About Us
Press Releases
February 1, 2002
People of Chinatown/North Beach Featured in New Public Art Work on Chinatown/North Beach Garage Wall
Two local artists feature the faces of Chinatown/North Beach community people in a new public art work, consisting of 11 ceramic steel portraits, on the exterior wall of the newly constructed North Beach Parking Garage, 735 Vallejo Street, between Columbus and Stockton streets. Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr. will officially open the new garage at a dedication ceremony on Thursday, February 7, at 11 a.m.
Harrell Fletcher and Jon Rubin went to neighborhood shops, offices and restaurants in search of family photographs, which they scanned and enlarged onto the durable ceramic steel. The portraits, which are both contemporary and historic, are of a North Beach bakery worker, a Chinese Family Association senior member, a young elementary school student, two middle-aged brothers in their Little League days, and others. In all, they reflect the diversity of the community the new garage serves.
For the garage interior, the artists collected the types of prophecies and insights found in fortune cookies. They have painted a different one on the ground at the end of each parking space.
The new works were commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission, in collaboration with the Department of Parking and Traffic, under a city ordinance that provides for an art enrichment allocation equivalent to two percent of the construction budget of a new public building or other civic improvement project.