Press Release

Local Artists Feature in New Exhibitions at San Francisco International Airport

09/27/2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT: 
Jane Sullivan
Manager Marketing and Communications
(650) 821-5152
SF-04-60

 

 

Local Artists Feature in New Exhibitions at San Francisco International Airport

 

SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco International Airport is pleased to announce two new exhibitions now on view in the Domestic Terminals. Both exhibitions are open to the general public, free of charge, twenty-four hours a day through January 2005.

 

Anne Veraldi: On the Farm
Gallery D-5, connector between Terminals 1 and 2

 

On the Farm presents twelve images by Anne Veraldi, a San Francisco artist who works with the very simplest of means to achieve a subtle complexity in her photographs. For many years, Veraldi has enlisted thousands, if not millions of helpers in the creation of her images. Often working outdoors in the Mission District’s public parks, she begins her art pieces with only a pencil and a piece of paper. What lures her to these parks is the constant availability of free help from her best protégés - the ants.

 

She has essentially eliminated the need for a studio in the production of her work, requiring only a table upon which to start the process with pencil drawings on paper. After rendering tight graphite patterns and icons onto the paper, she sets off for the park with only two additional tools, a camera and a squeezable plastic container filled with honey. At this point, she carefully doubles back over the pencil work with the honey, leaving a trail of delicious bait for the legions of helpers hiding nearby in the grasses.

 

Shortly thereafter, help arrives, following the trail of a sweetly scented reward for their toils: the honey. While the artist has managed to choreograph an extensive portfolio of images, the ants always walk away unharmed in the process. It’s a beautiful, symbiotic relationship between the artist and the ants.

 

Ira Nowinski: Café Society
Gallery D-1, connector between Terminals 2 and 3

 

Ira Nowinski’s Café Society provides a collection of images of the beat movement in San Francisco. The beats - a group of poets, writers, and activists that evolved in the post-World War II era - expressed their views and frustrations using the spoken word in coffee shops, bookstores, jazz clubs, bars, and other venues throughout the country. San Francisco, a place proud of its free-spirited reputation for embracing diverse peoples and ideas, welcomed the beat movement, quickly weaving it into the fabric of city culture.

 

As the beat movement became better known, and its artists and poets more famous or infamous, Ira Nowinski’s portfolio of documentation continued to swell. Included in Café Society are Nowinski’s images of such beat legends as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among others.

 

Ira Nowinski has documented several essential aspects of San Francisco, from handpainted signs on Sixth Street to lavish opera scenes at Civic Center. Today, his work is held in such high regard that it is widely collected by such institutions as Corbis; The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; and Green Library, Stanford University.

 

San Francisco Airport Museums

The San Francisco Airport Museums program was established by the Airport Commission in 1980 for the purposes of humanizing the Airport environment, providing visibility for the unique cultural life of San Francisco, and providing educational services for the traveling public. Today, the San Francisco Airport Museums features approximately twenty galleries throughout the Airport terminals displaying a rotating schedule of art, history, science, and cultural exhibitions, as well as the San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation Library and Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum, a permanent collection dedicated to the history of commercial aviation.

 

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About San Francisco International Airport

San Francisco International Airport SFO (www.flysfo.com) connects non-stop with more than 60 cities in the United States on 20 domestic airlines, including more than twice as many non-stop flights to the New York area than other Bay Area airports combined. In addition, SFO offers non-stop links with more than 30 international points on 25 international carriers, making SFO the Bay Area’s Airport of Choice.