In an alley, ‘unseen’ becomes an art scene
Colorful work in SoMa streetscape is made for people to use
When artist Leah Rosenberg first walked up Natoma Street from New Montgomery, she saw high alcoves forming the alley wall with a smoker tucked into each to get out of the wind.
She knew she could improve these accommodations, so on Saturday five of those alcoves were painted in long and bold latex stripes, and each was outfitted with a built-in table and stools, ledges at elbow height for standing and leaning, and solar lighting in matching panels overhead
“At least if they are going to smoke, it is going to be a pleasant experience,” said Rosenberg at the grand opening of “Local Color,” a permanent work of public art on an alley that dead-ends into the Howard Street entrance of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It can be seen from the windows and patios on the museum’s east side — a rainbow on an otherwise dark and drab corridor.
“It’s not only beautiful, it’s surprisingly comfortable,” said Jordan Kurland, the first
person to try out a fabricated steel dinette, painted in violet, with a wall painted marigold serving as backrest.
The backrest comes courtesy of the Academy of Art University, which donated its side wall for that purpose. The artwork is courtesy of Sites Unseen, a refreshingly original and energetic two-woman nonprofit charged with commissioning public art for eight alleys in the Yerba Buena area.
It will take five years and cost $3 million to “make these alleys places where people want to come spend time, and link all the cultural institutions in the neighborhood,” said Dorka Keehn, founder of Sites Unseen and co-curator with project director Jess Shaefer.
“Local Color” is the second alley activation in the program, following a six-story kaleidoscope mural by Barry McGee, which opened last October on the exterior walls of the Moscone Center parking garage. A third installation is planned for October, when New York artist Hank Willis Thomas will light a building on Annie Alley in neon.
The eight artists were chosen from among 150 who submitted proposals. For her piece, Rosenberg was given a budget of $25,000 funded by the Bently Foundation, the Rainin Foundation and a Kickstarter fundraiser.
“Leah is a hot local artist,’ said Keehn, a San Francisco Arts Commission member who noted that Rosenberg recently won a commission for a piece at San Francisco International Airport. She is also the overseeing artist for “Color Factory,” a pop-up group show that opened Tuesday, Aug. 1, in a two-story space on Sutter Street above Union Square.
For Sites Unseen, Rosenberg had her choice of alleys, and the one behind SFMOMA made sense because she used to work there as a pastry chef at Blue Bottle Coffee, in the museum cafe.
She advanced to the other side of the counter last April when she supplied a cake art installation to a Late Night Birthday Bash at SFMOMA. But she appears to have left that medium behind, because at Saturday’s opening she was focused on mixing up bottles of sparkling water with food coloring to match the palette of her seating areas. These were served with small fruit tidbits.
“You get to eat and drink the colors,” explained Shaefer. “It’s a synesthetic experience. That’s the activation.”
In the nomenclature of Sites Unseen, activation means everybody makes art. Keehn set the standard by pulling up in a black 4x4 pickup and springing the tailgate to unload supplies while wearing a dress with horizontal stripes to cross-hatch the vertical stripes on the wall.
“I always work in a miniskirt,” she said. “I’m matching the installation.”
Rosenberg, 38, was more subdued, in a sweater and work boots, as befits the Canadian stereotype. She grew up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and came down in 2006 to attend California College of the Arts.
To serve her colored drinks, she set up a table painted like a bar code, and was cutting up fruit to go with it. A separate table was piled high in yarn for a Crochet Jam hosted by Ramekon O’Arwisters. A third table was stacked in glossy glamour magazines from the 1960s and ’70s, to be cut up and remade as collage art by Fallen Fruit, an arts pair up from Los Angeles.
“They’re re-creating editorial and advertising for a new publication that we are all making together,” said Fallen Fruit editor David Burns. The private patio of the historic Pacific Telephone Building was borrowed for the opening, and by midafternoon the first traces of fog were blowing in and bouncing off the skyscraper.
“Making a collage in a wind tunnel is going to be funny,” Burns said.
An hour after the opening, the public was using the art as if it had been there forever. Sitting at their violet or blue or red tables, activators could look up the alley to Chris Johanson’s multicolored question-mark sculpture on the museum patio and see the link.
“What I hope happens is that people start to notice the colors in other parts of the neighborhood,” said Rosenberg. The alcoves are open all hours and to anyone, “so you can sit and have your meeting and eat your lunch,” she said. She didn’t want to make it too easy for smokers, so she stopped short of fabricating matching steel ashtrays for the tables and elbow rests.
Kurland, a Sites Unseen supporter and producer of the Noise Pop music festival, sat with his 9-year-old son, Theo, who had his head on the table to test its napping possibilities.
“It feels like home,” said Kurland, as he clinked the ice in his olive-green sparkling water. “It’s very European, sitting in an alleyway, sipping a drink.”