests that, like the Bayview community, the land is in a constant state of change yet it is solid and enduring.

Cliff Garten has been on this site before.

The history of Islais Creek is fascinating, you can read more about it here.

Islais by Cliff Garten * *

As maintenance is not a strong point with the San Francisco Arts Commission I was happy to see this legalese in the proposal for the piece with the Port of San Francisco.

The City’s Art Enrichment program requires that the artwork be accessioned into the Civic Art Collection whereupon the artwork will be under the jurisdiction of the SFAC for maintenance, upkeep and liability. If it is determined the artwork needs to be removed or relocated, the SFAC will follow all necessary policies and procedures and coordinate
with the Port prior to doing so.

The Port will enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to further clarify the maintenance and upkeep of the artwork and steps required for removal if required. The MOU will also allow the SFAC the use of Port land for the placement of the artwork for 25 years.

The contract for this piece was $445,000.

Light as Art

Posted by Cindy on April 3, 2018

Apr 032018

Ellis Street
Between Stockton and Powell
The Ellis entry to the O’farrell Garage

This light installation, titled Spine, is by Christopher Townsend Sproat, it was created in 1993.

Sproat was born in Boston and studied art at Boston University, the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, and Skohegan School of Fine Arts. He has created public sculptures for a number of transit systems and government buildings.

This piece, part of the San Francisco Art Commission collection cost $76,000.

Gates of Kezar Stadium

Posted by Cindy on April 3, 2018

Apr 032018

Kezar Stadium
Frederick Street Entrance

These gates stand at the entry to Kezar stadium and were installed in 1991. There are 22 of them around the stadium

Kezar Stadium has a long history in the City of San Francisco, but much of its original elements no longer remain.

The gates were purchased by the San Francisco Arts Commission for $99,825 and were the product of designer Alan Fleming.

According to the artist the final design is evocative of the merging of the natural and the man made, the hard edge and the soft edge, the straight line and the curved, that is representative of the park as a whole. The gates are 10-12 feet in height, 7-16 feet in width. Fabricated in galvanized steel, the gates were to be painted dark green.

Fleming holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Michigan State University and a Master of Architecture from UC Berkeley. He is a licensed architect and general contractor.

Red Gothic

Posted by Cindy on March 28, 2018

Mar 282018

Muriel Leff Mini Park
7th Avenue between Geary and Anza
Richmond District

This piece by Aristeded Demetrius is titled Red Gothic. It was donated to the park by the Cyril Lerner Foundation and was installed in the park in 1986 at the request of Ms. Leff and other community members.

Demetrius has several pieces throughout San Francisco. Aristides Burton Demetrios (1932- ) was born and raised in Massachusetts. His father, George Demetrios, was a classical sculptor, trained by Bourdelle, a student of Rodin. His mother, Virginia Lee Burton was the renowned author and illustrator of children’s books, including Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and The Little House, for which she won the Caldecott prize. After graduating from Harvard College, Mr. Demetrios spent three years as an officer in the Navy. In 1963, he won his first national sculpture competition when his proposed design was selected for a major fountain commission on the campus of Stanford University (The White Memorial Fountain: “Mem Claw” ). Shortly thereafter, he was chosen to be the sculptor for a public art commission in Sacramento in front of the County Courthouse; subsequently, he was selected by David and Lucille Packard to design and fabricate the sculpture to grace the entry to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

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The Park the People Built.

Global Garden

Posted by Cindy on March 26, 2018

Mar 262018

474 Natoma
South of Market

On this affordable housing unit are digitally embossed metal panels entitled Global Gardens, by artist Catherine Wagner. The images are of culturally specific plants representing the diverse community.

Catherine Wagner is a Professor of Studio Art, as well as the Dean of the Fine Arts Division at Mills College. She received her BA and MFA from San Francisco State University.

Wagner is an American conceptual artist whose process involves the investigation of what art critic David Bonetti calls “the systems people create, our love of order, our ambition to shape the world, the value we place on knowledge, and the tokens we display to express ourselves.” Wagner has created large-scale, site-specific public artworks for the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, and Kyoto, Japan.

This is part of the 1% for Art Program in the City of San Francisco. All new construction is required to dedicate 1% of the overall construction costs to art.

Dahlias at Cabrillo

Posted by Cindy on March 22, 2018

Mar 222018

Cabrillo Playground
853 38th Avenue
Outer Richmond

Cabrillo Playground, and its attached club house were completely renovated with $45 million dollars from the 2008 Clean and Safe Neighborhood Parks Bond. The budget for the art was $35,970.

These lacy flowers are by Colette Crutcher and were inspired by the Dahlia Garden that is attached to the park.

Photo courtesy of SF Park Alliance

The artwork is comprised of flower imagery fabricated in galvanized iron lacework, incorporated along fence panels on 38th and 39th avenues at Cabrillo Avenue, with an overall dimension of 121 in. by 299 in. at 38th Avenue; and 121 in. by 222 in. at 39th Avenue.

Colette Crutcher is not only a friend of this author, but has been in this site many times before for her work throughout San Francisco.

The wire sculpture was manufactured by Lace Fence.

The Clubhouse was originally built in 1938.

Alleyways of San Francisco

Posted by Cindy on March 20, 2018

Mar 202018

Jessie and Annie Streets

Sites Unseen is a fiscally-sponsored public art project of the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District (YBCBD).

They presently have three projects on the outskirts of San Francisco’s Museum District. The first is Love Over Rules

These 6 X 6 Neon letters are on the exterior wall of the Salma Family Building at 165 Jessie Street. However, the best viewing is on Annie Street. The light sculpture is the first permanent public artwork in the U.S. by New York-based artist Hank Willis Thomas. A tribute to the artist’s cousin, murdered in 2000, the blinking white neon installation shares his cousin’s last recorded message to Thomas.

In an interview with Artsmania Thomas had this to say about the piece: Public space is more and more contended about what kind of objects, who we celebrate, and what we celebrate. So I decided that I wanted to make statements, and one of the statements my cousin made that had a profound effect on me was, “Love overrules.” I thought of that being read multiple ways, both as “overrules” and “over rules” and the different ways you can interpret a single statement. So the neon flicker is between saying “Love Overrules” and “Love Rules” and “Love Over Rules.” In public space, where most of it is dominated by ads and commerce, putting things out that make different kinds of statements is important.

Thomas is a member of the Public Design Commission for the City of New York. He received a BFA in Photography and Africana studies from New York University and a MFA/MA in Photography and Visual Criticism from the California College of Arts. He has also received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Thomas lives and works in New York City.

Love Over Rules by Hank Willis Thomas San Francisco

Photo courtesy of SiteUnSeen

Alice Aycock at the SFPL

Posted by Cindy on March 18, 2018

Mar 182018

San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin Street
5th Floor

1996 Aluminum and structural steel with painted steel sheathing, approximately 24′ high x 32′ long x 20′ wide

Alice Aycock has designed a spiral stairway between the fifth and sixth floors of the suspended, glass-enclosed reading room that projects into the library’s great atrium space. The staircase wraps around a cone tipped at an angle, and as the two-story cone appears to unravel, it sheds fragments of false or imaginary stairs.

A second element, the Cyclone fragment, is suspended in the adjacent atrium and functions as a ghost projection of the spiral stair. If the stairs suggest knowledge unfolding, the Cyclone symbolizes knowledge in its most dynamic and transitional state. For the artist, her work in the library is the culmination of years of ongoing dialogue with the architect James Ingo Freed.

Alice Aycock Aycock was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on November 20, 1946. She studied at Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1968. She subsequently moved to New York City and obtained her Master of Arts in 1971 from Hunter College, where she was taught and supervised by sculptor and conceptual artist Robert Morris.

Aero Memorial

Posted by Cindy on March 4, 2018

Mar 042018

Philadelphia has the largest collections of Public Art in the United States and much of it can be viewed with an audio tour

I was particularly drawn to this bronze sphere which sits opposite the main entrance of the Franklin Institute and is dedicated to aviators who died in World War I. Inscribed with the Latin names of constellations and planets, this Paul Manship sculpture Aero Memorial illustrates the signs of the zodiac in a style that recalls both classicism and Art Deco.

The idea for Aero Memorial was conceived by the Aero Club of Pennsylvania, which donated modest funds for the purpose to Fairmount Park Art Association (now the Association for Public Art) in 1917. Fundraising took many years and the work did not begin until 1939 when the Art Association contacted Manship.

By the time he was fifteen years old, Paul Manship had decided he wanted to become a sculptor. Born in 1885, in St. Paul, Minnesota, Manship attended Mechanical Arts High School, he also took evening classes at the St. Paul Institute School of Art but left to work as a designer and illustrator.

In 1905 he enrolled in the Art Students League in New York City and after a few months of formal study became an assistant to the sculptor Solon Borglum, whom he considered a critical influence on his work. After further study, he received a three-year scholarship to study in Rome where he fell under the spell of Greek antiquity and the beauty of classicism. He traveled extensively before returning to the United States in 1912 launching a career that would last fifty years.

“I like to express movement in my figures. It’s a fascinating problem which I’m always trying to solve,” he said. He also noted, “I’m not especially interested in anatomy, though naturally, I’ve studied it. And, although I approve generally of normally correct proportions, what matters is the spirit which the artist puts into his creation—the vitality, the rhythm, the emotional effect.”

Some of Manship’s well-known works are the Prometheus Fountain in Rockefeller Center, the gates to the entrances of the Bronx Zoo and the Central Park Zoo, and the Time and Fates Sundial and Moods of Time sculptures installed in front of Trylon and Perisphere at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City.

Lichtenstein in Philadelphia

Posted by Cindy on March 4, 2018

Mar 042018

United Plaza
South 20th Street
Philadelphia, PA

Philadelphia has a wonderful program called Museum Without Walls, and this is part of that program.

Roy Lichtenstein’s Brushstroke Group, was brought to Philadelphia in August 2005 courtesy of Duane Morris L.L.P, one of the city’s largest law firms, which occupies the adjacent building.

In an unusual arrangement, the sculpture is on loan to Duane Morris from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. The Fairmount Park Art Association and the Philadelphia Museum of Art worked with the law firm and the Foundation to bring the sculpture to the city.

It is part of the Brushstrokes series of artworks that includes several paintings and sculptures whose subject is the actions made with a house-painter’s brush. The series was part of Lichtenstein’s 1960s slant towards reductive, economical work.

Roy Lichtenstein, born in 1923 in New York City, was one of the most influential and innovative artists of the second half of the twentieth century. He is preeminently identified with Pop Art, a movement he helped originate, and his first fully achieved paintings were based on imagery from comic strips and advertisements and rendered in a style mimicking the crude printing processes of newspaper reproduction. These paintings reinvigorated the American art scene and altered the history of modern art. Lichtenstein’s success was matched by his focus and energy, he went on to create a body of work consisting of more than 5,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, murals and other objects celebrated for their wit and invention.

Controversial Comfort Women Statue

Posted by Cindy on March 4, 2018

Mar 042018

St. Mary’s Square
Chinatown

From the moment of installation of this statue by Carmel artist Steven Whyte it has been controversial.

The plaque that accompanies the statue reads: This monument bears witness to the suffering of hundreds of thousands of women and girls, euphemistically called “Comfort Women”, who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces in thirteen Asia-Pacific countries from 1931 to 1945. Most of these women died during their wartime captivity. This dark history was hidden for decades until the 1990s when the survivors courageously broke their silence. They helped move the world to declare that sexual violence as a strategy of war is a crime agains humanity for which governments must be held accountable.

The statue was a gift of the “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition to the City of San Francisco.

According to a November 24, 2017 Newsweek article: San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee announced the endorsement of the statue at a city council meeting on Wednesday, despite Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura’s warnings about the possibility of the statue being given a permanent home in the city. Yoshimura will begin severing the ties between the two locales, which have been “sister cities” since 1957, and aims to completely separate from San Francisco by the end of the year.

Steven Whyte was born in 1969 in the United Kingdom and grew up in various parts of Europe.

Whyte, a dyslexic, has been described as first using art as a social solution, rather than a potential vocation: “Art class was often the only place I felt confident that I could contribute and learn at the same rate as my peers.” As an undergraduate, he became the youngest student accepted to the Sir Henry Doulton School of Sculpture.

After leaving school, Whyte obtained a teaching position at Stafford College, then became the youngest member of the London-based Society of Portrait Sculptors, where he served as Vice-President alongside President Franta Belsky PPRBS, late sculptor to the Royal Family.

In 2003, Whyte opened his first US open studio and gallery on Cannery Row in Monterey, California. In 2007, the Steven Whyte Sculpture Studio and Gallery moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.

Here is a clip of the sculptor describing how he came about this particular iteration.

Gloria Victis

Posted by Cindy on January 24, 2018

Jan 242018

Civic Center
505 Van Ness
Edmund G. Brown State Office Building

Closed Weekends

Gloria Victis (Glory to the Vanquished) is by Olga Rozsa, dedicated in 1986.

The statue was a project between the Hungarian Freedom Fighters Federation of San Francisco and the Honorable Ernie Konnyu, a former Representative of the California State Assembly.

The statue portrays Hungaria, the Spirit of Hungary, and symbolizes the idea of everlasting hope in spite of defeat. The statue expresses the aspirations of all people in their hunger for freedom. It is a memorial to all nations defeated by brutal force, whose love of liberty and spirit must stay alive to strive to free themselves again.

The statue is a result of AB2227 of 1981 as introduced by the Honorable Ernie Konnyu to the Arts Council. The bill required the Arts Council to provide a grant, not to exceed $150,000 for the construction and placement of Gloria Victis as a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

Sadly there is no information available about the artist, other than she died sometime before 2004.

Solar Totems

Posted by Cindy on January 22, 2018

Jan 222018

Glen Park Canyon Rec Center

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.

The piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission at a cost of $92,000 and was installed in 2017.

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.

Pumpkins on Naoshima

Posted by Cindy on January 19, 2018

Jan 192018

This pumpkin sits on a pier on the island of Naoshima. The first art project for the Benesse art site was Open Air ’94 Out of Bounds, organized as an outdoor exhibition space in 1994. Out of Bounds referred to the crossing of borders in hope that Naoshima be linked to the rest of the world. Pumpkin (the yellow one) by Yayoi Kusama made its debut in this exhibition.

Yayoi Kusama (1929-) is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation but is also active in painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. During the 1960s she was a part of the New York avant-garde scene, especially in the pop-art movement. Since participating in the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993 she has been exhibiting actively and has gained widespread international recognition. In 2017 a fifty-year retrospective of her work opened at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. Also that year the Yayoi Kusama Museum was inaugurated in Tokyo.

Kusama creates a four-metre-tall red pumpkin for the ‘Naoshima Standard Exhibition’,

Inside the 13 foot tall Red Pumpkin that Kusama created for the ‘Naoshima Standard Exhibition’ in 2006

Archipelago

Posted by Cindy on August 11, 2017

Aug 112017

San Francisco General Hospital
1001 Potrero Avenue
Potrero Hill

Titled Archipelago this piece is based on the concept of a river as a metaphor for life. It was created by Anna Valentina Murch and sits in the plaza connecting the old and new buildings of the hospital complex. An important feature of the installation is a 6’-tall oval-shaped stainless steel banded sculpture, which is internally illuminated at night to serve as a symbolic beacon. Additionally, a series of basket-like, stainless steel banded sculptural seating elements surround planters and companion carved granite benches.

Murch was born in Scotland and grew up in London, where she earned degrees from the University of Leicester, the Royal College of Art and the Architectural Association. Murch had an interest in art installations, sculptures, and ecological design. She often collaborated with her husband Douglas Hollis, who is an environmental artist.

Murch came to the Bay Area in the 1970s and taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and UC Berkeley She began teaching at Mills College as a professor of studio art at Mills college in 1991, she passed away in 2014.

This installation was purchased by the San Francisco Arts Commission for $826,800.

Breath Between Sky and Ocean

Posted by Cindy on August 9, 2017

Aug 092017

San Francisco General Hospital
1001 Potrero Avenue
Potrero Hill
Roof Garden of the Acute Care Building
7th Floor

Breath Between Sky and Ocean by Masayuki Nagase was created in 2015 and consists of two hand-carved granite boulders (4 ft. by 4 ft. by 4 ft.), five polished and carved granite benches (5 ft. by 6 ft. by 18 in. each) and eight polished and carved pavers.

The artist’s design depicts a series of ripples carved into the boulders to express themes of water and wind, and the design on the stone pavers has polished surfaces and carved cloud-like forms.

Masayuki Nagase was born in Kyoto, Japan. He began his career as an artist by studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tokyo from 1968-1971. From 1971-1976 he trained in a traditional stone-carving apprenticeship in the granite quarries of Inada in Ibaragi-ken, Japan.

In 1995, Nagase became a resident of the US and established a studio with his wife, Michele Ku in Berkeley, California.

These pieces were purchased by the San Francisco Arts Commission for $200,000.

Pylon

Posted by Cindy on August 8, 2017

Aug 082017

Philip A. Hart Civic Center Plaza
Jefferson and Woodward Avenues
Detroit, Michigan

120 feet tall by 7 feet square The Pylon is the terminus for Detroit’s main street, Woodward Avenue.

Created by Isamu Noguchi, the monumental work is of joined steel sections. The rectangular pylon makes a quarter turn as it heads upwards to the sky.

Isamu Noguchi (November 17, 1904 – December 30, 1988) was a 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, such as the Noguchi table for Herman Miller, some of which are still manufactured and sold.

The Spirit of Detroit

Posted by Cindy on July 21, 2017

Jul 212017

2 Woodward Avenue
Detroit, Michigan

This stunning sculpture is the best-known piece of public art in Detroit. It’s location and presentation was well thought out.

The backdrop was designed by the architectural firm of Harley, Ellington and Day, also responsible for the Veterans Memorial Building in Detroit.

The sculpture itself is by Detroit area sculptor Marshall Fredericks. Commissioned in 1955 for $58,000, the sculpture was dedicated in 1958.

The seated figure represents the spirit of humanity. In his left hand, he holds a gilt bronze sphere, with emanating rays, symbolizing God, in his right hand he holds a group of people embodying all human relationships.

The plaque in front of the sculpture says “The artist expresses the concept that God, through the spirit of man is manifested in the family, the noblest human relationship.”

Along the back is the passage “Now the Lord is that Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty”.

The round reliefs are the seals of the City of Detroit and the County of Wayne.

Marshall Fredericks was born of Scandinavian heritage in Rock Island, Illinois on January 31, 1908. His family moved to Florida for a short time and then settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where he grew up. He graduated from the Cleveland School of Art in 1930 and journeyed abroad on a fellowship to study with Carl Milles (1875–1955) in Sweden.

In 1932, he was invited by Carl Milles to join the staffs of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Cranbrook and Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, teaching there until he enlisted in the armed forces in 1942.

There is now a Marshall Frederick’s Museum in Saginaw, Michigan.

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