Public Art Proposal Display

Art Proposals for the 900 Innes–India Basin Shoreline Park Public Art Project

Public Comment Period:

November 23, 2020 to December 06, 2020

Proposal Viewing Location

Tech Hub at India Basin Shoreline Park
Hunters Point Blvd & Hawes St.
San Francisco, CA 94124
Hours: Mon - Friday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
Public Comment
View the Proposals

SFAC 900 innes_opt2 (1).jpgThe San Francisco Arts Commission is conducting a review process to select an artist, who will create a 2-dimensional design for the pier at 900 Innes - India Basin Shoreline Park. The space is intended to become a 21st-century legacy park in a historic waterfront context, with an emphasis on habitat and wetland restoration and enhancement, public access, resiliency to sea level rise, social equity, and waterfront recreation. The project goals are to create an artwork with high visibility that will help create a destination point and draw users to the waterfront. Three artists were chosen as finalists to create proposals for the 900 Innes–India Basin Shoreline Park opportunity, they are: Miguel Arzabe, Raylene Gorum, and Ron Saunders. 

SELECTION PROCESS:
Arts Commission staff presented the qualifications of 24 artists from the Bayview Artist Registry for the 900 Innes–India Basin Shoreline Park public art opportunity. The panel consisted of an Arts Commissioner, one member of the design team, one representative of the client agency, three arts professionals, and one community representative. The Panel reviewed and scored the artists on the short list and selected the three highest scoring artists to create proposals for each opportunity. The finalists then developed their proposals that are on display at the Tech Hub at India Basin Shoreline Park and on the Arts Commission website for public comment from November 23 to December 6, 2020. Comments will be summarized and shared with the Panel prior to the final selection. Please note that comments by interested members of the public do not constitute a vote.

Weaving

Miguel Arzabe

Arzabe_900 Innes_display board_v4_small.jpgWeaving is inspired by the woven basketry of the Ohlone people, the first known inhabitants of this land. The baskets were often given as gifts and used in important ceremonies. To begin the design process I painted an original abstract watercolor painting on paper. The colorful palette is a celebration of the diversity of people who have made the area their home. This painting was cut into strips and woven together in a pattern inspired by the basket motifs. The resulting paper weaving pattern will be saw-cut at 1/8 inch thick into Pier 2’s concrete sand finish. CFS concrete coloration techniques will be used to match the color of the design. The colored “strips” will be 2.5 feet wide and 6 inches apart. The orientation of the design is meant to encourage the flow of people from the street above towards the water. Weaving is my gift to the Bayview community. I hope it brings people together and fosters a vibrant atmosphere of inclusion - a memorable backdrop for a variety of community activities.

For a larger image of the proposal, please click here. 

Lady Bayview

Raylene Gorum

1-GORUM Poster-LadyBayview-sm.jpgLady Bayview
While the history of this site at the water’s edge in Bayview is one that has been subjected to the turbulent tides of economics, racism, displacement and environmental abuse, it is also notably buoyed by the ingenuity, resilience and joy of the people who have lived, worked and built community here. My family's own history of displacement passed through the Bayview but was notably also peppered with stories of joy, ingenuity, music and community.

This well situated bay port has a remarkable history. First home to an indigenous community, it has since supported each successive population in waves that mirror the story of America itself. It is my aim to create a work for this former shipwright’s perch which speaks to this many layered maritime past in the context of a good spirited guardian figure who holds the tides of change in a gentle embrace.

Guardian
Every seafaring culture has looked to the auspices of a benevolent guardian to protect them from the perils of the sea and to express gratitude for the bounty provided.  Such figures exist in nearly every culture across the globe, and most certainly have representation in every demographic that has inhabited India Basin throughout its maritime rich history. Many are female. Lady Liberty is a modern version who welcomes immigrants and visitors as she stands guard  at the edge New York Harbor.  As I departed for my recent trans-Pacific crossing, a friend sent me off with the blessings and images of Yemaya, patron saint of the ocean, who is revered throughout the African diaspora for her protective and cleansing spirit.

As this site has a maritime history dating back thousands of years and has served as a modern boatyard for the last 150 years, it seems fitting to give India Basin and the surrounding BVHP community their own talisman, Lady Bayview, to tell the history of the people who built their lives, their ships and their community in India Basin. Lady Bayview is inspired by the strong female African-American leaders in the community, particularly those known as the Bayview Five who successfully advocated for better housing, health and labor issues, local theater and more. Lady Bayview is a tangible representation and reminder of that nurturing strength and serenity in the midst of storms.

Viewpoints
I aim to have the art speak to the many layered histories of the site and to have it be perceived at different scales. Visitors descending the stairs and ramps from Innes Avenue will get a taste of the more aerial view enjoyed by residents uphill. From this perspective, one sees the Lady Bayview with a swirling, patterned body holding a dark but glimmering circle (mirrored mosaic flecks will help differentiate here and reflect the changing light).

The linework animating her body is dynamic, like water and wind, and invites your eyes and body to move with the pattern across the pier. As you approach on land, you see that the watery pattern of her body is made of various arrow-like dashes with a wide variety of local ships sailing in between.  These dashes draw the visitor into the pier and around a circular gathering point at the center. The motion expressed by these lines or wind barbs will act as a beacon for energetic children and outdoor performers of many types.

Sailors will recognize the arrow-like linework as wind barbs, which tell the direction and force of the wind (a line with three long dashes = 30 knots; two long dashes and one half dash = 25 knots; one short dash = 5 knots and so on). These undulating lines spiral into a shimmering celestial circle Lady Bayview is tenderly holding at her center. She is essentially both water and sky and a peaceful protective presence for all who visit India Basin. One doesn't have to navigate by stars to understand the relationship between the sky and the sea. It's a beautiful relationship that keeps us visiting our shores at all times of day.

Working Waterfront
The ships speak to the long maritime history of the site and consequently to each of the successive inhabitants. With deep waters and protected microclimate, it expresses a pride of place through this unique local history. Due to its warmer climate, fresh water sources, and proximity to tidal marshes, Hunters Point was one of the most popular locations for Ohlone settlements in what is now San Francisco. These ideal waterfront conditions, along with deep waters and a can do-spirit also attracted generations of British, Scandinavian, Greek and German boat builders and Chinese Shrimping camps to India Basin.  The Navy’s operations here during World War II brought along a new wave of ship builders, including the African American community.

Reflecting this unique history in the work, we see canoes made from reeds by the native Ohlone tribes, Chinese shrimping junks, scow schooners designed by collaborating groups of immigrants in this very port to reach shallow inland areas (like the Alma which still sails on the Bay from the Maritime Museum Marina), locally designed brigantines (such as the Tall Ship Matthew Turner which was recently painstakingly recreated and can also be seen out on the Bay), the USS Sanctuary (a Navy hospital ship that speaks to the many ships built by locals and launched from the Hunter's Point dry docks during WWII), locally built Pelican sailboats, a modern racing vessel and of course, our modern commercial workhorses, the cargo ship. 

Together, the ships tell the long history of this site as a place where peoples from all over the globe made lives for themselves much as the original indigenous Ohlone people had building boats and making their livelihoods from the richness of the Bay, their own innovation, perseverance and community. It is also a story of displacement, collaboration, commerce and our water based connection to the rest of the globe.

I bring to this creative project the perspective of a person who lives in a floating community on the Bay; advocates with the Working Waterfront Coalition and sits on the board of a community boating center committed to providing affordable and diversified access to the Bay, I see increasing maritime environmental awareness and local pride as pivotal to the long term health of the SF Bay and the communities immediately surrounding it.

It is my hope that this site specific artwork can be educational and entertaining for curious people of all ages. There are many opportunities for STEM learning latent within the design  (math, navigation, map reading, ecology, etc). I would LOVE to work with local schools and organizations to create workshops and interactive teaching opportunities. On the other hand, the casual visitor may simply enjoy walking along the linework like a labyrinthine meditation or engage in creative play. Curious folks may spend some time at the plaque describing the work and be inspired to dig further into the histories described. Others may glimpse Lady Bayview’s beatific face from afar and allow curiosity to draw them toward the end of the pier. Residents in the hills overlooking the site from above may just take solace in the resilient and protective spirit looking over their waters and declaring pride of place.

For a larger image of the proposal, please click here. 

Untitled

Ron M. Saunders

Saunders_ Ron 900 Innes.jpgThe images created for this proposal are inspired by the history, culture, and natural environment of Bayview Hunter’s Point area. This proposal focuses on the ever-present role of water and its relationship to the area. Water is powerfully evocative. It can be soothing, reflective, cold, warm, playful, nurturing, and formidable. Blue will be used extensively throughout the design to underscore the association with sky and sea, time and flow.

The history of the SF Bay Area is nuanced and complex. Points of change and struggle will be depicted as photograms set in seed pods to create a blue path across the pier:

• The Ramaytush Ohlone are recognized as the original occupants of the San Francisco bay area. This tribe settled thousands of years ago on the banks of the Islais Creek watershed.

• In the 1700’s Spanish explorers made contact with the Ohlone dwellers along the shores of Islais Creek.

• As people migrated west in the mid 1800’s they brought with them enslaved Africans. In 1850, California entered the Union as a free, nonslavery state. Two years later, the legislature passed a fugitive slave law, legalizing the arrest and removal of runaway enslaved Africans who arrived with their enslavers before statehood.

• The land we now know as the Bayview- Hunters Point district was subdivided into rural ranch-lands and gardens. Between 1860 and 1910, the area evolved into San Francisco’s most consistently vocationally and ethnically varied community, with British merchants and landowner-farmers, Scandinavian and German boat builders at India Basin; Italian and German homebuilders and ranchers in central Bayview.

• Construction of the California Dry Dock Company at the southern tip of India Basin in 1866 spurred the growth of maritime manufacturing and commerce.

• From their arrival as chattel brought across the Atlantic Ocean, Africans began their long and often precarious migration to this area seeking freedom in the West.

• Chinese immigrants began camping on the south end of India Basin and harvesting shrimp from the Bay around 1869. The shrimp fishermen sailed the Bay and used triangle-shaped nets along the mudflats. Each day the fishermen collected their haul from the nets onto the shores of India Basin.

• Italian, Maltese, and Portuguese truck farmers became part of the Bayview in the1890’s. French tannery workers and Mexican and southwestern vaqueros have lived in Butchertown since 1900.

• On April 20, 1939, the San Francisco Health Department employed the doctrine of eminent domain to burn the shrimp village to the ground to make way for the Hunters Point Shipyard.

• The United States Navy built the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1940.

• With America’s involvement in the Second World War and the opening of the Naval shipyard, Hunters Point quickly transformed into an engine of military manufacturing, generating well-paying jobs. Increasing numbers of African American families came to San Francisco seeking economic opportunities that the shipyard would provide. This wave of new workers came to be known as the “Second Great Migration”. Thousands of emigrants from the Jim Crow South came west to build the boats and guns that would win World War II.

• Third Street was originally called ‘Railroad Avenue’, because it was used as a plank road stagecoach and railroad line. It was renamed in 1910.

• Sam Jordan was the first African American man to run for mayor of San Francisco and was known as the Mayor of Butchertown. He was also a light heavyweight boxing champion. The artwork will be a catalyst for dialogue about the community’s past and present history. Like water, that history flows through and shapes our environment. There are businesses like Mazzei Hardware and Sam Jordan’s that have been in Bayview for more than fifty years and there is the constant promise of what will come next.

The photographic images are created by using the photogram process. Photograms are photographs made without the use of a camera. This 19th century photographic process has an immediacy and rawness and a kind of truth not found in images created with a camera. I place the human figure, plant material and water on the surface of silver-based photographic paper, and then the paper is exposed to light emitted from an enlarger to create a shadowy silhouette image. To achieve a collage effect, I layer the objects on the surface of the photographic paper and make separate exposures of each element. The unique images are scanned and colorized using Photoshop to create digital cyanotypes.

The seed pods guide visitors across the plaza, inviting them to engage with elements of Bayview Hunter’s Point history. Seeds represent a beginning and historic trajectory. I will incorporate tangible and familiar items such as water, plant material, nets, machine nuts and bolts and silhouettes of people from the past and present. I will employ dark brown tones in some of the silhouettes to honor the Ohlone and African Americans. Different tones of blue are used to depict the various moods and conditions of the water as it changes over the course of a day. The largest and central seed pod evokes the children who represent the past, present and future.

For a larger image of this proposal, please click here. 

Opportunity For Public Comment

Please take a few minutes to review the proposals on display above and complete a comment form below. You may also email your comments to sfacpublicartcomment@sfgov.org.The Final Review Panel will take place on Wednesday, December 9, 2020, 1 p.m.–5 p.m. via teleconference meeting hosted on Webex. All Artist Review Panel meetings are open to the public. An agenda for the meeting will be posted 72-hour in advance of the meeting on SFAC’s website under the Public Meeting section: www.sfartscommission.org/calendar.

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