The good news: A tall, twisty giant "Venus" sculpture is coming to the Mid-Market area. The bad news: Most of us will not be able to see it.
The 92-foot stainless steel piece, created by Lawrence Argent, will go up at the new (albeit uninspired) Trinity Place apartments at Market and Eighth Streets, nestled in between three of the towers. Though people will be able to see its gleam from in between the buildings, peak-a-boo-style, it won't be visible from a distance.
That said, Argent's work is a piece of public art and will built upon a public art garden space. So while not viewable from the outside, folks will be able to see it should they venture inside the Trinity behemoth once the park and sculpture are open in the spring of 2017.
How it even came to fruition is another story. The now-deceased owner of Trinity Place, developer and landlord Angelo Sangiacomo, commissioned it as a dramatic final farewell.
San Francisco Chronicle has more:
Sangiacomo was not known for putting art into his apartment buildings, either in architecture or decor, but he had to do it at Trinity Place because the project falls under the city’s "1 percent for art" program operated by the San Francisco Planning Department. The program requires downtown developers to pay the equivalent of 1 percent of a project’s cost to fund public art. The funds can either be donated to the Public Art Trust Fund, overseen by the San Francisco Arts Commission, or added to a project by its developer, as overseen by the Planning Department.
The Trinity Place art requirement is $5 million, and once that number was reached, Sangiacomo embraced it, taking several trips to Italy with his wife in search of inspiration.
Venus will get bragging rights as San Francisco's tallest work of public art until 2019, which is when Roxy Paine's enormous 110-foot-tall twig-like piece will go up outside of the Yerba Buena station for the impending Central Subway.
"Venus" is currently being installed. It's a good start insofar as public art goes. But we sure wouldn't mind seeing even bolder works on the horizon.
Here's a shot of "Venus" being installed: