Paint the City in Green

From renowned gardens like the Japanese Tea Garden and The San Francisco Botanical Garden to humble backyard plantings, gardens have a long and influential history in San Francisco. One of the most inspiring aspects of the city’s botanical history is the legacy of Victory gardens in San Francisco.

Jesse Drew writes about the significance of these gardens in his article Call Any Vegetable: The Politics of Food in San Francisco in the Reclaiming San Francisco anthology by City Lights Books. According to Drew, “World War II caused a momentary lapse in corporate food production for the consumer market, leading to the popularization of Victory gardens, small home vegetable plots intended to aid the war effort. In San Francisco alone, there were as many a 70,000 such home gardens.” Drew illustrates in his article that the Victory gardens were just one integral piece of a long-term sustainable food production movement in the Bay Area that continues to this day.

After the war, the popularity of these gardens diminished. But, the appetite for organic and locally grown produce has sustained. Drew writes, “San Francisco takes its food seriously. After all, this is the city that has more restaurants per capita than any other city in the United States. In the quest for nutritious food and equitable distribution, thousands of San Franciscans have mobilized to develop creative and alternative ways of procuring this most basic human need.”

One San Francisco Artist/Activist believes that Victory gardens are an alternative we she seriously reconsider. Amy Franceschini, is the winner of the (SFMOMA) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s 2006 (SECA) Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art, for her garden renewal project, which is on view at the SFMOMA until April 22.

In a recent article on SFGate.com, Franceshini talked about her idea of reinstating the thousands of private and public Victory gardens that were once found in the city. Franceshini added, “that 8 billion tons of food were produced in Victory gardens around the country.” In San Francisco, Victory Gardens were such a success they were even found in places like the front lawn of City Hall and the Strybing Arboretum.
Franceshini is not alone in her quest. Recently, in an unused plot next to the apartment complex on the corner of Stanyan and Fulton Street, residents and citizens have reclaimed the dirt and planted a Victory garden. The 20 by 90ft. plot, has potatoes, fava beans, snap peas, garlic, mustard greens, strawberries, and more. According to the SFGate.com article, “All the open space in San Francisco, including backyards, amounts to a sizable 1,823 acres.” This is one less backyard Franceshini has to worry about.

Mural Mashup a Picasso Reiteration?

“Rise to The Top on the Backs of Others”
It may seem inconceivable to draw parallels between Pablo Picassos renowned “Guernica” and the mural mash up created by USF’s drawing and painting students. However, the relationship exists in a desire to unsettle the emotions and thoughts of a community while spurning on the growth of reflection and a desire for awareness.

In 1937, Picasso’s masterpiece was one of the first blatant antiwar statements rolled out upon a large surface and displayed with the intent to spark controversy. Now, almost exactly seventy years later, students at the University of San Francisco have begun to paint a work of their own, representing the concerns that America faces in a culture twisted many directions.


“Rise to The Top on the Backs of Others”, read a statement blaring out of an electric radio on one of the walls. And that is what we do as a country, incredibly motivated towards money and instant gratification. Little is achieved in America alone and unfortunately many are downtrodden under the powerful in the process.

A fairly young nation driven by success lies painted on our hallway walls, naked in its truth and harsh in its judgment but nonetheless entirely American. Cheney stares at his spectators with his head flayed open and a striking phrase beside his portrait. Up and down the hallway political statements are laid bare. Halliburton is called out on their corruption, and the separation between church and state is punctuated with a question mark? Because… if theretruly is a separation then why is our motto “In God We Trust”?


The incorrigible truth lies in the lack of knowledge our Culture boasts. In a sense, USF students are attempting to do what Picasso did years ago, to implore the public to open their eyes and see what is occurring in the world today.

USF Mash Up

"I Love to Watch you Fall Apart"

This quote can be seen outside of Crossroads Cafe at the University of San Francisco on a mural painted by students for a class assignment. On Wednesday, March 21,2007 Painting 2 and Drawing 2 students joined together for a class project called "Mash Up." Professor Hongisto and Professor Siskins gave their art students a chance to express themselves in a project a little outside of the norm.

Five blank white murals were hung in a highly-populated campus hallway, and students were given the chance to draw, paint, and write about any issues felt were important. Consumerism, the Iraq War, President Bush, Dick Cheney, guns, bombs, SUV's, "crack", and "aids": were just a few of the issues the students chose to address with their 'freestyle' and 'freehand' assignment.

Serina Dean, a USF senior, double majoring in Communications and Business Administration with a minor in Fine Arts, shed some light on why the "Mash Up" is very different from their day to day assignments. "This project is great because it is not so focused on artistic detail, and it is more focused on students getting the point across through art," said Dean. As Dean worked diligently on painting flowers she explained that her piece did not have a specific theme and was more freestyle, as opposed to for example the political piece's. However, Dean said that because it was an ongoing project and many different students would end up working together that, "it was important to correlate each part as we go, so that the artwork flowed together in the end."

The Art of War

How can I describe American Culture to someone who isn’t familiar with it?

The other day, I was in a friend’s living room, as their neighbor’s six year-old son sat in a trance in front of a 50-inch widescreen TV. His parents were nowhere to be seen. The child was completely oblivious to everything around him. His entire focus was dedicated to navigating his digital self through the mean-streets of the latest Grand Theft Auto videogame. The object of this game is to steal lots of cars and to commit as many acts of violence as possible. His character ran the streets beating people to the brink of death, robbing them of their possessions, and running over innocent pedestrians in stolen vehicles. He played for an hour or so until he became bored. He got up from his seat on the couch, he didn’t say any goodbyes, and he wondered out the door. Nobody seemed to notice him leave.

I thought of this boy, as I came across USF Art students working on a mural outside of Crossroads café last Wednesday. The piece was in its early stages, but its strong political themes were already becoming clear. What particularly brought the boy to my mind was a section of the mural where the artist painted a military tank in a harmless shade of pink. Using cut out photos from magazines, the artist has an ecstatic young boy driving the tank over the heads of babies, all of them smiling. The tank becomes a toy and its victims are happy. War is now a game.


The U.S. has fought a lot of wars in the mass media age, but none of them have been on U.S. soil. Instead they have been fought on our TV and computer screens and in the pages of newspapers and magazines. The average American comes into contact with war through images and words. We fight communists, Nazis, terrorists, enemy combatants, insurgents, or simply put “bad guys.” Thousands of Americans have died fighting these “bad guys” and they are recognized as heroes who died for their country. Many, many more “bad guys”, “bad guys” family members, and innocent bystanders who happened to be in the area of perceived “bad guys” have died as well. They remain nameless, and become statistics that are tallied during the nightly news in between commercials.

As technology improves, and our appetite for reality-based entertainment continues to grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. I think of that little boy playing his videogame, and I wonder if he can still tell the difference between the digital people dying in his game and the real people dying on TV.

Fooled

What am I doing here? This is the question I kept asking myself as I sat in the dark, cold McLaren Complex room watching a slideshow presentation by Ruby from Wise Fools Community Arts, a "non-profit organization which uses art and theatre as vehicles for community building, self-determintation, social and political change."

According to their website, the organization was officially birthed in the Spring of 1990 and became recognized as a non-profit organization in July of 1993. Wise Fools "combines giant puppetry, mask, stiltdancing, wild costumes, eclectic sculpture, music, movement, fire and song to create highly participatory, issue-oriented, outdoor theatre..."

Amidst the history of puppetry and the constant shuffle back and forth of an unprepared slideshow, I couldn't help but think I got duped. The flyer I received about the presentation had colorful pictures of the different puppets that the organization used to make people aware of social and political injustices. It would have been interesting to see, in person, some of the puppets (or even a performance of some kind), not just look at pictures. I think the organization's use of art to bring people together and make a change in society is great. But the presentation left much to be desired.

I would definitely attend another presentation by Wise Fools, because they deserve another chance to showcase the vibrant organization they really are. Just as long as they bring the stilts, wild costumes, and do some dancing. And they promise to bring on the puppets!