As the 600-foot wall backing David Baker + Partners Crescent Cove development looks today above, as it will look once Brian Barneclo’s Systems Mural Project is in place below.
Adobe has donated $10,000 to get the paint rollers rolling, but the extra dollars still needed to make the rendering a reality currently stands at around $65,000 (for which there’s a fundraiser this Saturday). And yes, click either image to enlarge.
∙ Crescent Cove [dbarchitect.com]
∙ Systems Mural Project [systemsmural.com]
I love Brian Barneclo’s work. He did the Food Chain Mural in the Mission, the Guardian’s building, as well as the restaurant NOPA. This will make my walk to the ballpark a little more pleasant!
It looks like a nice mural, though they’re usually a sign that an area is run-down, blighted.
I was once developing some land outside a small town in Washington state. In the middle of the town was a building with a mural in Gaugin colors urging young people to stay off drugs. I don’t think it had any effect on the use of drugs by young people, and it just gave the town a look of blight. I asked the locals to get rid of it and they eventually did. At least it didn’t picture any local boss men and kleptocrats, like so many of the murals in rundown areas do.
Nice mural, but I can think of better things to do with $65k. Such as:
1. Feed the homeless
2. Build/improve a park
3. Extra counselor care for people who need it (drug addicts for example).
4. Donate the money to an animal shelter
5. Buy new books/materials for school for kids…
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1,000. Paint Mural
SFRE – You just made an argument against any public funded art, right ?
Nope. Art was just way down on the list. There is plenty of art you can see/appreciate just by walking around the city, not to mention the museums.
Nice way to end Friday — on a feel-good note. This will be seen by 10s of thousands weekly. Note to artist, please pop the colors more. Looks good.
Looks great. I wonder why it wasn’t painted in day 1 🙂 Should have make the developer pay a deposit for art installation before letting them off the hook.
Secondly I’m nitpicking on the paint color. The curve wall is make up of many short straight segments. Currently the uniform brown paint make the angled join stand out. Whatever they do try to make it look more like a smooth curved surface.
SFRE, your priority list is just a lot different from my priority list. I see public art as something that enrich the life of many people. It definitely have good value.
Arent all developors required by ccsf to allocate a portion of the build budget to art? why the fundraiser?
How much does it cost to paint a mural this size?
We’ve calculated the costs to be near $75,000. A large portion of this goes into permits to operate on Caltrains railyards. Another chunk of it goes to supplying paint and tools. And finally the workers are compensated for their time and skill.
$75k for a mural? really? The city can’t even waive permit fees for public art? we can’t get volunteers to paint this?
although I really really really like the idea of a mural, the $75k is preposterous IMO.
A few years back Minneapolis painted 8 very nice wall murals in a transitional neighborhood near my new nabe. I’m sure they didn’t total the 600 feet that this SF project had, but it was a sizeable undertaking. (I’ve never measured but each mural is the side of a building, some of them 2 stories tall… so my guess is that these total at least half and maybe 3/4 of what the SF project totals)
It was made into an event, with community breakfasts and picnics each day, painting by volunteers, sometimes local bands went down there to play, they had block parties, you name it. All done over a long weekend.
Total cost: $3500.
It was a community building thing, with volunteers and artists and community support and everything you want to build a community.
Why can’t SF do this? have the city waive the permit fees, have volunteers donate time and energy and maybe even paint supplies, and bring this cost down.
Then make it a community affair. Invite a bunch of local artists to plan the design and have local art-enthousiasts help paint it. Have local restaurants and churches and community organizations plan picnics and all sorts of things. Make it an event. Make SF a community.
Then repeat the process all over the metro area.
I’d rather have ten $7,500 murals like I just described than one $75,000 mural. Better yet, you could have 20 $3750 murals. Or better yet, make the above mural for $10,000.
again: the idea is a good one, paint a mural on an ugly wall. I just dislike the execution of the idea. SF really missed out here.
details on the Mpls project (which has been repeated all across the city by the way) can be found here: (it has pictures, cost, schedule of events, etc…) FWIW: I like the Mpls murals better, and they’re much more detailed, so if volunteers can paint those they can paint the basic mural above.
http://www.walldogs.lyndale.org/index.html
oops:
correction: they painted 10 murals on 8 buildings in 3 days.
one of the murals is somewhat small though.
This is a great idea – in my view it is way, way worth it – and i hope it is executed well.
Sf is full of single interest groups and positions – and this article is bringing out some of those them – but i think this is a good allocation of a very small slice of the capital involved in this project.
These are all subjective views – but i think prioritizing art , visual quality, whatever you want to call it, down the list cause there is always something else for the next marginal dolla is badly misquided.
you could also have let the developers of this project, which looks pretty good, suck a few more dollars out of it , build it cheap and nasty, and buy a new hospital room with it. something of pristine validity. how far do you want to take that?
1001. psychotherapy for real estate agents who rip everybody off.
@Louis: How can you prioritize art over giving someone a meal?
SFRE – should we halt all government spending that is not a direct handout then? How can you prioritize building a bridge over giving someone a meal? How can you prioritize scrubbing the floors at City Hall over giving someone a meal? How can you prioritize mowing the grass in a park over giving someone a meal?
Building a bridge serves a purpose – traffic/commerce
Scrubbing floors – maintenance/safety
Mowing Grass – maintenance/safety.
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Mural – “feel good” expense.
Got it. So no public art then? Also, should all public buildings be built with the cheapest materials possible? Utilitarian architecture/materials only? No more monuments either, I presume?
Public art is important, I’m not saying its not. I’m just saying during these days of economic hardship, there is better places to spend money.
Public buildings should not be built with the cheapest materials, because the cheaper the materials the more maintenance/repair is needed in the long-term, so it doesn’t make sense.
SF spends plenty on homeless in the tune of $100 mil a YEAR. If I lose my job, I’m staying put in SF. Visited the groundbreaking of a new homeless housing project not too long ago. The city’s intentions are good but it’s an incredibly expensive burden as in this case the City spent over $350,000 to build 1 tiny studio unit to house 1 homeless person…ouch.
The mural news is a breath of fresh air. It’s fine time we spend on something “happy” than things dreary that benefically to many than a singular class. Do note the proposed is substantially larger than the ones Minneappolis which are only half to 1 story tall in the tune of 50 times. 420 Berry murals are 4 STORIES tall and a full block long, So at $65,000 to $75,000 it’s a real bargain. Someone must be donating the scaffold because that alone would run about $100,000 to rent.
Although it’s a bit loud, I don’t mind the colors, they match the apartments. Paint fades anyway.
@ncyder: That is a completely different topic. I believe they should have a different policy for the homeless rather than giving them housing or building housing in one of the most expensive cities in the US.
With that being said, its hard to justify a mural when people need to eat. A mural that will likely be covered graffiti in a year.
Actually, I believe the likelihood of the wall being covered with graffiti in a year to be much, much less likely if the mural is put up, rather than if it’s left blank.
If you can show examples of SF people starving because of a lack of money for those programs, then I would agree with you. I’m disputing the fact that homeless programs/keeping people from starving programs are in fact lacking for money these days. Which ones have lost funding in the past two years, exactly? We’re certainly still in a recession, but we don’t exactly have people starving on the streets.
Public buildings should not be built with the cheapest materials, because the cheaper the materials the more maintenance/repair is needed in the long-term, so it doesn’t make sense.
I was more talking about basic decorations. If we had to rebuild City Hall now, would you be okay with making it an architecturally striking building, or would just want a basic box, built with earthquake-resistant reinforced concrete and not painted at all (wouldn’t want to paint it, as that would waste money and require repainting at some point)?
Building a community, which people want to live in, want to go to school in, want to visit as a tourist, want to invest in, and want to do business in requires making investments in public areas, including art of the type that we’re discussing here.
In addition to the mural,why don’t they allocate some funds to spruce up that part of Townsend (like Divis and other streets). It’s basically a parking lot, no sidewalks, and a chain link fence with the lovely view of the tracks and CalTrain trailers…