Tile Art – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Art at Bernal Heights Branch Library

Posted by Cindy on March 5, 2019

Mar 052019

Bernal Branch Library
500 Cortland Avenue

Reuben Rude of Precita Eyes Murals was chosen for this project. It was a difficult decision, as it replaced a mural that had been on the walls of the library for years. A recent renovation required the removal of the old mural which the current mural attempting to pay homage to some of its elements.

This mural with its bronze book and tile embellisment was paid for by the San Francisco Arts Commission at a cost of $115,000.

Reuben Rude grew up in the woods of Northern California and studied at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. He utilizes his expertise in drawing, painting, and illustration in both the creative and commercial realms. He has shown in galleries, comic books, and magazines throughout the world.

Ocean Avenue History Staircase

Posted by Cindy on September 10, 2018

Sep 102018

Unity Plaza

Opened in 2016 Unity Plaza features a new pedestrian path that stretches from the north side of Ocean Avenue to the City College campus. The path, created in partnership with City College, features an integrated landscape and this stairway that features a collage of historic photographs of the neighborhood laid out on the steps.

In 2009, the Balboa Park Station Area Plan was adopted by the City and County of San Francisco. This was the culmination of a 10 year Better Neighborhoods Planning Process.

The plan also included a reconfiguration of the Phelan Bus Loop, now known as City College Terminal and the affordable housing project on 1100 Ocean Ave. Unity Plaza occupies the space between the bus loop and the housing development.

Some of the larger scenes in the stairway consist of:

City College students, taken in 1973

The Sundial at Ingleside Terrace

Street Cars

The Rail and Streetcar Intersection in 1904

The Ingleside Presbyterian Church founded in 1907

The project was created by Wowhaus Studios who have been in this site before. They are photographs printed on porcelain enamel tiles and installed in the risers. Wowhaus sourced the images directly from community members and the library archives.

This was paid for by the San Francisco Arts Commission with a budget not to exceed $15,000.

Hans Shiller Plaza

Posted by Cindy on August 27, 2014

Aug 272014

Corner of Peabody and Leland
Visitation Valley

Opening in March 2001, Hans Schiller Plaza was the first Visitacion Valley Greenway site to be completed. Construction was supervised by the Trust for Public Land with funding from the Columbia Foundation founded by the late Madeleine Haas Russell. The gift was made in memory of her friend Hans J. Schiller.

Hans J. Schiller was a Bay Area architect and environmental activist. Mr. Schiller’ s career spanned more than 50 years. Schiller settled in the Bay Area in the 1940s and established the firm, Hans J. Schiller Associates, in Mill Valley. Schiller’s passion for his work was matched by his commitment to ensuring that people from all walks of life had access to parks and open space. It was these commitments that lead to his appointment by Governor Jerry Brown as Commissioner of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission in 1978.

The Landscape architect on the project were Sarah Sutton and Chris Kukula of Wolfe Mason and Associates.

The Visitacion Valley Greenway is composed of a linear series of six publicly owned parcels (each a block long), cutting a swath through the heart of Visitacion Valley. Over a period of 16 years it has been developed by the members of the Visitacion Valley Greenway Project in partnership with the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department (SFRPD) and the Trust for Public Land. Originally a PUC easement, it took 5 years of negotiations to gain permission to build the Greenway. The Visitacion Valley Greenway is a Parks Partner of the San Francisco Parks Trust.

Visitation Valley Greenway would never have been possible without the tireless effort of artists Fran Martin, Anne Seeman and Jim Growden.

Fran Martin, Design Coordinator for Visitacion Valley Greenway was responsible for the tile work.

Fran holds an MA in art and worked as a sculptor until 1995. In 1994 she began working full time as a co-ordinator of the Visitation Valley Greenway Project.

Jim Growden was the designer for the entry gates and fencing.

Jim received an M.A. in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1972. Jim worked as a sculptor of wood and steel, for 25 in San Francisco. In 1993 he moved to Visitacion Valley where he became involved with the Visitacion Valley Greenway.

Jim Growden has created 8 of the Greenway’s 12 signature gates and finials, as well as the cut steel images of native animals and plants seen at the Native Plant Garden, as well as on Leland Avenue.

Fran Martin created 2 of the Greenway’s gates, weir walls, tile work and patios with columns sites.

Sargent Johnson Tile’s the Maritime Museum

Posted by Cindy on May 11, 2014

May 112014

Maritime Museum
Aquatic Park

This 14′ x 125′ glazed tile mural was created by Sargent Johnson in 1939 with the help of FAP (Federal Art Project) funds. The east end, however, is incomplete.

When the project began, the building was to be a publicly-accessible bathhouse. However, shortly after it opened, the City leased a majority of the building to a group of private businessmen who operated it as the Aquatic Park Casino, limiting the public’s use of the building. Because of this, Johnson walked away from the project before he had completed this interior tile mosaic.

Johnson has been in this website before here for the slate art piece on the front of the building.

This shows the unfinished section of the mural.

And yes, those two animals are by Beniamino Bufano.

Arelious Walker Stairway

Posted by Cindy on May 5, 2014

May 052014

Innes Avenue
Bay View / Hunters Point

This was the proposal that was written for the Call for Artists by the SFAC:

The Arelious Walker Drive Stair replacement is a dynamic community project in partnership with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and the Department of Public Works to create ceramic tile mosaic steps on the Arelious Walker Drive extending uphill from Innes Avenue to Northridge Road in the Bay View Hunters Point neighborhood. The stairway provides a vital connection from an isolated low-income community to the India Basin Shoreline, the Bay Trail, Herons Head Park, and future development at Hunters Point Shipyard. The mosaic steps project will enhance the character and livability of the surrounding area so that it becomes a gathering place consistent with the nature and spirit of the neighborhood. The project will also beautify the site by landscaping it with California native plants, succulents, and other drought tolerant species to attract birds, butterflies, and other wildlife.

The new stair comprises 87 equal steps, each measuring four feet wide (4’) and seven inches high (7”). Each riser will be faced in ceramic tile mosaic ½ inch thick.

The artists chosen are the same lovely ladies that are responsible for two tiled stairways in Golden Gate Heights, Colette Crutcher and Aileen Barr. Both ladies have been in this website many times before. The cost for the installation was slated to be $90,000.

Helen Bruton’s Tile Murals at the Golden West Hotel

Posted by Cindy on January 22, 2014

Jan 222014

114 Powell Street
Union Square

In the very narrow entry way to the Hotel Union Square are these two exquisite tile murals. While the hotel was originally built in 1908 for the 1915 Pan Pacific International Exposition, the murals were not added until 1935.

The murals were done by Helen Bruton Bell (1898-1985) Ms. Bell was a fascinating woman. One of three artistic sisters, she was born in Alameda. She attended the University of California for one year.

During World War I, she worked with her sisters Esther and Margaret in occupational therapy at the Letterman Hospital in San Francisco. In 1920 she moved to New York to take classes at the Art Students League for one year under sculptors Stirling Calder and Leo Lentelli. (She returned several years later to study drawing with Boardman Robinson.)

After those two years, she joined her sisters in Europe to study art, mainly in Paris.

Returning home, she became interested in California-Spanish architecture. She was commissioned by tile producer Gladding-McBean and Company to create mosaic panels for the Mudd Memorial Library at the University of Southern California. In 1929 Helen, her mother and her sisters traveled to New Mexico where all three girls painted and sketched. When they returned they gave a joint exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery in San Francisco. Helen also exhibited at the California Society of Etchers and the Progressive California Painters in 1934.

Murals by the Bruton Sisters – The Fleishacker Building.

Helen later worked with her sister Margaret on a W.P.A. project for the Fleishacker Park in San Francisco. The sisters designed and implemented the two mosaic panels that were the first tile mosaics to be done in San Francisco by local artists. Helen later received a commission from the University of California Berkeley to create mosaic panels to adorn the University Art Gallery (1936).

She continued to live in the San Francisco Bay Area eventually settling in Monterey, California with her sister Margaret until her death in 1985.

There is a marvelous interview done by the Smithsonian of the two sisters in their later years that you can read here.

The hotel was known at the Golden State Hotel in the 1950’s and became the Hotel Union Square in 1982.

Tile Art at Jackson Playground

Posted by Cindy on April 5, 2013

Apr 052013

Jackson Playground
17th and Arkansas
Potrero

One of three park reservations made by the Van Ness Ordinances of 1855 in working class Potrero Nuevo, the site was originally known as Jackson Square. Undeveloped and virtually ignored for more than 75 years, Jackson Square was made into a playground in the twentieth century. A 1930 map shows a simply landscaped park with a small building, possibly a clubhouse, on the Mariposa Street side. The same map shows what was probably an oval cinder running track occupying much of the park. Very little on it appears in the city records.

It was run down and overrun for years and the aging playground could no longer meet the needs of neighborhood families.

The Potrero Hill Parents Association (PHPA), a cooperative formed by concerned and active parents came to the rescue. In 1993 they submitted a $335,000 proposal to Rec. and Park’s Open Space Fund. That first year, they were awarded $50,000, the next year, they got $100,000, and in 1995 they received the remaining $205,000. With the full funding in place, a detailed design plan had to be approved by the Recreation and Park Department before any ground could be broken.

The design and planning process took over a year. Working with Department of Public Works landscape architect John Thomas, PHPA came up with a striking new plan for the 10,500 ft. space. It laid out separate play areas — one for toddlers, the other for kids 5 to 12 and up — and separated them by a low, gracefully curving wall, comfortable for seating and incorporating art in the design. Other features included tables, benches, new trees and ground cover.

Neighborhood artist Josh Sarantitis supplied the art. Chosen by the San Francisco Art Commission to conduct a tile-decorating workshop for kids, he taught some 125 young artists how to paint and glaze tiles. Their 150 hand-painted creations are installed atop the seat wall. Josh did the colorful mosaics along its sides.

Joshua Sarantitis has been creating monumental professional work in public spaces for over 20 years. His 40 commissioned works include glass installations and mosaic murals located regionally and abroad. He has a BA in Fine Arts from Oberlin College, and studied at the Arts Students League of New York under Gustav Rehberger, Marshall Glasier and Michael Burban.

CCSF Mission Campus

Posted by Cindy on January 29, 2013

Jan 292013

1125 Valencia
Mission District

Said to be the biggest Tonalmachiotl in the world, this version of the Aztec Calendar sits at the entry way to the City College of San Francisco Mission Campus.

Tonalmachiotl is called the Aztec Calendar, the Sunstone or Piedra del Sol. Scholars believe that pre-conquest Mesoamerican cultures conceived of time as circular…. [Mesoamericans] therefore thought they could predict the future by recording events from the past. Using their calendric system and mathematics, they could look both back in time to when they believed the world began, and infinitely forward.

This colorful 27-foot Aztec Calendar hovering over the entrance to the campus on Valencia Street is constructed of some 660 ceramic tiles painted mostly bright blue and orange. The calendar is hand-engraved and painted and was commissioned for $200,000 to two Tucson artists, Alex Garza and Carlos Valenzuela.

Excerpt from a Tucson Weekly Article: Garza was born in Cristal, an epicenter at one time for Mexican-American civil rights in Texas. Garza’s family moved well before Jose Angel Gutierrez, a founder of La Raza Unida, and other activists changed the course for Mexican-Americans in south Texas.

The Garzas found discrimination up north when they settled in Des Plaines, Ill., where they worked tomato and onion fields near what was becoming O’Hare Airport. Garza combines matter-of-fact recollections with humor, including being a champion in downing burgers from the first McDonald’s.

His and other Mexican-American families were pushed off the main streets, and Garza was intent on exploring. He did in Chicago in the heady late 1960s. He studied and trained and gravitated not toward galleries but to neighborhoods.

He now teaches at Las Artes.

Carlos Valenzuela also teaches at Las Artes, and other programs encouraging youth out of crime and into education.