Guerilla art

I’ve been super busy the past week doing interviews with various park people, gathering wonderful stories that will take me some time to digest. Meanwhile, a quick entry about art in the park. I don’t mean the capital-A Art cemented in place outdoors or hanging on the walls of the De Young.

I’m talking about the ephemeral, mysterious pieces that just appear one day, the repurposed piece that find new life in the park, like the statues at the top of the page. I spied these two reclining figures through a fence surrounding one of the work yards — strange broken nymphs watching the gardeners and foresters come and go.

(After publishing this piece, an answer about their origin came in from a reader who had already asked park historian Chris Pollock about them. Pollock believes the statues were the work of artist Robert Boardman Howard, part of a larger sculpture of whales playing that was made for the 1939-40 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. The frolicking whales were relocated to the fountain in front of the old Academy of Sciences building and these remnant mer-people somehow ended up here.)

I think of it all as guerrilla art — flashes of beauty, whimsy or critique that may last for months or be gone in days. Here are a few other examples I’ve come across. I’d love to hear about more.

Photo by Christian Jurinka

This memorial to the Xerces Blue butterfly, caught by photographer Christian Jurinka, lived briefly in the Music Concourse on a plinth formerly occupied by a statue of Father Junipero Serra. (Protesters took down the padre in 2020, along with other statues of slave holders.) It commemorates the first butterfly in North America driven to extinction by human activity. Xerces Blues once flitted all over the San Francisco sand dunes and then disappeared as the dunes disappeared under concrete and buildings. The last Xerces Blue was seen in The Presidio in March, 1943, according to the accompanying plaque. The statute went up the night before Earth Day and was removed two days later because the San Francisco Art Commission does not allow unauthorized art installations.

These other works have survived perhaps because they’re tucked away in quiet places and don’t declare themselves so vigorously.

This tiny Victorian appeared on top of a 30-foot tree stump in early 2022 . Though unauthorized, Rec and Park manager Phil Ginsburg told staff to let it stay. You can still find it near the park entrance at 19th Avenue and Martin Luther King Dr. To me, it reads as a commentary on real estate in the city— tantalizing but near impossible to attain.

Postscript: Soon after posting, I heard from the young man who built the house. He wants to remain anonymous, but happily described how he’d come to create it. In early 2022, he noticed the high cypress stump and thought it would be fun and funny to put a house on top of it, way out of reach. He picked one of the Painted Ladies to copy and carefully built a model to scale that he then bolted in place. He never imagined it would stay up as long as it has.

What’s the meaning? I asked, wondering if I’d guessed right. Turns out, not quite. The color scheme, yellow and blue, was a gentle statement in support of Ukraine. The more important statement, though, was a quote from the Prayer of St. Francis, (the city’s patron saint) that he put on the back of the house: “Where there is hatred, let us sow love.”

 This pine cone labyrinth unspools out of sight in a gully near 25th Avenue and Lincoln Way. I’d been walking by without noticing it for months before a gardener told me about it last year. I’d love to know how Nick came to create this lovely spiral. “Center yourself and add a cone. Walk together or walk alone,” the sign invites. I keep expecting to find it destroyed and yet for over a year it has remained in place, an offering of peaceful meditation for all lucky enough to find it.

This recently appeared on JFK Promenade, west of Rainbow Falls. I don’t think it’s official and I have no idea what it means. Those bold blue and white angular shapes are jarring against the backdrop of rocks and trees — and maybe that’s the point.

I came across these willow fences out in the western end of the park, behind the golf course. I don’t know if they’re there for a camp or forest school. But I love how they beckon you to take a wander through the trees.