Results tagged “publicart”

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.

by Lisa Hix

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.

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).

                                   

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.

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.

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.

Before & After

Well, this was unnerving.

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

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.

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.

It's mostly this guy's fault.

--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.

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.

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.

features panelists, Seyed Alavi, Louise Bertelsen, Packard Jennings, Wang Po Shu, and Rigo 23. It takes place at the Mission Cultural Center (2868 Mission St at 25th) and covers how to see a public art project through from proposal to installation, advice on researching legal issues surrounding your project, and discussion about the advantages and disadvantages to mounting a guerilla style project. (7pm)

at Biscuits and Blues (401 Mason St.), legendary New Orleans pianist, Henry Butler performs solo piano, combining the classical and jazz elements he absorbed at Louisiana School for the Blind and Southern University with the gospel, blues and R&B sounds he heard growing up in New Orleans. (8pm & 10pm shows)

The MoAD Vanguard presents Preview at the Clift Hotel, (495 Geary St. at Jones) an evening of art, music and dance for a cause - the cause being MoAD and the arts of the African Diaspora. From the PR: groove to the global sounds of DJ Cecil (Relevant Sound, Bembe) while taking in the artwork of Amanda Williams, April Banks, Rah Crawford, Rosalind McGary, Emmanuel Pratt and Sydney James. Preview is sponsored by Giant Step Records and ToDo Monthly. (6-9pm)

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.

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.

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.)

-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.

Sfist interviews Nathalie Roland

Those of you longing to start airbrushing flames on or supergluing action figures to the side of your car, it's your weekend! Starting today through Sunday, it's Art Car Fest 2004! Intended to celebrate "the quintessential public art of our times," art cars will be driving all over the Bay Area to show off their style, flash, and pizazz.

More Mission woe -- over the weekend, there was a drive-by shooting on 26th and Mission on Friday 8:30 p.m., a stabbing at that same corner a day later, and a shooting at 19th and Guerrero. Kamala Harris came by to check things out (and get a burrito). In other weekend crime news, a man stabbed his ex-girlfriend in the neck in the Haight at the McDonalds on Stanyan, and three men were stabbed in a bar in the Bayview area. There were also two shootings at Divisadero and Eddy (the cops think gang-related).

New York gets apples, DC gets donkeys and elephants, and Chicago cows - so naturally, San Francisco is filled with decorated hearts. I left my HEART in San Francisco, get it? (nudge nudge - sigh). Brought to you with a heavy hand by Cow Parade, the folks who previously left fiberglass cows all over America, there are approximately 130 5-foot-tall hearts scattered throughout the city, sponsored by the largesse of various corporate entities and decorated by an odd mix of artists, socialites, community groups, and random others (....why does the cast of Passions/Days of our Lives get to decorate a heart? Are they particularly committed to our fair city?).