#benny bufano

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Bear with Two Cubs Benny Bufano

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[mmckenzieport]

By Melissa McKenzie

Just down the street from Benny Bufano’s “Universal Child” sculpture at City Hall is Anne Van Kleeck’s contribution to outside art in Santa Clara - a bronze statue of St. Clare, the city’s namesake.

“The new statue honors the quiet, well-to-do, and well-educated 13th century girl who renounced the world of her prominent family and entered monastic life,” reads an article published in the December 1965 issue of the FMC Corporation newsletter. “As a close follower of St. Francis of Assisi, Saint Clare became the inspiration of the Franciscan Brothers and priest missionaries to the Orient and New World. Thus she was considered the mission fathers’ matriarch in heaven, inspiring them to endure the dangers and hardships of mission life.”

To get the project, the Ohio-born Van Kleeck submitted a model, which was put up against more than two-dozen submissions from other well-known artists in the area. But, when it came down to it, her $35,000 estimated cost was much lower than the other top two sculptors ($82,000 and $78,000), and she was given the task of making her mini St. Clare the 20-foot tall sculpture that now sits at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and El Camino Real.

When Van Kleeck was finally commissioned to create the piece, it was August of 1963. Originally, it was estimated that the statue, which was created by a centuries-old casting technique called “lost-wax,” would be completed within a year. However, it took two years and an extra $7,000 for Van Kleeck to finish the project - the three-ton statue, cast overseas, with a green patina finish that is perched atop a seven-foot pedestal to overlook the city.

Just two months into the project, an October 17 issue of the San Clara Journal quotes Van Kleeck as saying, “I’m a fanatic on the St. Clare project...I’m hooked, absolutely hooked.” She also describes the piece as “not for now, but forever,” and says she was creating it to “mean something when they dig US up.”

When the statue was completed in June of 1965, the Santa Clara Journal, again, quotes Van Kleeck. “Words can’t express how I feel today,” she says. “I’m glad it’s finally going up. I can get no satisfaction until it’s actually standing.” And, while St. Clare was up soon after the article ran, the sculpture wasn’t dedicated until October 10, 1965 at an event celebrating the completion of the art piece and Civic Center Park that was attended by the local dignitaries of the time: Mayor William Wilson, Jr., Director of Parks and Recreation Earl Carmichael, City Councilman Lawrence Fargher, Mayor’s Statuary Committee member Austen Warburton, and the Lieutenant Governor of the State of California Glenn Anderson.

While some may see the piece as awkward and bulky, St. Clare is there to simply remind Santa Clarans of the city’s rich history and deep connection to the Catholic Church and California Missions.

Mary Hanel, local history librarian at the Santa Clara Library, contributed to this article.

[mmckenzieport]

By Melissa McKenzie

All residents of Santa Clara have seen it; the kooky and somewhat creepy monstrosity of artistic vision sitting at the corner of Warburton Avenue and Lincoln Street - right in front of City Hall. But where did it come from, and why is it still here?

For starters, the Universal Child missile-like sculpture was designed by Benny Bufano - the once-considered-radical Italian born artist who advocated free public art.

A Santa Clara Journal article written July 17, 1963 says that then-mayor Gene Burgess, calling Bufano “the world’s greatest sculptor,” commissioned the artist to create a statute to “put Santa Clara on the map...and create closeness within the community.”

In the same article, Austen Warburton, a member of the Statue Committee, repeated Burgess’ sentiments by saying, “the world recognizes the greatness of this man...who has a close place in his heart for Santa Clara,” and describing the piece as, “a project to live for centuries.”

The statue, which cost $50,000 to build, was brought to Santa Clara in January of 1964 in three separate pieces, and dedicated on February 29 of that year.

According to California History Volume 84, Number 3, from spring 2007, “This 85-foot-tall projectile of stainless steel, cast stone, and mosaic is undoubtedly a rendition of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Like The Expanding Universe [a statute Bufano created in Timber Cove, a city north of San Francisco], it was created in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis and was almost certainly influenced by that event.

“Near the top of the statue is the stylized face of a child and far below, near the base, is a mosaic of children,” continues the description. “Representing the races of the world, they stand shoulder to shoulder, in unison, looking straight ahead and smiling. An anthropomorphic figure, perhaps the Madonna, stands behind them, enveloping them in her embrace. And peering from just above her head and shoulders is the profile of a bird’s beak and wings. The bird is depicted as if flying up the sculpture and thus powering the missile on which the children are transported.”

Prior to building the statue, Bufano was quoted saying, “Children see no color. A child has no malice, no flag...except that of the human race.” However, a Department of Parks and Recreation Historic Resources Inventory completed in July of 1981 somewhat contradicts Bufano’s statement about children. “An interesting aspect of the statue is the fact that all of the various ethnic children’s faces are smiling except the black child, who is frowning. This is due to the fact that the artwork was completed during the civil rights disturbances of the mid-1960s and the artist was illustrating the displeasure of the violence of this era.”

As to why the sculpture remains, “Bufano was San Francisco’s cultural mascot for nearly 50 years,” reads a profile in California People by Carol Dunlap. “Much of his work ended up in storage, whether through inadvertence of suppression. There were reports of vandalism, and the suggestion that Bufano himself may have been responsible...Most of his surviving work now belongs to the streets and the people of San Francisco.” Bufano is a local legacy, and whether or not the statue is seen as an icon or eyesore, Santa Clara has a Bufano original - a piece of free, public art for generations to enjoy.

Mary Hanel, local history librarian at the Santa Clara Library, contributed to this article.

[laprincipessaerrante365]

Chinatown, San Francisco - September 8, 2011

Chinatown

St Mary's Square

Quincy, Pine, California and Kearny Streets

Sculpted by Beniaminio Bufano

This 12 foot statue is inscribed (in Chinese):

Dr. Sun Yat Sen 1866-1925 

Father of the Chinese Republic and First President 

Founder of the Kuo Min Tang 

Champion of Democracy 

Lover of mankind: Proponent of friendship and peace among the nations, 

based on equality, justice and goodwill

Bufano has been in this blog before.  His work usually used an easily-recognized style of glazed terra-cotta, a technique he learned from porcelain glazers while traveling in China. Also while in China, Bufano met and befriended the Chinese revolutionary leader, Dr. Sun Yat Sen. His claim to have stayed at the Sun home has never been substantiated, but it is clear he knew the man.

When Sun was in political exile, he visited San Francisco with the largest Chinese community outside Asia, to rally support for his overthrow of the Manchu Empire. Sun was successful in founding the Chinese Republic in 1911, and was inaugurated as first president on January 1, 1912. He served only six weeks, but the republic lasted more than a year. Dr. Sun lived until 1924.

In 1938, Chinatown business leaders commissioned this stainless steel and red granite statue of Sun, to commemorate Sun's visit to the city. Bufano received the commission.

Dr. Sun Yat Sen was recently described by the People's Daily (official paper of China) as, "the forerunner of the democratic revolution in China.…a great revolutionary and a great statesman who fought against imperialist aggression and for the independence and freedom of China." Dr. Sun was among the first graduates of the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese.

Photographers note:  That is a pigeon on Dr. Sun's head.  The bane of statuary photography.

I am sharing on And then she Snapped

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The Embarcadero July 5, 2011 Sydney Walton Park, San Francisco

This is one of the entries to Sydney Walton Park in the Embarcadero Area of San Francisco.  It sits surrounded by Jackson, Pacific, Davis and Front Streets.  This wonderful park is full of art, and history.  It is just a marvelous oasis in the middle of lots and lots of high rises.  You will also find Kokkari Restaurant across the street on Jackson, one of the best Greek restaurants you will ever have the pleasure of dining in. The Arch above is the Colombo Market Arch on Front Street, it is the only structural piece remaining from the old San Francisco produce market, a series of brick buildings that occupied this area. This is the part of town nicknamed the Barbary Coast.  By 1892 it had become a raucous district of prostitution, dance halls and thievery. The Coast continued to flourish until 1911, when Major James (Sunny Jim) Rolph initiated a clean-up. Shut down for good in the early 1920's, it became the Produce District. Golden Gateway Center, created in the 1960s, was designed as a mixed-use, urban residential community. At that time, it was the largest project of its kind in the country. By law, art was required as part of the project, originally the pieces were slated to be spaced around the project, and indeed some are, but later it was decided to put all the art in the park, and this is the result.   The two-acre site was designed by the well-known landscape architect Peter Walker (managing partner of Sasaki Walker, later to become SWA).

Penquins by Benny Bufano was one of the original pieces and it stands outside the park on Davis Court. Bufano was a famous San Franciscan and I have written about him before on this blog.

“Portrait of Georgia O’Keefe” Marisol Escobar, 1982

O’Keefe sits on an old tree stump like an ancient wizard, loosely dangling her walking stick and flanked by two compact woolly dogs.” This description is based on photographs she took while visiting the 90-year-old O’Keefe in New Mexico. Her sculpture, with her two pet show dogs, is the product of that visit. Marisol Escobar was born in 1930 in Paris to wealthy Venezuelan parents who were traveling through Europe.  As a child, Marisol was educated in private schools in Los Angeles, then continued her art studies in New York City. In 1963 the Venezuelan Marisol became U.S. citizen. The angle of this photos makes it a bit hard to appreciate the face, but sadly there was a homeless gentlemen sleeping next to it, and to avoid him I ended up with this poor angle. Today I am linking up the The Creative Exchange

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Ingleside - June 9, 2011 - Guns and Roses

It is June and summer has not arrived in San Francisco, so on a cold and miserably dank day I headed to San Francisco City College, off Ocean Avenue.  They have a nice art collection and I thought it was time to photograph some of it.  At the entrance to the college is "St. Francis of the Guns" by Bufano.  Born in Italy, in 1898, Beniamino Benvenuto Bufano taught at the California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute, (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. so his work is (or should be) well known to natives. Following the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, then Mayor, Joseph Alioto, initiated a voluntary turn-in drive that yielded 2000 handguns. He commissioned Bufano to use the gunmetal in a sculpture.  Bufano had it forged in Italy, adding bronze to the gunmetal to keep it from corroding in the city's foggy weather. A mosaic inlay depicts John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abraham Lincoln, all victims of assassination by handguns, above a multi-racial children's chorus. The sculpture was dedicated by Mayor George Moscone who was himself assassinated by a handgun eighteen months later.  Bufano died in 1970.