Civic Center — Back to Nature

Grove Street

mixed media photo collage on board, 18”x14”

Imagining the busy corner of Grove and Van Ness a few hundred years ago.  Perhaps when there was still a grove of oak trees.  Long before our beautiful City Hall was built and before the Henry Moore sculpture was placed in front of Symphony Hall.  This Time Travel Photo captures the past and the present. It even features one of the Beaux Arts light poles that may no longer be part of the streetscape in the future (read about the controversy here).

This is the final piece from my new series of Time Travel Photos.  They will all be shown at San Francisco’s Glama-Rama Salon and Gallery.  The show runs from October 11 to November 27, 2016.  The opening reception is on the evening of Saturday, October 15 at 7:30 pm.

City Hall

City Hall, 36”x12”, mixed media collagescape on board

Sometimes a collagescape is a landscape and sometimes it is a cityscape.  My latest collagescape is inspired by San Francisco’s City Hall.  This year, as I celebrated my 25th year living in San Francisco, our City Hall celebrated its 100th anniversary.  I had a view of the dome from my first apartment, back in 1990.  In those days the cupric dome was the patinated green color that can now only be seen in old movies.  After a lengthy restoration in the 1990s, the dome’s blackened copper was treated with a finish that gave it a luster that has now faded to a dark gray.  For this piece I attempted to capture the many shades gray of the granite that dominates the building.  There are small hints of the colors from the interior marble and statues as well as the colors of the flags that fly on the building.  And of course gold for the trim that decorates the Beaux Arts Monument.