Happy Birthday Sutro Tower

Sutro Tower is 50 years old, and it is time to celebrate our favorite “locals only” landmark. It gives us TV and radio signals, and one day will be used as the docking port for the alien mothership.  
 
Prints are available of my latest piece at Society 6.  

Handmade Postcards from San Francisco

When you make mail art, there is no need to buy souvenir postcards, even in a city like San Francisco where there are countless ones available.  And, you can choose the landmarks.  Golden Gate Bridge?  Or why not use my Sutro Tower rubber stamp?  This set, mailed today, pays homage to San Francisco’s most ubiquitous invention, the one truly known around the world; blue jeans.  

November Mail Part I

November always feels like an intermission month to me.  This fall’s show are hung, it’s the quite before the holidays and San Francisco is a mix of warm sunny days with intermittent rain as we wait for the real, wet winter to get its start.  Here is some of the mail art that I have recently received: 

1. Jennifer Utter could not resist taking a photo of a spectacular sunset and turning it into mail art.  You might not realize this, but for all we do have in San Francisco, an impressive sunset in our foggy city is a rare thing.
2. Elaine James incorporated the San Francisco MUNI map into a Día de los Muertos card.  The papel picado stamps the USPS put out this year are some of the best for 2016. I used many.
3. Punkie Ebert has done a colorful zine featuring many of cultural icons.
4. Jacqueline Wygant sent a small little booklet from Portland that reminds me I need to make a trip up there to once again spend the day at Powell’s.
5. And a new set of awesome owl artist stamps from Darlene Altschul.

Thank you for the mail art, watch for November Mail Part II in the next post.

October Mail

The Pink Mail is ready to go up to the show in Sacramento and it’s time to organize all the other mail art and Halloween greetings that I received in October.  Some of the highlights include:

1. “Urban Accessories” from Fleur Helsingor.
2. I may have to go out in the neighborhood and see if I spot Sally Wassink if this Halloween postcrad is any indication of the wild costume she might be wearing. 
3. I love Sutro Tower and adore this zine I received from Julie Crossman as well as the Halloween Witch powder.
4. Marina Salmaso sent me this very pop-art collage from Denmark.
5. An altered postcard with a hand-stitched stamp arrived from Angela Behrendt in Germany.
6. Torma Cauli’s latest card from Hungary.
7. New prints came from Serse Luigetti.
8. A collaged art card from Skooter Fein.
9. Halloween greetings from Jennifer Utter.
10. And finally, Halloween mail art from Dori Singh.

Thanks for all the great stuff, now time for me to get back to painting and gluing.

Sutro Tower, our “Locals Only” Icon

The other day I was eating lunch.  Across from me sat a woman with an eight inch tall Sutro Tower tattooed on her arm. It is a very cool tattoo.  I’ll add that as one of the options on the if-ever-I-get-a-tattoo list. 

The tattoo got me thinking more about Sutro Tower.  San Francisco has iconic images that are recognized around the world like the Golden Gate Bridge, the Transamerica Pyramid and the row of Victorians on Alamo Square.  Yet, when people visit our City from all over the world, most barely notice Sutro Tower. You won’t find it on many postcards and there are no miniature Sutro Towers for sale in Chinatown. 

For San Franciscans, even if we take it for granted, most of us have a certain love for Sutro Tower.  If anything, the tower lets many of us avoid paying for cable.  With a bit of looking or a visit to any local craft fair, it does not take long to come across products with images of Sutro Tower.  Maybe they should be called staycation souvenirs?  Sutro Tower could be called our “Locals Only” icon.   

Sure, the tower has its detractors, and I have even come across a few fanatics who really hate the tower. But, well, San Franciscans do love to obsess over a cause.  For the rest of us, we’ll just look up and see it peaking through the fog.  And a few of us might secretly suspect the tower has another purpose — as an alien spaceship docking port. 

As for products – get some!  Like many of my fellow citizens, I have at least one t-shirt with our iconic tower.  My favorite t-shirts (shown below) are the ones from Glug, but I only have seen those in kid sizes.  I found some temporary tattoos (shown below) from sflocal.net.  I think I need to place an order.

Many local artists have used Sutro Tower as a subject.  One my pieces for the 2011 Project is shown below, also Shannon Cope O’Rourke’s cityscape with our tower.  One could easily start a collection based on Sutro Tower art.  You might begin with Michael Wertz’s print and then this appropriately named Sutro Tower – Unlikely Landmark print from Minor Thread.

Nothing says real San Francisco like the Sutro Tower.