• "Hermes and Dionysus, Monument to Anlysis"
• "Wave Organ"
• "Untitled"
• "San Francisco Renaissance" (East wall)
• "San Francisco Renaissance" (West wall)
• "Universality of Wisdom"
• Security Pacific Art Gallery
• "Sea Change"
• "Untitled"
• "Pax Jerusalem"
• Abbreviations

Comment (Personal observation).

The Wave Organ is a wave-activated acoustic sculpture located on a jetty in the San Francisco Bay. The concept was developed by Peter Richards and installed in collaboration with sculptor and master stone mason George Gonzales. Inspiration for the piece came from artist Bill Fontana's recordings made of sounds emanating from a vent pipe of a floating concrete dock in Sydney, Australia.

In 1980, Richards (Senior Artist at the Exploratorium) received a planning grant from the National Endowment for the Arts which enabled him to conduct an extensive period of investigation into the physicality of the Wave Organ phenomenon. The sculpture's speaker horn and audio equipment were either built or acquired for use in some of the experiments of this period.

A prototype, built at the same location, was presented as part of the New Music '81 Festival. Though very rudimentary in nature, it generated enthusiasm and support for a permanent work. Permit acquisition and fundraising efforts by Frank Oppenheimer, founding director of the Exploratorium, began soon after, but actual construction did not start until September of 1985, seven months after Oppenheimer's death. The Wave Organ was completed in May of 1986 and was dedicated in June to the memory of Frank Oppenheimer.

The Wave Organ is located on a jetty that forms the small Boat Harbor in the Marina district of San Francisco, walking distance from the Exploratorium. The jetty itself was constructed with material taken from the demolished Laurel Hill cemetery in 1939, providing a wonderful assortment of carved granite and marble, which was used in the construction of this piece. WPA records show Charles Harvey, the contractor who later built Candlestick Park, was paid 80 cents a ton to dump walls, crypts, and markers [from Laurel Hill] into the Bay, later to become the Marina Yacht Harbor jetty.

The installation includes 25 organ pipes made of PVC and concrete located at various elevations within the site, allowing for the rise and fall of the tides. Sound is created by the impact of waves against the pipe ends and the subsequent movement of the water in and out of the pipes. The sound heard at the site is subtle, requiring visitors to become sensitized to its music, and at the same time to the music of the environment (The Wave Organ).

Monadock Bld Sculpture Garden: No description available (Personal observation).

The entrance lobby [of the Monadnock Building] has outstanding trompe l'oeil murals by the Evans and Brown Co. featuring famous people from the city's past who are identified on a handout available at the security desk (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 24).

The Monadnock Building was under construction prior to the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. After the earthquake struck, the United States Army entered and made an unsuccessful attempt to dynamite it; thwarting their plan to create a fire break intended to save the old Palace Hotel. Having survived the earthquake, dynamiting, and fire, this building was completed in 1907. After spending many years as a headquarters location for national railroads, the building was thoroughly renovated by 1986; becoming the mostly art and law oriented office building that it is today. The murals and sculpture garden originate with that renovation.

The theme of this mural, by the Evans and Brown Company, is "San Francisco Renaissance." It is painted in the Renaissance Baroque style trompe l'oeil (which means to fool the eye) and chosen because the facade of this building was inspired by that period. That is why all these San Francisco and California Characters are dressed in such costumes.

On the east wall, to your far left, the man holding the newspaper is Dr. Walter Lum. He founded the Chinese Times, managed it for thirty-five years, and became a leading civil rights advocate for the Chinese by the 1970s.

The next figure, in red, is Supervisor Harvey Milk, the camera shop owner who rose to become the nation's most powerful advocate for gay rights. Supervisor Milk and Mayor George Moscone (not depicted) were both assassinated in their City Hall offices in 1978.

The blonde lady is Lotta Crabtree. A popular acteress, singer and comedian during the Gold Rush years, it was Lotta who in 1875 donated the fountain you see across the street. This was modeled after a prop from one of her plays.

In the green tunic is a very young looking Bernard Maybeck. He was the architect responsible for designing the Palace of Fine Arts (1915) and numerous other landmark buildings in the Bay Area, including part of the UC Berkeley campus and the First Church of Christ Scientist, also in Berkeley.

The lady in pink is Isadora Duncan. Born in San Francisco in 1875, Miss Duncan achieved international fame in Europe as the founder of modern dance. She was a dazzling figure who danced in flowing robes and bare feet.

The last adult, in black, is Mary Ellen Pleasant, or Mammy Pleasant, as she was popularly known. She was, by legend, a mysterious and powerful figure behind the scenes during the Civil War years of San Francisco, as she championed the cause of blacks all across the nation.

The children, Max and Chloe, are the son and daughter of Don Baker, a former Eastdil Realty developer who engaged the services of artists Mark Evans and Charlie Brown during the building's renovation in 1985.

On the opposite (west) wall we have just four figures with names. The boy on the far left and the lady on the far right playing the mandolin are nameless or generic.

Second from the left, the tall man in blue is the great public benefactor and San Francisco mayor (1895), Adolph Sutro. Initially gaining wealth and fame from his mining techniques and investments in his own Comstock Silver Mines of Nevada, Sutro at one time possessed 1/12th of the land in San Francisco.

The man in the yellow vest is John Muir. A prolific writer and explorer who successfully campaigned for the preservation of forests, Muir is often referred to as the inspirational father of the national park system.

The next figure, in glasses and what looks like a Robin Hood hat, is Herbert Law. A patent medicine king of the 1890's, and a former owner of the Fairmont Hotel, Law was the developer who placed this building here in 1906.

The last portrait with a name is opera singer Luisa Tetrazzini, one of Italy's greatest coloratura sopranos. In 1910, on Christmas Eve, she sang "The Last Rose of Summer" to over a quarter million people right across the street at Lotta's Fountain (Monadnock Building Handout, nd).

Bronze (Personal observation).

The Security Pacific Art Gallery, designed by Frederick Fisher in collaboration with artist David Ireland, islocated on the first floor. Completed in 1990, the space is detailed in subtle and interesting ways; the window walls on the street are also used to showcase art (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 35).

Stainless steel (Personal observation).

Notable new works of contemporary sculpture by Richard Deacon and Joel Shapiro have joined the cityscape, thanks to the developers of Foundry Square, a half-completed ensemble of office buildings at First and Howard streets in San Francisco.

Shapiro's renown rests on his having turned the vocabulary of minimal sculpture back toward figuration about 30 years ago.

He took square wood beams, favorite forms of his older contemporary Carl Andre, and made structures of them that could be read as stick figures.

Shapiro then abbreviated and exaggerated his work's figural qualities so that they come and go depending on the viewer's position and on his determination to see them.

Built-in aspects of "bad fit"--apparent right angles that turn out to be oblique, slight off-square rotations--read expressively from one viewpoint, and willfully abstract from another.

Large scale has defeated Shapiro on occasion, making his work look like small ideas inflated rather than like products of enlarged thinking.

Standing 24 feet high, the Foundry Square piece is an unusually good example.

Its plaza setting touches off an apt association to the work of Alberto Giacometti, for whom urban crossings symbolized the modern world's banishment of humanity from all common spaces. Much of Shapiro's best sculpture updates the drama of emotional versus physical distance central to Giacometti's mature work.

As the public focal point of a corporate work environment, the Shapiro also monumentalizes the perilous balancing act that sums up so many employees' experiences of office politics (Baker, Keneth, San Francisco Chronicle, 06.25.2003: D1, D5).

(Personal observation)

Abbreviations