MONA CARON
art, murals, illustration
Mural Art
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Public murals "Weeds" Painting live |
Watercolor Illustration
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Various Posters Covers Children's book |
Block Print illustration
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food & nature storytelling landscapes packaging |
Series
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A California Bestiary Utopian San Francisco Mark Growden album |
Other Works
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drawings painterly |
| Contact |
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Various Links
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About The Duboce Bikeway Mural
at the Mural unveiling, November 21st, 1998.
What the mural representsContext: The Duboce Bikeway mural was created during a period (1996 -1998) of great transformation and activity within fast-growing bicyclist community of San Francisco. The Critical Mass movement was at the height of its politicization and overt activism, and had galvanized a widespread public discussion of alternative uses of public space, adding to an already widespread critique of car-oriented urban infrastructure. The membership of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition was skyrocketing at the time, and the flourishing of a new bike-culture had just begun. Progressive city planning was aided by this political climate, and decisive infrastructure improvements started to be implemented. San Francisco would never be the same: the bike-friendly City we know today bears little resemblance, for bicyclists, to the dangerous, car-centered place it used to be up until the late 90 s. The Duboce Bikeway was the very first stretch of street in SF to be converted from car use, to bicycle- and pedestrian-only use. The City Bike Plan commissioned this mural to accompany this first bikeway, and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition fiscally sponsored the project. The mural imagery The mural celebrates the creation of the adjacent Duboce Bikeway, by illustrating the importance of that little stretch of street to bicycle traffic in San Francisco. The Duboce Bikeway is the gateway to the Wiggle - a zig-zagging route through the Lower Haight that enables bicyclists to avoid steep hills when heading from East to West in San Francisco. Thus, the mural shows a virtual ride across the whole city, from downtown to Ocean Beach. At the center of the mural, the bikeway is shown (along with the mural itself), and the path enters the Wiggle, which is represented by a wiggling waterway leading to the Haight. This reminds us of how, as we instinctively avoid unnecessary effort when heading to a higher altitude, we end up retracing the natural flow of water. And, indeed, a creek used to run down the canyon that the Wiggle follows. From the Wiggle, the path continues through the Haight, then Golden Gate Park, and finally the beach, ending in movie-like fashion: riding into the sunset. The context and narrative of the mural is defined back at the beginning of the mural, at the left end of the picture: At the eastern end of the mural, the painting begins with a view of downtown, flooded with cars in a tremendous gridlock. At the foot of Market Street, a stream of Critical Mass bicyclists is seen leaving Justin Hermann Plaza. Some of these bicyclists take flight in Leonardo-like, fanciful pedal-powered flying machines. They glide up into the sky, each trailing a long, fluttering golden banner. These characters symbolize the dreamers and utopians who, each in their own unique way, hold aloft the banner of their dreams and ideals for a better life that overcomes the unsustainable mess seen below. (Such visionaries are often frowned upon by those who profit from the status quo, a fact that is represented by the scowling expressions on the corporate office buildings, which were drawn by guest artist Jim Swanson, a noted illustrator among the pioneers of the SF bicycle movement.) To the right of this scene, the whole rest of the mural unfurls as another one of these golden banners, which is meant to express that, what follows, is one of many constituent dreams for a better society: in this case, the dream of a bike-friendly city where human-powered and public transportation define the streets. Back to the Duboce Bikeway Mural Page
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