When the Masonic Avenue Streetscape Improvement Project is completed in early 2017 (at a cost of $18.2 million), the stretch of street between Geary Boulevard to the north and Fell Street to the south will host a bevy of new practical features. And while the city plans to improve the space for bicycle-car-pedestrian interaction, add plants, and even a parklet, the real highlight is a public art installation called “Points of Departure,” by local artist Scott Oliver. It’s an enormous signpost, with each of the arrows built to reflect the past, present, and future of the community. Oliver, a Fort Bragg-based sculptor and member of the San Francisco Arts Commission, will craft the towering signpost at the corner of Masonic and Geary, which is currently a slightly dismal, mostly concrete Muni island.
“I wanted to allude to the idea that this is a place where if you’re there, you’re leaving,” Oliver told me. “You’re headed somewhere else. It doesn’t really connect to the neighborhood right now and I want to give some form to it.”
To accomplish this, Oliver has spent many days behind a cheap plastic table waiting for commuters to arrive so he can ask them three simple questions: Where were you born? Where are you going right now? Where do you want to go that you’ve never been? If you answer, Oliver will give you a free coffee, and your response just might end up on one of the arrows jutting out in all directions from the 10-foot signpost.
People, in general, are willing to talk to Oliver. “Some are wary, but most people are excited, maybe even relieved that I’m not a solicitor,” he said. “I’ll say this though, people think me asking their year of birth is too invasive.”
Oliver has already gathered almost 200 sets of answers, but he hopes to get upwards of 600 (1,800 answers in total) before he whittles it down to a final 120 to put on the signpost. To reflect the diversity of the neighborhood, Oliver passes out the questionnaire translated into Russian, Chinese, and Tagalog, and all of those languages will be represented when the signpost goes up in early 2017.
So far, Oliver has spoken with people born in Cambodia, Trinidad, Tobago, and a Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. He’s met people who want to go to villages in India to take part in specific yoga classes. He’s spoken with folks who want to go to Hawaii, to the Nile, the top of Mt. Fuji; one person even told Oliver they wanted to go the top of the Transamerica Building, a goal Oliver described as “eminently doable.”
Once Oliver has gathered all the answers, the challenge will be putting together “the puzzle” of the chosen locations and their geographic bearings to highlight the varying demographics of the neighborhood, as well as simply creating a beautiful piece of art. “Only a certain amount of arrows can point in each direction,” Oliver said. “It’s a puzzle to figure out which locations work best.” But when that puzzle has been solved, the gritty stretch of Masonic between Fell and Geary is going to not only have a new street beautifying piece of art, but one that Oliver hopes will help bring “a sense of place” to a small patch of street defined by transience.
Photo courtesy of torbakhopper/Flickr
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