[ Golden Gater Online - December 11, 1997 ]
Andreas Tzortzis
Staff writer
Emily Payne is starting to get excited about the ceramic tiger lurking in the plants next to the library.
"See, you can see it walking," she said pointing and waving her hands, "and it looks like it's coming out of somewhere."
Payne, a fine arts graduate student and an accomplished sculptor herself, is doing her best to explain one of many new public art sculptures that have graced the lawns and concrete pathways of SF State in the past two years.
The tiger, a sculpture covered in bits of brightly covered ceramic tile, is the work of an SF State student. But many of the new art pieces growing out of the ground virtually every semester are donated by professional Bay Area artists or are part of a collaboration between students and artists. No one quite knows the reason why SF State is jockeying to position itself at the avant garde of university art, but most art faculty say it's the work of a dedicated art professor on sabbatical and the director of plant operations.
"(Public Art) was dormant as a program," said Mark Johnson, an art professor and director of SF State's internationally known art gallery in the Creative Arts building. "But it became revitalized as a result of the support of Leonard Hunter and Robert Hutson."
The art department is riding the wave of SF State's newfound public art obsession by bringing in visiting professional artists to teach classes that produce actual works for the campus.
A year ago, San Francisco artist Ruth Asawa taught a class titled Zen Bauhaus and Public Art. The class, which combined 22 art students with eight budding high school artists from the nearby School of the Arts, designed a piece of art called DNA Studies which hangs on opposite sides of the second floor entrance on the inside of the new Creative Arts building. The project was financed by a $10,000 grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission.
"Good public art doesn't just stand out and startle you," said Payne, who crafted a three dimensional, steel rod, and wire mesh hanging for the DNA project. "A good piece invigorates the space it's in."
But the jury is still out on whether the campus sculptures do, in fact, invigorate space.
"It fills up the space, I guess you could say," said theater arts student Terry Trumbo, 24, of the giant wishbone sitting at an intersection of campus walkways near the student center. Trumbo examined the wishbone for the first time with a quizzical look on his face.
"I'm not ecstatic about it. I guess its art, it symbolizes...." Trumbo's words trailed off as he furiously thought of what to say about the piece.
On the other side of the union in front of the gym, Anthropology and Art History major Rosie Mills enjoyed sitting on a colorful metal bench built by local artist Bill Wareham. Wareham taught a sculpture class here last semester and is responsible for the giant orange and yellow metal work sitting on the grass island between Burk Hall and the gym.
"It's great that it's functional," Mills said of the bench. She admitted that, at first, she didn't notice the giant piece of folded metal Wareham calls "Buckeye" standing in front of her bench. "It definitely makes (the university) less sterile. It's more of what we need."
Wareham, who continues to work as an artist out of Hunters Point Shipyard, thinks that Buckeye is probably the best in a series of similar pieces he crafted, but allowed that "if they get tired of it, they'll ask me to come by and pick it up."
Johnson said that bringing in artists was something the department was going to continue. Next semester, Wang Po Shu, a Feng Shui artist, will teach a class in which students will create a rock garden to display somewhere on campus.
"It teaches people about looking," Payne said of the campus sculptures, adding there was no hidden message to discover. "It's just whatever you get from it that matters. If it excites you or moves you, then that's what it's all about."
[ Golden Gater - December 11, 1997 ]