Sunday: Artist Performance Will Focus on Alex Nieto Shooting

April 11, 2014April 11, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 1 Comment

Megan Lavelle emailed Bernalwood this week to invite our community to a performance dedicated to the officer-involved shooting of Bernal resident Alex Nieto. Megan writes:

I am the Assistant Curator for Manresa Gallery, a contemporary art gallery inside St. Ignatius Church on the USF campus. This Sunday, April 13th we will be hosting a performance by artist Amitis Motevalli titled “I Speak of Shards and Pebbles.” To quote the artist:

‘“I Speak of Shards and Pebbles” uses documented accounts of recent incidents of officer involved shootings in and around San Francisco. The artist investigates how victims become dehumanized in their media portrayal. In the tradition of Iranian folklore, Motevalli finds stories by community members and the deceased’s family to create a more human depiction so the state driven narrative is not the only one accessible.’

The performance on Sunday will focus on the recent police shooting of Alex Nieto on Bernal Hill and we are hoping Bernalwood would feature the event on the blog as a way for mourners to find another outlet for their grief.

Again, the event is this Sunday, April 13th, 2014 beginning at 2:15pm inside St. Ignatius Church at the corner of Fulton and Parker in San Francisco.

PHOTO: Alex Nieto via Amitis Motevalli

Bernal Artist Bernie Lubell Unveils Remarkable Wooden Machine That Does Almost Nothing

April 10, 2014April 10, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 2 Comments

Last night, Neigbor Lessley and I left the familiar environs of Bernal Heights to attend the glamorous opening party for Neighbor Bernie Lubell’s massive new solo art installation at Intersection for the Arts downtown.

As you may remember, when we last saw Neighbor Bernie’s new artwork, it was under construction in his garage on Crescent, and it looked like a medieval Rube Goldberg machine built from wood scavenged from a construction site. Very mysterious.

Last night at Intersection for the Arts, the true nature of his project was revealed. It’s called “Why Can’t the First Part of the Second Party be the Second Part of the First Party?” and when fully assembled, it becomes a series of rope-driven pulleys, gears, and driveshafts fabricated entirely from lumber. The ropes are driven by human-powered pedal-bikes and treadmills, which generate lots of gear-spinning motion — but surprisingly little actual change.

This high effort/outcome ratio very much by design. “It’s a piece about people working together to get nothing to happen,” is how Neighbor Bernie described it last night. The wall text at Neighbor Bernie’s show explained that the piece…

… relies entirely on visitors’ active participation to bring it to life. The interconnected mechanisms provide various ways for participants to cooperate to get nothing to happen and several ways to monitor this nothing as it happens.

It’s extremely complicated, meticulously constructed, somewhat confusing, and completely awesome.

Neighbor Bernie’s exhibition will be at Intersection of the Arts (925 Mission) from now until June 7, so if you find yourself near Mission and Fifth, stop in to check it out. Bernalwood is told he will also give an artist’s talk there on May 10.

Congrats and nice work, Neighbor Bernie!

PHOTOS: Top, Bernie Lubell at his opening last night. All photos by Telstar Logistics

New Mural, Very Hot Pink, Now Complete on Helipad House

April 1, 2014April 1, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 66 Comments

The paint is dry and the scaffolding has come down. And now, the new mural is complete on the facade of the Helipad House at the tippy-top of Folsom Street just below Bernal Hill.

As you no doubt recall, the mural was created and executed by Casey O’Connell, on behalf of Neighbor Scott and Neighbor Regina, who encouraged the artist to do her thing.

The result is very pink, which will be terrific news to all pink fans in Bernalwood. It’s also gritty and cute, all at the same time.

Plus, the cool lady with her finger in the shark’s eyeball has a cool tattoo that says… YOU:

Fortunately, the shark does not seem particularly upset by the presence of the finger in its eyeball:

And if you look closely, there’s a San Francisco skyline in the shark’s teeth:

What does it all mean???!!! What is the message??? What is it telling us???

As we contemplate such deeper questions, this much is certain: All of us now have a new piece of art to ponder, discuss, and debate. Some of us will cheer. Some of us will not. But all of us will say: Hot pink!

PS: In case you missed it during brunch, Neighbor Scott and Regina’s Helipad House also appeared in last weekend’s Sunday New York Times Magazine. In this way, hundreds of thousands of brunch-eaters across America and around the globe were introduced to Bernal’s own… Junior Neighbor Iris!

That’s it. Bernalwood is calling it, right here: New mural + NYT Mag shout-out = PEAK GLAMOR. This is our moment.

MURAL PHOTOS: Telstar Logistics

Today: Bernal Kids Will Present Spoken Word in Bayview

March 20, 2014March 20, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 1 Comment

Tonight, several of Bernal’s most distinguished junior street poets will be in Bayview for a spoken word performance. Neighbor Maya Sussman provides the preview:

I’m an Elsie Street native and current resident. I work at Performing Arts Workshop, a 49-year-old arts education nonprofit that provides performing arts classes at schools and community centers around the Bay Area.

On Thursday, March 20th, some of our students from Bernal’s Paul Revere K-8 School will be performing their original spoken word pieces at the 3rd on Third community arts and culture celebration in the Bayview.

What: Beats of the Bayview: FREE live spoken word and Afro-Peruvian dance performances, featuring young artists from Dr. Charles Drew College Preparatory Academy and Paul Revere K-8 School

When: Thursday, March 20th, 2014, 5:30-8pm

Where: 3rd Street, between McKinnon and Palou, San Francisco, CA 94124

Contact: For more information, visit our Facebook event page.

Colored Lights Bring New Waterfront Mural to Life at Night

March 13, 2014March 13, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 4 Comments

The new mural on the waterfront silos visible from the eastern side of Bernal was completed a few weeks ago. Now the multicolored lights that animate the mural at night are also live, and the result is rather wonderful.

To review: The mural is called Bayview Rise, and it was created by Haddad | Drugan under the auspices of the Port of San Francisco:

Bayview Rise is an illuminated animated mural located at the Port of San Francisco’s Pier 92 grain silos on Islais Creek. The project weaves together iconic imagery reflecting the Bayview neighborhood’s changing economy, ecology, and community. Its large-scale graphics will make its primary images visible from a distance, while views up close will reveal the abstract patterns from which those images are composed. In the night sky, the imagery is animated with lighting effects to allow viewers to enjoy the work throughout the day. The artwork is conceived as a gateway into Bayview Hunters Point and will be visible and changing from day to night.

Neighbor Michelle described the illumination of the project after spending some time with it:

Seeing it transform before your very eyes is so much more powerful than any still shot. I have attached a small teaser…a video I shot a few weeks ago when the artist was in town from Seattle to test out the piece. It is amazing that the changing imagery is not projection, but all paint and the different pictures revealed by the color of the light directed at the paint. The fellows who installed the lights installed some of the lights on the Bay Bridge art piece as well.

The piece is scheduled to be up for a few years, so there will be plenty of time to enjoy it. While not visible from our house on Winfield, it can be seen quite well from the glamorous east slope of Bernal… and Neighbors Shane, Katy, Deckie and Evelyn have a great view right through their front door!

Neighbor Michelle’s onsite video demonstrates the mural’s magical morphing powers:

UPDATE: Damon A.B. created this supersexy map that shows the points east of the mural where it is visible. It’s interactive and clickyclicky, so check it out:

PHOTO and VIDEO: Courtesy of Neighbor Michelle

Sneak Preview: Aaron Zube’s Dreamy Bernal Heights Paintings

February 24, 2014February 24, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 12 Comments

Neighbor Aaron Zube recently shared images of his Bernal Heights paintings over in the drop-dead sexy Bernalwood Flickr group, and his work blew me away.

“Huh? WOW! What? How?” I asked. Neighbor Aaron explains:

I’ve been living in Bernal (on Bocana street) for about four years now — the paintings are mostly of my immediate surroundings. In this series, I’m trying to capture the feeling of the light & character of the neighborhood. The painting technique is relatively slow & involves multiple layers of translucent oil paint to give a luminous quality to the painted surface. The entire series should be complete this Fall when I’ll be showing the paintings at Inclusions Gallery.

IMAGES: Aaron Zube

Bernal Artist Building Medieval Rube Goldberg Machine in Garage

February 11, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 7 Comments

Sivan, the Jedi waffle-slinger from Suite Foods at 331 Cortland, noticed something rather amazing during a recent stroll through Bernal Heights:

I was walking down Crescent recently and saw an open garage with a very intriguing gigantic wooden sculpture filling up the space. The artist/craftsman, Bernie Lubell, was very friendly and let me take the attached pic. It’s a huge, almost entirely all-wood kinetic sculpture. It’s so big that he was making it in three parts, to be assembled off-site. He said that it’ll be showing in a gallery (I forgot which one) in April. If you take a close look you can see that very few screws were used. It’s primarily held together with wooden pegs.

Some strategic Googlery reveals that Neighbor Bernie’s show opens on April 9, and it will take place at Intersection for the Arts on Mission at 5th. It sounds like it will be epic:

Bernie Lubell’s new large-scale interactive wood installation monitors Intersection for the Arts’ building systems. The installation uses wood computers to slowly get nothing to happen as we work together in surveilling the “nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.”* Why Can’t the First Part of the Second Party be the Second Part of the First Party? is adamantly low-tech, consisting of a complex system of gears, cranks, wheels, and pulleys that relies entirely on participant engagement to come to life. The experience is much more than purely visual – it also engages touch, hearing, movement, teamwork, and collaboration. As participants pedal, crank, and play together on the sculptural installation, they become active partners in the construction and understanding of the work, and an essential component of a complex system that participants can see activated as a direct result of their movements. Bernie Lubell states, “My installations frequently require cooperation but they always need manipulation. You must touch them and feel how they work to fully appreciate the experience. It is a question of participation rather than witnessing.” As participants interact with the installation, they will likely tap into a reservoir of tactile knowledge stored in their bodies. Our hope is to reawaken a childlike sense of wonder about how machines work and operate and to reintegrate participants’ bodies in the life of their minds.

PHOTO: Sivan Wilensky

Clever Infographic Shows Where Runners Run in Bernal Heights

February 6, 2014February 5, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 9 Comments

The FlowingData website just posted a set of spiffy infographics that visualize where people go running in a variety of fabulous cities:

A lot of people make their workouts public on a variety of services, so there’s definitely accessible data. I use RunKeeper for cycling. I sampled from there.

The maps below are what I got, mostly for American cities, but there are a few European cities in there too (alphabetical order). If there’s one quick (and expected) takeaway, it’s that people like to run by the water and in parks, probably to get away from cars and the scenery.

So, this is New York City:

And this is Paris:

Bernalwood is vain and narcissistic, so we just had to zoom and enhance to create a map that’s all about us. So where do people who like to run like to run in Bernal Heights?

Mostly, around Bernal Hill, via Folsom from Cesar Chavez. Some enjoy the Esmeralda stairs. Precita carries a lot of east-west traffic. The hardcores loop around both Holly Park and Bernal Hill.

MAPS: via FlowingData

New Mural Takes Shape on Helipad House

February 3, 2014February 4, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 27 Comments

Bernal Hill is swell place to go for a nature walk, but it’s also becoming a great place to view large-scale art. The mural on the old grain silos on the eastern waterfront is now complete, just as a new installation takes shape on the northern-facing facade of the “Helipad,” the contemporary home at the top of Folsom near Ripley.

Neighbor Regina previews what’s coming:

Life’s too short to live in a plain white house. Plus, the hottest neighborhood in America should have a hot pink element. The artist is Casey O’Connell and we just let her do her thing, which currently involves sharks with gold grills of the San Francisco skyline.

PHOTOS: Top, Monique Soltani. Below, Joe Thomas

Mockups Show Proposed Mosaic for Back of Bernal Library

January 31, 2014January 31, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 16 Comments

Neighbor Brandon has an update on the new artwork that’s in development for the southern, playground-facing side of the fashionable Bernal Heights Library:

The second phase of the library mural is moving ahead. We have a design (viewable on our site, Tumblr, etc.) and also in hard copy form at the library and Heartfelt. We welcome comments on cards available at the library. Those comments will be shared with the library and art commission meetings which are coming up soon. Funding is at about 90 percent, and we’re looking for a few headline donors to put us over the top. If all goes well with the commission meetings, Johanna Poethig will begin work in early autumn.

Over on the Library Project Tumblr, there’s more information about the proposal, which mixes mosaic tile with neighborhood photography:

The “Story Cloud” is a cloud form created by the overlapping of wires to evoke connectivity. The cloud hovers at the top of the Bernal Library wall overlooking the playground and can be seen from the ground and from a distance. It is a place to tell the story of the neighborhood, conceptually and visually integrating with the site, architecture, playground and functions of the library. This form also references the digital “Cloud” holding information and linking together old and new ways of storing and accessing information. The cloud, fabricated out of glass mosaic, digitally designed and produced to have a pixelated look. Ceramic tile inlaid into this composition holds the pictures collected by the community. Binoculars will enable viewers to explore the cloud in a fun interactive element. This evokes the position of Bernal Heights, the views of the hill and then out over the landscape that surrounds it.

“Story Cloud” meets the criteria of the participating Bernal community to combine compelling and dynamic visuals, preserve the aesthetics of the building, express the values of the community, enhance the experience of the programs and resources offered by the library, identify with Bernal history, present and future. The “Story Cloud” integrates with the other artwork on the Library by adding a third natural element. The wave form unfolds on the front of the building, the tree is rooted and branches out on the side and the cloud hovers over the playground bringing our attention up to the sky. Children in the playground can enjoy the cloud form, elements of discovery and story telling.

PHOTOS: Bernal Library Art Project

Neighbor Noah Invites You on a Trip to Stylish North Korea

January 29, 2014January 29, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 10 Comments

Neighbor Noah Lang lives in Precitaville, and he runs the wonderful Electric Works fine art press in SoMa. He’s a terrific fellow with superb taste, and I suspect he’d be a great travel companion. That’s important, because Neighbor Noah would like you to join him on a tour of North Korea.

Yes, just imagine the surreal sensation you will feel as you compare notes with Neighbor Noah about your favorite Cortland Avenue boutiques while taking in the art and architecture of exotic Pyongyang!

There’s an informational meeting about the trip happening at Electric Works (1360 Mission St., first floor) on Thursday, January 30 at 6:30 pm. Until then, Neighbor Noah writes:

I took my first trip to North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 2008 as a side trip from Beijing while attending the Olympics. It was an amazing, eye-opening trip.

The DPRK is perhaps the least-well understood country of our times. And while relations between the US and the DPRK are strained, travel there is relatively quite safe.

While traveling in the DPRK, we will be under auspices of Koryo Tours. They are by far the most experienced, most trusted company that offers travel to the DPRK. Their connections go back over 20 years and they offer access to this secretive country that no one else can or does. During this art and architecture tour, we will gain access to buildings and sites that have previously remained closed to all other Western travelers.

The people behind Koryo Tours are responsible for, among other things, several interesting films on the DPRK. Several of these films, including “A State of Mind,” “Crossing the Line,” and “The Game of Their Lives” offer a look into this mysterious country. I highly suggest watching what you can before the tour. All are available through Netflix.

But I’m inviting you to travel with me on a once-in-a-lifetime tour to a country like no other.

The sights in the DPRK are unlike those in any part of the world. Many people who have traveled there have compared it to stepping into a time machine. Pyongyang is an amazingly clean, modern showcase city: the jewel of the DPRK. During the tour you’ll find a sparkling city, lined with trees, fountains and parks. The architecture is what caused me to take a second look while traveling there. These were not your typical Stalinist-era concrete monstrosities. That’s when I first thought of a trip devised to have a focused look at its idiosyncratic design and often surprisingly playful nature. The public art, while all supporting the vision of the DPRK’s founders, is quite powerful; the mosaics, statues and painting all impressive.

Dates are April 12—19, 2014. Travel is from Beijing to Pyongyang and back. Please visit the itinerary page for a detailed description of the tour. We need to be in Beijing on the 10, and flights can be scheduled home as early as the the evening of the 19th.

PHOTO: via Noah Lang

Neighbor Ashley Illustrates the Horrifically Beautiful Weather on Bernal Hill

January 24, 2014January 24, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 8 Comments

This winter has been freakishly warm and dry, which is simultaneously wonderful and alarming. Bernal neighbor and superstar illustrator Ashley Wolff has been documenting this phenomenon in her #DroughtDiaries2014, an ongoing series of illustrations that capture these warm-weather days as seen atop Bernal Hill.

Watch for more in the series on Neighbor Ashley’s stunning Flickr page, which she has shared via the Bernalwood Flickr Group

Yarn-Bombers Stage Daring Infiltration at Precita Playground

January 3, 2014 / Todd_Lappin / 17 Comments

Happy New Year!

We begin 2014 with news of a surprise direct-action by members of the knitting underground on two trees located at the eastern end of Precita Park, inside the beloved children’s playground.

Analysts from the FBI and Knitting World magazine have examined the guerilla stitch-work, and determined it to be of exceptionally high quality. No one knows who was responsible for this daring infiltration, but we can say this: They were pros.

Meanwhile, Neighbor Noah reports that denizens of the playground have responded to the yarning with squeals of glee and occasional tree hugs:

PHOTOS: Top, Linda Burbank; Middle, Karen Zuercher; Below, Noah Lang