Public Art Projects

Three Artist Teams were selected through a public process facilitated by the Arts Commission in 1998. For details about the Artist Team selection process, please go to Project Synopsis.

Mission Bay/Central Waterfront/Potrero Artist Team

• Christopher Andrews is an architect and town planner, currently working in Berkeley, CA, who has worked primarily on residential projects in the Bay Area. Most recently, he worked with HDR LCA/Sargent on the conceptual design of the Hercules Sycamore Street Mixed Use Development and a Master Plan for the Blue Mountain Group Home and Charter School in Calveras County, CA. He has worked as a Project Architect with Skillful Means and Designs & Construction in Berkeley, CA, and with Solomon Inc. Architecture and Design in San Francisco. In the Fall of 2005, he taught a course, Mapping the Polis, at the University of San Francisco.
• Bill and Mary Buchen design interactive installations for museums, galleries and public sites throughout the United States. They have collaborated on public art projects for 25 years, including sound parks and science playgrounds, Aeolian (wind) harps, and designs for urban and park environments, and have participated on several design teams. Current projects include commissions for Ohio State University Larkins Hall in Columbus; Pompano Beach Neighborhood Transit Center in Broward County, Florida; and two design team projects for a playground design and transit links in Long Island City, New York. They currently live in New York City.
• Ken Smith is a landscape architect who has worked on a wide variety of national and international projects, in both private and public practice, including many team endeavors. His background and training is in both landscape architecture and the arts, with a degree from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he is currently a Visiting Lecturer. In 2005, Princeton Press published Ken Smith Landscape Architect: Urban Projects, edited by Jane Amidon. Recent exhibitions include Groundswell: Constructing the Contemporary Landscape at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. His practice is based in New York City.

Bayview/Hunter Point Artist Team

• Frederick Hayes, who works primarily in drawing, painting and sculpture, has exhibited his work in San Francisco at the Patricia Sweetow Gallery, the Rena Bransten Gallery and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He received a Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation in 1999, which resulted in a traveling exhibition, and his work has been exhibited at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and at The Drawing Center, both in New York City. This year, he will be in an exhibition at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, New York, and will complete a residency at the MacDowell Colony in Petersborough, New York. He currently resides in New York City.
• JoeSam., a long time Bay Area resident, is both a painter and a sculptor who has completed numerous public art projects over the past ten years, at such places as the Tulsa Boys Home in Tulsa, OK; a new homeless center in Palo Alto, CA; and a tile mural for the walls and floor of the Martin Luther King, Junior Pool in San Francisco, CA. In 2005, JoeSam. had solo exhibitions at the Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oakland, CA; the MOHR Gallery in Mountain View, CA; The Idaho Black History Museum in Boise, ID; and at the Sargent Johnson Gallery, the Pigman Gallery, and the Axia Gallery, all in San Francisco, CA.
• Horace Washington is a sculptor and mural artist who has completed numerous public projects in the western United States. Most recently, he created ball game theme sculptures for the City of Oakland’s Coliseum, and shipyard era sculpture designs for the City of Richmond, California. He was commissioned to design the the Metro Blue Line’s Vernon Station in Los Angeles, a design that was awarded a National Merit Award by The Design for Transportation Awards Program from the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Transportation. He is a Ceramic Instructor at the Creativity Explored Art Center in San Francisco, CA.

Visitacion Valley/Little Hollywood Artist Team

• Anita Margrill is an artist and architect living in San Francisco, with projects ranging from public art in parks, plazas, transportation corridors, corporate lobbies, private gardens and science museums, to designing and building energy efficient housing. She has been commissioned for public art projects most recently in Wichita, KS; Dallas, TX; Davis and Ventura, CA, and designed a synagogue in New York City. Margrill has received grants from the New York Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, was Artist-in-Residence at the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, CA, and received an Art-in-Public Buildings Award from the California Arts Council.
• Nobuho Nagasawa’s professional works include site-specific projects, gallery and museum installations and public art, exhibited internationally. She is a recipient of numerous international awards in the arts, including the DAAD from Germany, and grants from both the Rockefeller and Japan Foundations. Nagasawa received a Design Excellence Award for Architecture for a Los Angeles library public art project, and her public art project with architect Antoine Preddock for the new City Hall and Public Plaza in Austin, TX, was one of 21 public art projects highlighted in Art in America’s 2005-2006 Annual Review. An Associate Professor at SUNY at Stony Brook, Nagasawa is currently working on collaborative projects in Seattle and Los Angeles.