click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney
San Francisco can be perplexing -- but I think I've finally figured out what to do with her. Explore Fort Mason and the surrounding environs.
Best place to park -- that would be the Marina Green, because it's free and is a great starting point for part of San Francisco that normally only tourists get to see. Fisherman's Wharf is just a stiff hike away. Great views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. If you're lucky a ship will steam by. Seagulls are free. So is the art.
click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney
Well, I managed to creep-out "Sinbad's Dad" yesterday with Benny Buffano's four-eyed mosaic/sculpture, so I say "good work", Mr. Buffano -- your art definitely makes an impact.
click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney
Beniamino Benvenuto Bufano (October 14, 1898 – August 16, 1970) was a California-based Italian American sculptor, best known for his large-scale — usually granite — monuments. His modernist work often featured smoothly rounded animals and relatively simple shapes.
Bufano was born in San Fele, Italy, but was brought to the United States by his family at the age of three. He spent his childhood in New York City and was educated by private tutors, eventually studying at the Arts Student League from 1913 to 1915. He first came to San Francisco to work on a sculpture for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, alongside Dirk Van Erp. Afterwards, he traveled extensively before returning to settle permanently in the San Francisco Bay Area.
It is said that he chopped off his trigger finger and sent it to President Wilson at the onset of World War one. In addition his work as a sculptor, he taught at the San Francisco Institute of Art (but was dismissed in 1923 because he was considered too modern), the University of California, Berkeley, and Oakland’s California College of Arts and Crafts.
Some of his best-known works include the statue of Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen in San Francisco’s Chinatown’s and his 93-foot (28-meter) sculpture Peace in coastal Timber Grove (near Jenner, California). Examples of his distinctive and large-scale work can be found throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, and there is a Bufano Sculpture Garden at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney
So, what does it all mean? Well, I guess it's about togetherness and cooperation -- perhaps we should put our politicians on a bus, drive them all out here to Fort Mason, then let them absorb Buffano's mosaic/sculpture. They could bring frisbies and their dogs. They could sit down on the grass and talk about their dreams. God Bless America.
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