How many times do we walk by something every day, and forget that, yes it is art. These fence panels are on a park with a fascinating history.
Victoria “Vicki” Manalo Draves (December 31, 1924 – April 11, 2010) was an Olympic diver who won gold medals for the United States in both platform and springboard diving in the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. She was born in San Francisco. Born to a Filipino father and an English mother that met and married in San Francisco. She couldn’t afford to take swimming lessons until she was 10 years old and took summer swimming lessons from the Red Cross, paying five cents admission to a pool in the Mission district.
This 2-acre park is located between Folsom and Harrison Streets, and Columbia Square, and Sherman Avenue, and adjacent to the Bessie Carmichael Elementary School. In 1996, Mayor Brown and the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to allow for a series of property transfers between each agency to construct a new neighborhood park in the South of Market Area. In February 1997, the Board of Supervisors approved an exchange and lease agreement between the City and SFUSD to purchase the Bessie Carmichael School site for a new city park.
Bessie Carmichael school had been a very sad sight. It opened as a temporary school in 1954. Temporary trailers served as classrooms and they surrounded a blacktop area. It was very, very bleak, and lasted in that state for 52 years. The new school is modern, light and airy, and far more conducive to learning. 1 out of 5 students at Bessie Carmichael live in transitional housing: a shelter, residential hotel, or an over-crowded living condition. It was time the kids got a nice place to attend school.
The park is also a wonderful spot for children to come and play.
The artist is Irene Pijoan (1953-2004) Born in Switzerland, she received her MFA from the University of California, Davis. She was a professor at the San Francisco Arts Institute.
The creatures are of air and the sea and were dedicated to the artists daughter Emiko Pijoan Nagasawa.
What beautiful works of art!! Love the creatures of the sea!!
How beautiful these are!