“Light” is a semi-creepy short film directed by David Parker, and as Sunday-Paper.com tells us, it "initially began as a project intended to bring awareness to energy waste ... [but] the film also grew into a poetic statement about a world run amok and the human tendency to exploit that which we hold dear." more ›

"Everyone's saying we hate beavers, but this is not about liking beavers or not liking beavers," said public works director Dave Scola, a third-generation Martinez native who ordered the beaver's removal. — From the Chronicle's report on Martinez muralist Mario Alfaro, who was forced to remove a depiction of a beaver from a city mural due to some dam controversy. more ›

The Central Subway has plenty of opponents as it is, but the animal rights contingent is not one we expected to hear from in this fight. As the Examiner points out today, Tom Otterness, the sculptor commissioned by the SFMTA install 59 bronze sculptures throughout the proposed Moscone Station has a recorded history of canicide. more ›

In the words of Boys II Men (perhaps it was your graduating class song?), "It's so hard to say goodbye," but the time has come. You were warned about this day back in December. "Three Heads, Six Arms," which had resided at Civic Center for the better part of 2010, is heading back to China tomorrow. more ›

Director of Cultural Affairs for the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) Luis R. Cancel announced the winners of the Central Subway art installation contest today. Six local and national artists were chosen to create "original site-specific works" for the Central Subway's Union Square/Market Street, Moscone, and Chinatown stations. Here are the winning works in sorta exciting computer-rendered form. more ›

A Simpsons-esque mural of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and other characters from '80s sci-fi comedy Ghostbusters popped up at Bryant and 8th Street this week. Pretty cool, but no love for the Gatekeeper and Keymaster? Boo. more ›

Louise Bourgeois' bronze spider sculpture is leaving the Embarcadero at Pier 14, ready to nest in Houston where it will be part of a private collection. Aw. more ›

by Lisa Hix more ›

Bumblebee, a Los Angeles-based artist, has been turning abandoned telephone booths into works of art. After a recent trip to San Francisco, he struck one booth on Minna, above. more ›

For those of you who don't think smiley face tagging is positively whimsical, be sure to use 311's Graffiti Reporter. You can help erase mischievous displays of graffiti you find in public parks (Golden Gate Park, John McLaren Park, and other playgrounds and park property), on private property (personal residences, homes, office buildings), on public property (bike racks, trans cans, newsracks, mailboxs, public toilets, parking meters, fire hydrants, etc.), or any other location that affects your sacred quality of life (MUNI buses/trains/cable cars, billboards, bus shelters, BART, Caltrains, schools). more ›

In a city boasting oversized weapons of love and Ionic Breezes masquerading as apartment buildings, the shockingly vibrant murals of San Francisco are part of what makes San Francisco's art scene special. more ›

Well, this looks like fun -- something San Francisco should have (that is, if the majority its residents approved of anything other than Diego Riveraesque murals.) The 88, a luxury highrise in San Jose (how adorable!) has a piece of public art outside its building, one that you can control using your mobile communication device. more ›

We've been fans for awhile, and now NBC 11's Traci Grant -- who seems like a lot of fun, and someone should throw a local Emmy at her -- has also picked up on the awesome public art piece Muni Hot or Not of the Now over at Nature abhors a vacuum. more ›

Before & After
more ›

Well, this was unnerving. more ›

-- 177 Townsend's promise of public art delivered, raised. [Curbed SF] more ›

Let the bourgeois battle begin: Green Connect and SF Community Clean Team are looking to clean up Warm Water Cove, the waterfront park at 24th and Michigan Streets, this coming Saturday morning. (And want you to wakeup up before 9 a.m. to pull weeds?!) Many an art school student brandishing a can of spray paint and local musicians like this place for 'spressing themselves or for throwing afternoon concerts. While others are understandably looking to make the Dogpatch park more streamlined to fit the area's new, um, growth, others are also understandably very upset about it. more ›

The Haight/Ashbury intersection was once marred by a Gap, but no longer -- the monster closed down a couple months ago, and it's just been a vacant storefront ever since, which isn't totally awesome but is at least an improvement. more ›

It's mostly this guy's fault. more ›

--Civic Center's SFMike reports on a Hayes Valley-themed mini-golf public art installation. That's the eponymous Mr. Hayes (not Rutherford B., but another guy named Thomas) to your right. more ›

We've been noticing lately that there seems to be not only lots of construction crews out on Valencia Street but big, huge squares of road missing. What this means is that either the roads are even more of a mess than usual (possible) or they are actually fixing Valencia Street. So, we checked out the Better Valencia Project and discovered that it's twue, it's twue-- they're repaving the streets. more ›

We mentioned this in Tuesday's Day Around the Bay, but there are some new bits to the story so we're going to do a full post on it. Plus, it's kind of a fun story. Anyways, this is about the guy in Alameda who did some public art in front of his house that features a cardboard cutout of the President with a knife in his head. Well, the Secret Service were not amused and came to give the guy a visit. more ›

In honor of Labor Day, we'd like to point out that every employee, freelancer and consultant in Silicon Valley has to bargain their health benefit terms on their own or take what the company offers, and many end up one of the 46 million Americans without. So this techie is rooting for Tom Ammiano to legislate health security, at least for San Franciscans. While individual entrepreneurial successes like the Mercury News' Matt "Silicon Beat" Marshall going solo are inspiring ('Web 2.0' bubble prophecies aside), we hope he doesn't have dependents or any pre-existing conditions that need insuring. more ›

It's so much fun to complain about public transportation that we sometimes forget it's almost just as fun to take it (well, sometimes, anyways.) Here's two events that'll bring a bright ding-ding to your day. more ›

Public art is often the butt of jokes and viewed with contempt, along with performance art and washed up aging rockers on the county fair circuit. Whatever your feelings are about the role of government in the arts, many people support public art in theory, and its civic impact is meager compared to contracts for garbage disposal, cable television, and towing. Public art controversies are noteworthy in that one sees people get twisted knickers over something being ugly or, to put it politely, "compositionally unresolved." (Personally, we wonder if Baby Suri isn¹t compositionally unresolved.) more ›

more ›

-Developers planning to build new housing in the SOMA area encountered a new concern last week as drivers complained that a possible eight story building on Harrison between third and fourth might obstruct views of the city. From the freeway. Turns out it's city policy not to build something along the freeways that would create a "canyon" effect and not allow drivers to see where they are in the city. To which members of the Planning Department banged their heads against their tables and threw their hands up in surrender. more ›

Sfist interviews Nathalie Roland more ›