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

Don Potts Amazing Wood Models

 Posted by on February 5, 2014
Feb 052014
 

City Hall
South Light Court
Civic Center

Screen Shot 2014-01-27 at 2.51.37 PMPylon of the Golden Gate Bridge

There are four amazing, exquisite and highly detailed wood models in the South Light Court of City Hall.  They are all by Don Potts.

These architectural models were designed and built in 1982 by Don Potts in commemoration of the Centennial of the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.  The models were first displayed in an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art which “highlighted the important contribution that architecture has made to the City and County of San Francisco, and which served to reawaken a public awareness of the built environment.  Each building or public space represents a unique phase in the evolution and development of San Francisco’s rich architectural heritage and distinguished urban design. Each model also serves as a type of icon, symbolizing various aspects of urban life.”

The models were purchased by the joint committee of the SFAC and the San Francisco Airports Commission for $13,700.

Don Potts Golden Gate Bridge Pylon

Donald Edwin Potts was born in San Francisco on October 5, 1936.  Potts studied at San Francisco City College and received his M.A. at San Jose State College.  He taught at the University of California at Berkeley for several years.  In 2006 he moved to Fairfield, Iowa.

He has had 24 solo shows at the Whitney Museum (New York), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), and others.

His works are held at Pasadena Museum; San Francisco Museum; Oakland Museum; La Jolla Museum; Joselyn Art Museum (Nebraska)

Italianate Victorian House by Don Potts

This Italianate Victorian Home was modeled on a home at 1808 California Street.  The model was altered to give it a more Italianate feeling.  Maplewood was laser-cut to give the model its gingerbread ornamentation. Multi-shaped woods were laminated together to give the desired pattern and three-dimensional image.

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