About a dozen community members joined the San Francisco Arts Commission, Performing Arts Workshop, Friends of Geneva Car Barn & Powerhouse, Market Street Railway and artist Claudio Talavera-Ballón at the Powerhouse last week to plan a temporary mural on the Office Building’s facade.
“Your ideas, memories, experience and what this place means to you will be central to the design,” Talavera-Ballón said. “I know the mural will be temporary, but I hope the story and the meaning behind it will stay with this community for a long time.”
The arts commission put out a call for artists in February for a community-engaged temporary exterior artwork project that would support neighborhood visibility, cultural identity and community storytelling. The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, which owns the building at San Jose and Geneva avenues, and the Community Arts Stabilization Trust, the lessee, are collaborators.
Among the 75 applicants, a panel selected Perú-native and Mission District resident Talavera-Ballón for his significant work across the city that depicts wildlife and the story of migrant people in the style of impressionism. Several of his pieces are placed throughout Districts 7 and 11, such as inside Commodore Sloat Elementary School and on the Bridge Housing’s Islais Place development.
The mural would be installed for three years beginning next year and cover approximately 800 square feet of the 1901-built office building’s turret and windows. It will be composed of DIBOND, an aluminum composite material.
Restoration of the historic landmark has slowly been in the works since 2002, with the renovation of the Power House side being completed in 2020. Phase II of the project, which would focus on the Office Building, is yet to be funded.
Christian Ard from the Friends of Geneva Car Barn & Powerhouse said the mural would raise visibility of and prompt questions about the office building, which the Friends supports.
The meeting was an opportunity for the community to offer suggestions on what the mural should include, artist review panelist for the project and Performing Arts Workshop Community Outreach Manager Hien Huynh said. There will also be a second meeting at an undecided later date.
“It would mean a lot because we have a lot of youth that come here and youth that live in the neighborhood,” Huynh said. “Right here is a major public transport zone where all the kids go to school and college and all the schools in the surrounding areas. It would be so amazing to have their creativity reflected.”
After a presentation about the project by Huynh, Ard and Talavera-Ballón, participants went to three stations.
The first was dedicated to photo and memory, where people could share the significant or stand-out moments they’ve had in and around the neighborhood and add them to the memory map. It was also an opportunity for them to share what they’d like to see on the mural.
The second station was the land and nature corner where attendees could learn about extinct bugs and wildlife that once roamed the area and share what nature-based elements they’d like to see in the mural.
The third station was tailored to youth who do and don’t take classes at the PAW to draw what comes to mind, with finished pieces being used as inspiration for the mural.
Market Street Railway’s Indigo Rosenberg, who lives in the neighborhood, and Julia Kawano shared they’d like to see elements of streetcars incorporated into the mural and said it was great to see the city take the time to preserve historic spaces and continue to make them community hubs.
Al Perez, a member of the arts commission, said he’d like to see a nod to Filipino heritage throughout the mural and said that he thinks the mural will give life to this corner of the neighborhood and signal that there is more to come.
“This neighborhood has the largest concentration of Filipino residents in all of San Francisco,” Perez said. “We have the most Filipino restaurants here, which is not very many to begin with, so I'm hoping that the residents and that kind of flavor can be incorporated somehow, so that we can be represented.”
Other aspects attendees wrote down included bears, native plants that depict life and growth, birds like a robin, diverse youth in artistic and explorative action and images of Mary Ellen Pleasant, a historic San Francisco figure who owned the land that the building sits on.
Arts commission project manager Craig Corpora said that because the artwork is temporary, a decision made because they were unsure what would happen with the building in the near future, they wanted to work quickly. Traditionally, they would have three finalists and review design proposals, Corpora said. The goal for this project is to have the mural up by January 2027.
“I think it's gonna kind of brighten up the building,” Corpora said. “We're putting the mural into those plywood windows, so it's going to really brighten up the place. I think a lot of people are going to get a lot of enjoyment out of it.”
