Valencia Street Posts

Artist Michael Arcega has erected San Francisco’s newest Painted Ladies atop telephone poles along Valencia Street in the bustling Mission district. Each of the four public sculptures in this permanent installation, located between 16th and 19th Streets, reflects the surrounding architecture and provides the public a forum for sharing and distributing information.

The public has readily adopted the physical space Arcega has created for communicating information that is now typically disseminated over the Internet: a flurry of announcements, posters, political messages, and signs cover each post. The exuberant public utilization of Valencia Street Posts as a community bulletin board shows that Arcega’s work has tapped into the social nature and continuing relevance of the public post as a catalyst for community interaction.

Distribution of information is not the only function Arcega’s work serves, though. The public uses Arcega’s sculptures for a variety of purposes beyond their function as community bulletin boards. Valencia Street Posts have also become a place to rest, meet friends, lock up a bike, and stack trash bags. Their multiple functions, coupled with their aesthetic affinity with local architecture, help Arcega’s sculptures visually blend into the neighborhood. Rather than standing out as distinct works of art, Valencia Street Posts become absorbed into the visual vocabulary of Valencia Street.

The concentration of three posts between 16th and 17th Streets contributes to their visual assimilation into the scene, but in doing so they become common experiences. Encountering this work more sporadically over the length of Valencia, or even throughout various neighborhoods in San Francisco, would have made their presence more distinct. Only the lone fourth post, located between 18th and 19th Streets, becomes a distinguishable landmark amid the active street life of the Mission.

Valencia Street Posts, 2010; installation view, 16th Street, San Francisco. Photo: Charles Moffet.

Nonetheless, the posts’ ability to blend into street life speaks to their placement as everyday objects in a community that approaches them as both art and functional tools of communication. In this way, Arcega’s public sculptures are not just more posts in the ground; instead, they enrich community life in the area.

Valencia Street Posts were unveiled on Valencia Street, in San Francisco, on July 15, 2010. 

Charles L. Moffett is a graduate student at California College of the Arts in the Curatorial Practice program.