San Francisco’s Fall Antiques Show returns from October 25 to 28 at Fort Mason.
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It’s a bug’s world
Posted on October 7, 2012 by editors
"Praying Mantis Playing Cello" by Lisa Wood
By Julia Irwin
“JUST IMAGINE what a bunch of bugs would be doing if they weren’t being watched, and then put that under a glass dome,” says local artist Lisa Wood, describing her otherworldly dioramas that feature insects at work and play. “It’s usually a simple story: a beetle clipping articles out of the newspaper, a caterpillar decorating a wedding cake or two ants having tea.”
Wood walks to her part-time job at Nest, the gift shop at 2300 Fillmore Street, from her home near Alamo Square. When she moved here from New York in 2000, she found inspiration in her new surroundings.
“Actually, when I first moved here I wasn’t that crazy about the Painted Ladies and Victorian homes,” she says. “They just grew on me.”
Now Wood not only finds inspiration in the surrounding Victorian architecture, but also in the history of the Victorian people.
“It’s just their sensibilities,” Wood says. “They’re very crafty people with their photography and odd, morbid fascinations. People were collecting things from nature — and nature is my biggest influence. That all kind of interweaves with what I’m interested in.”
(more…)
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A sculptor and a filmmaker
Posted on August 5, 2012 by editors
AN EXHIBITION of Jerry Barrish’s sculptures of musicians created from found materials, “rhythm spirit motion,” opens today at the Lush Life Gallery in the Fillmore Jazz Heritage Center at 1320 Fillmore Street. The exhibition opens with a reception from 2 to 5 p.m. and continues through September 30.
Art historian Peter Selz writes of Barrish: “He haunts all the junkyards, the beaches, the streets, dumps, auto graveyards and recycling centers and collects the debris that suits his fancy. Then the fabulist makes it into figurative sculptures that tell their own tales.”
Barrish is also a bail bondsman and a filmmaker. The characters in his newest film, “Sanctity of Marriage,” consist entirely of his own sculptures.
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Creating a new public space
Posted on July 9, 2012 by editors
Photograph of the Fillmore Stoop by Daniel Bahmani
DESIGN | NICK KINIRIS
Three years ago, the concept of the Fillmore Stoop was born, with the intention of making the northern stretch of California Street near Fillmore more pedestrian friendly and softening the harsh visual of the busy four-lane highway. The idea was to create a public space where neighbors could meet, relax, take a break from shopping or just hang out.
San Francisco has embraced these kinds of parklets — usually two parking spaces converted into mini urban parks. The parklet movement originated here, but was inspired by beautification efforts in New York that reclaimed dead urban spaces and transformed them into parks and plazas. The idea also takes its cues from European cities, where urban pedestrian zones have always been valued. The parklet concept has since expanded across the globe.
Each parklet in San Francisco has its own flavor. The Fillmore Stoop was designed by architects Jessica Weigley and Kevin Hackett of Siol Studios at Fillmore and Clay. Its multi-tiered sculptural form provides several levels for pedestrians to sit. It both creates more space for people and also acts as a barricade against the busy California Street traffic. The $25,000 project was funded by Chase Bank, which recently opened a branch across the street from the parklet.
EARLIER: “Parklet sprouting on California Street“
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A designer who’s just our type
Posted on July 4, 2012 by editors
POSTER ARTIST | Carly Lane Plaskett
She was a high school art teacher in London before moving to San Francisco four years ago to study new media at the Academy of Art. Carly Lane Plaskett flourished in the “digital meets old school design” program.
For a class in typography, she was challenged to design her own font. Since she lived near Fillmore Street, she decided to evoke the neighborhood’s jazz era. “I wanted something local to inspire me,” she says. “All through school I’d worked at Harry’s on Fillmore.” She studied mid-century typefaces, with their thin and thick letters, as she created her own Fillmore face.
Once she’d created the font, she had to demonstrate its use. Last year’s Fillmore Jazz Festival had just come and gone, so she imagined what the next poster might look like, and how the design would work on postcards and street banners.
“I’ve been to every Fillmore festival since I got here,” she says. “Fillmore is real — it still has a cultural element that’s gotten lost in the more commercial areas.”
She got an “A” on the project and graduated to a job at Sparkart, an agency in Oakland. And when she emailed a copy of her Fillmore Jazz Festival project to the festival’s organizers, they promptly suggested it be featured on the poster for this year’s festival.
“It’s really exciting to see my design all over,” she says. She was especially flattered when the poster was reproduced in chalk on the blackboard at Kiehl’s.
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The scooter and the spit
Posted on May 1, 2012 by editors
Defining a place: handpainted lettering on the facade of Roostertail at 1963 Sutter.
DESIGN | Chris Barnett
San Francisco graphic designer Christopher Simmons has a long list of powerhouse clients including Facebook, Microsoft, Wells Fargo Bank, Stanford, Kaiser Permanente and the Nature Conservancy. So why in an uncertain economy would he take a flyer on two Fillmore startups that sell Vietnamese sandwiches and rotisserie chickens?
For Simmons, owner of the design firm MINE, it was a matter of pride — and guilt.
“I got an e-mail from Denise Tran, who was planning to open Bun Mee, a small restaurant specializing in casual yet upscale Vietnamese street food, but I didn’t respond for six or seven days,” Simmons admits. When he did call, Tran told him she had decided to go with a New York City creative house.
Simmons, a soft-spoken 39-year-old who favors vintage tennis shoes and wears only scruffy duds made before 1970, says he “always wanted to do a restaurant.” He had a good feeling about Tran and her concept and offered to do a full-blown proposal anyway in two days.
Tran recalls it somewhat differently. “I had committed to the other firm, but Christopher called and persuaded me to reconsider. His pitch was so much stronger that I hired him instead.”
(more…)
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The Fillmore Stoop is unveiled
Posted on April 7, 2012 by editors
The first parklet in the neighborhood — in front of Delfina Pizzeria at 2410 California Street near Fillmore — is now accepting visitors. It’s a new public space that offers a spot to pause in the sunshine.
EARLIER: “Parklet sprouting on California Street“
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Lafayette Park or Peyton Place?
Posted on March 29, 2012 by editors
ORNITHOLOGY | Monte Travis
From my ninth floor office near Lafayette Park, I’ve been watching a pair of red-tailed hawks engage in aerial courtship flights since early this year.
In late March I saw the hawks carrying sticks to a large nest high in a eucalyptus tree in the park, undertaking a little remodeling. A few days later, I observed one of the hawks poking its head above the rim of the nest. This suggested at least one egg and probably more had been laid in the nest. If all goes well, we should have chicks in about a month.
As I was photographing the female hawk on the nest, I was alerted by the screams of about 20 red-masked parakeets — the famous parrots of Telegraph Hill — who suddenly bolted into the air from the treetops directly overhead. I looked up, and there came the male redtail swooping in from the west. When the male arrived at the nest, the female, who is larger, rose up, and for a short time both stood on the nest (above). Then the female took off and the male settled in for his shift.
Redtails are monogamous and generally mate for life. But later that same day, I witnessed a mystery: three adult birds on the nest (below). For 45 minutes, all three alternately flew to and from the nest. A menage a trois, perhaps? Or maybe redtails, like certain other species, sometimes employ one of their young from the prior year as a helper. This will bear watching in the coming days.
It’s a domestic ornithological mystery. But it seems appropriate for San Francisco: an alternative avian family.
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A modern take on the town
Posted on March 3, 2012 by editors
When architect Michael Murphy came home to San Francisco after a decade in London, his fresh eyes gave him a new appreciation for the city’s architecture — especially the modern buildings that often get overshadowed by the showier Victorians.
So he began creating a series of prints celebrating some of his personal favorites, including several in the neighborhood. There’s the new St. Mary’s Cathedral (“one of the most beautiful spaces in San Francisco,” he says) and the Japantown pagoda (“simple, with cherry blossom pink”), modern Pacific Heights (“it’s cocktail time”) and even daytime and nighttime tributes to the much-maligned Jack Tar Hotel on Van Ness Avenue.
“It’s reinvigorated my notion that people are suckers for architecture,” Murphy says. “They love it and they love to hate it.”
The entire series is available at Zinc Details, the emporium of modern design at 1905 Fillmore Street, and on Murphy’s website.
“They’re a hit,” Murphy chuckles. “My art has overtaken my architecture.”
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Parklet sprouting on California Street
Posted on March 2, 2012 by editors
Crowds gather outside Delfina Pizzeria on California near Fillmore nearly every day at noon and nighttime. They’re waiting for a table, preferably one of the coveted spots out front.
Soon the waiting may be more convivial — and the odds of snagging an outside table considerably improved — when the Fillmore Stoop is completed. It’s the first parklet in the neighborhood — and one of the few with a proper name — although the take-back-the-pavement mini-parks are already a big hit in North Beach, on Divisadero and especially along Valencia Street. They transform one or two parking spots into a public space, usually with tables and chairs and a bit of greenery.
The Fillmore Stoop is the creation of Jessica Weigley and Kevin Hackett, architects whose firm, Siol Studios, is at Fillmore and Clay. Their proposal takes the parklet idea a step further by creating sculptural benches and planters in two parking spots, with room for four or five tables from Delfina. They gained the endorsement of neighboring businesses and persuaded Chase Bank — coming soon across the street — to pony up $25,000 to cover construction costs.
The city has approved the plans and issued permits. Most of the work will be done off-site, with installation in late March or early April.
Filed under: Art & Design, Civics, Home & Garden | 2 Comments »
