News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
Despite an earlier recommendation that it be removed and relocated or put into storage, “Blue,” the public artwork on the bridge at Fillmore and Geary, will remain in place. At a recent meeting, the citizens advisory council was told by officials from the Redevelopment Agency, which commissioned the artwork, that it would be too expensive…
ICONS | LESLIE M. FREUDENHEIM From 1876 to 1910, a group of creative and pioneering men and women in Northern California sought an architectural expression appropriate to the region. They rejected Victorian excess, preferring simple homes of natural materials. Their aspirations went beyond architecture to advocate a sensibility and a way of life. The cradle…
LEGENDARY PHOTOGRAPHER Ruth Bernhard, who lived up a narrow stair in a Victorian flat on Clay Street from 1953 until she died in December 2006 at age 101, was released to “fly with the angels” — her term for death — at a memorial service March 31, 2007, at Calvary Presbyterian Church. Bernhard was remembered…
ART | JEROME TARSHIS From the 1890s to the early 1920s, the artists Arthur and Lucia Mathews were at the center of an artistic movement that sought to combine European tradition in art and design with the ideals of a new way of life that celebrated the natural splendors of Northern California. After the earthquake and…
ART | Jerome Tarshis Fifty years ago a reader of the national news media might think North Beach was San Francisco’s only artistic bohemia. But even during the heyday of the beat poets, upper Fillmore offered not only upscale living but fertile ground for art and literature. The artist Wallace Berman’s first apartment in San…
Upon entering Addison Fine Arts at Jackson and Buchanan, one might reasonably wonder: What are paintings of this quality by artists of this caliber doing in a neighborhood gallery? They are, in fact, part of gallerist Steven Platzman’s mission to enrich the cultural holdings of the city. He aims to do that by placing significant…
LOCALS | DAVID ISH It is a misleading moniker to call Bill Shields a neighborhood artist. He is indeed an artist who lives less than a block from Fillmore Street. But his work and his life have extended well beyond the neighborhood. Although born in San Francisco in the Presidio, where his physician father was…