Public Art Proposal Display

Art Proposals for Portsmouth Square - Sculpture

Public Comment Period:

June 30, 2025 to July 21, 2025

Proposal Viewing Location

Proposals located at 667 Grant Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94108.
Public Comment
View the Proposals

The San Francisco Arts Commission is conducting a review process to choose an artist to design an artwork for the Portsmouth Square entrance plaza, located at the corner oof Walter U Lum and Washington Streets. The artwork will be a human-scale sculpture and comprised of durable, sustainable materials intended for exterior use, such as stone or metal. The goal of the project is to create an artwork that acts as a welcoming beacon to Portsmouth Square entrance plaza; is highly visible from the street; and draws people into the park space; and celebrates the people, history, and values of San Francisco’s Chinatown communities. Three artists/artist teams were chosen as finalists by a Public Art Review Panel to design proposals for this opportunity. They are: lee + boles faw, Bijun Liang, and Cathy Lu.

藝術提案展覽 花園角雕塑計劃

Art Proposals for Portsmouth Square - Clubhouse Wall

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lee + boles faw

Living Room/Living Gate

​​lee + boles faw_Living Room_Sculpture Proposal for Portsmouth Square_digital poster.jpg“When you welcome a guest, you have found your home.”[1] 

This sculptural and metaphorical Chinese gate, “Living Room,” will act as a welcoming beacon for Portsmouth Square and Chinatown beyond. Its structure provides a physical transition from the city into the square, using the rebus[2] for the space of a growing tree for the “Living Room” of Chinatown, and a message of hospitality for visitors and community members alike: When you welcome a guest, you have found your home. 

As a monument, the artwork expresses a poetic symbol of ancestral history, commemorating the decades of community development and organization, including the civil rights contributions and social justice history of the Chinatown community. As a nature-based and time-based work, it also alludes to natural history and the original indigenous stewardship of this space in pre-colonial times. Finally, the work expresses a deliberate opening for future generations and possibilities, a transmutational and symbiotic relationship between those who came before and those who come after, between immortal and living, human intervention and nature. 

The gate consists of a bronze copy of a magnolia tree that will be felled in the park before its renovation, a tree that witnessed the last 60+ years in Portsmouth Square and Chinatown, and a tree in Chinese culture that symbolizes ancestral strength and wisdom. This magnolia stood guard over the community fight for civil rights, culturally-competent services, and the formation of Asian-American identity. This bronze witness sits in one planting bed at the entrance court, just across the path from a living flowering tree in a stone planter in the opposite planting bed. The open bottom planter milled from dolomitic limestone will formally and visually act as a monumental plinth to hold up a powerful, living symbol for the greater community. English text (When you welcome a guest, you have found your home), Tagalog text (Sa pagyakap sa bisita, tahanan ay nadarama), and a Chinese cheng-yu 安居樂業 drawn by a master Chinatown calligrapher will be carved over and through a simplified relief image of ocean water texture on the stone plinth. As a result, the text is entwined with a texture associated with migration, feng shui, and ecology that can also relate to the dynamism of this particular community: a rootedness in place and history, connection and the sharing of resources – and the foundational strength and heritage that allows for flourishing and new growth.

The bronze tree will support a cantilevered piece of wood for the top of the gate, which will be milled from one of the other felled park magnolias. This crosspiece with wood grain will be gilded to reflect light, a luminosity that changes perceptively as light shifts throughout the day. This cantilevered piece contains a generous opening for the living tree to grow through and thrive. The ancestral Portsmouth Square trees are therefore providing a “living room” for a new tree that will grow into and around the opening provided by the eternal bronzed magnolia. The piece gives testament to the strength of the Chinatown community, the cultural value of ancestral gifts and reverence for youth, revealing a time-based, radiant experience of history, possibility, change and resilience.

[1] An unpublished aphorism by Summer’s mentor, Takeyoshi Nishuichi

[2] The use of rebus is prevalent in traditional Chinese and other Asian artworks. A rebus is a visual and linguistic puzzle in which words are represented by a combination of images.  For example, a bird on branch in Chinese paintings. Also, the cheng-yu mentioned below is a rebus: In this instance of An Ju Le Yeh: "An" is homonym of Quail=peace, "Ju" is homonym chrysanthemum=residence, "Le" is falling or fallen=happiness, "Yeh" is leaves=career. This then is the rebus of an image of quails, chrysanthemums and fallen leaves. With help from David Lei.

View a larger image of Living Room/Living Gate.

Bijun Liang

鞋天鞋地 (xietian xiedi)

Bijun_proposal-poster.jpg

鞋天鞋地 (xietian xiedi) is an interactive installation featuring a pair of bronze guardian lions shaped like boots. One lies firmly grounded—stable and peaceful. The other lifts off like a rocket, excitedly pointing toward what’s possible. Together, they honor where we come from and imagine where we’re going.

For generations, people in this neighborhood have been on the move—physically, economically, socially—finding ways to build a life with what they had. These boots carry that spirit: grounded and determined, always in motion.

The name 鞋天鞋地 plays on 謝天謝地 (xietian xiedi), meaning “thank heavens and earth.” It adds a layer of gratitude for those who walked before us, and blessings for those still to come.

These boots are made for the garden entrance. As my mom would say, “Take your shoes off before coming in the house!” If Portsmouth Square is Chinatown’s “living room”, then the garden entrance is the front door—where family and friends slip shoes on or off, coming or going.

Hopes for the community
I immigrated to San Francisco Chinatown with my single mom when I was five and have been rooted here ever since. Decades later, my family still lives and works in the neighborhood, and my art is shaped by the joy and resilience I see here every day.

This piece is personal… not just my story, but one perhaps shared by many families in Chinatown. We simply moved forward, one step at a time. xietian xiedi is positioned the same way—one boot grounded, the other ready to take the next step. Chinatown has always been a place where people rebuild and keep going, even in the face of uncertainty.

I made xietian xiedi interactive so that people are at the heart of the piece. The boots are meant to be pet for good luck, played with, even dressed up during festivals. I hope they spark joy and invite connection for a community that never stops moving.

Like guardian lions, they’re here to bring good fortune—and maybe a little fun, too.

View a larger image of 鞋天鞋地 (xietian xiedi).

Cathy Lu

Nuwa’s Hand (Fruits of Chinatown)

LU_CATHY_SFAC PSQ PROPOSAL DISPLAY .jpgNuwa’s Hand (Fruits of Chinatown) is a site-specific bronze and aluminum sculpture on a concrete base in the Walter U Lum Pl. and Washington St. entrance to Portsmouth Square in Chinatown SF. It is a 9 ft sculpture of a greenish jade colored tree combining elements of Chinese mythological creation goddess Nuwa 女媧 (her hand) and Fusang 扶桑 (a mythological sacred tree) that features the different fruits and produce of SF Chinatown. Colorful produce such as bok choy, jackfruit, bananas, etc. grow on the eight branches of this tree, with the base of the tree ending in Nuwa’s hand rooting into the ground. The concrete base is 2 ft tall, making the sculpture with the base 11 ft tall. The tree branches are 7 ft wide.

For almost two decades, I have been creating artwork that reference Chinese diasporic imagery and mythology as a way to draw attention to unacknowledged histories and experiences of immigration, hybridity, and assimilation. In doing so, I reimagine our past and present to create more equitable futures.  For the last five years, I have been focusing on Nuwa, the Chinese creation goddess with the body of a snake and head and arms of a woman, who is said to have sculpted humans from the earth. Nuwa is both a creation goddess and an artist; she is a reminder of our agency and ability to shape and change the world as we want it to be. I show her hand rooting into the ground as a way to speak to the experiences of Chinese residents fighting to maintain space despite historic and current racism and gentrification, as well as the experiences of immigrants and diasporic peoples at large making homes in new lands.

From her hand grows a spectacular tree that branches out with fruits that are found for sale in Chinatown and represent Asian diasporas. The tree is modeled after a bronze Fusang tree from 1200 BCE, and is patinated in greenish jade hues. There are twelve varieties of fruits: bok choy, jackfruit, lychees, napa cabbage, bananas, bittermelon, durian, grapes, Hami melons, dragonfruit, ginger, and pomelos. Each fruit is cast in aluminum from an original fruit procured in Chinatown SF. Fruits are coated in a durable polyurethane paint in a variety of different eye-catching colors like pinks, reds, blues, greens, purples, etc. By depicting fruits that would not normally grow together, I speak to experiences of hybridity, of different peoples and cultures coming together in community. The fruits will also be depicted with their interior flesh showing as a way to show power in vulnerability. This sculpture is about the resilience of Chinatown and its people, its abundance, and the strength in living in hybrid cultures and communities.

View a larger image of Nuwa’s Hand (Fruits of Chinatown) ​.

Opportunity For Public Comment

Please take a few minutes to review these artwork proposals and provide feedback. The proposals are available online at www.sfartscommission.org/calendar/proposal-displays, or accessed by the QR Code below, where you can leave feedback in the public comment form. Comments may also be submitted via email to sfacpublicartcomment@sfgov.org by Monday, July 21 at 5:00 p.m. PST.

Public comments will be considered by the Review Panel as part of the Final Review Panel meeting where the Panel will recommend one proposal for implementation. Please note that public comments do not constitute a vote.

The Final Review Panel meeting will take place remotely the week of August 4, 2025. All Artist Review Panel meetings are open to the public. An agenda for the meeting will be posted 72 hours in advance of the meeting on SFAC’s website under the Public Meeting section: www.sfartscommission.org

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