Art Scales a Ladder in North Beach

Artiste Brian Goggin ascends a ladder at the intersection of Broadway and Columbus
in North Beach, 11/23, to put the final touches on Language of the Birds,
a new solar powered art sculpture designed by Goggin and Dorka Keehn.

By Patrick Goggin

November 30, 2008

In the spring of 1997 public sculptor Brian Goggin and scores of his friends, artists and artisans alike, put the finishing touches on Defenestration. You know, the now infamous artwork at Sixth and Howard in SOMA where household items remain affixed to the exterior of the building on the intersection’s southeast corner. Back then when Willie Brown was a first term mayor thousands lined the block to join the spectacular and extraordinary urban circus that celebrated the piece’s opening.

It took 11 ½ years for San Francisco to once again revel in another Goggin opening. This past Sunday, he and chief collaborator Dorka Keehn headlined the unveiling of their new sculpture, Language of the Birds, in North Beach at the well traveled intersection of Broadway and Columbus. Partially funded by the San Francisco Arts Commission, this new sculpture now graces the space above a newly paved plaza that supplanted a right turn lane.

Modeled after the flight patterns of pigeon flocks in Washington Square Park, Goggin, Keehn and team installed 23 flying white books in front of the popular jazz mural on the adjacent building. In numerous random sequences the birds each light up at night, appearing to breath LED light—all powered by solar panels. On the plaza floor lie hundreds of words as if they were book droppings, or should I say bird droppings?

An event shortly before dusk bringing together the likes of political artists Willie Brown and Aaron Peskin to address the crowd squeezed-in beneath the book-birds, climaxed when the cover on the seemingly highest book refused to release its grip. After the assembled ladders proved insufficient, Goggin’s friend John Law came in handy by retrieving his extra long 30-foot ladder. Bracing it against one of the ladders being used by scantily clad Extra Action Marching Band girls to unveil the books, a group of strong men and women spontaneously embraced the ladders to ensure stability as Goggin scaled the heights of the North Beach night to finally free the book from its trappings while standing on the ladder’s second to last wrung.

After the final book was unveiled and the band played its way down Columbus, the crowd dissipated, but not the exhilaration felt from the mysterious performance combining opera, marching band funk, chamber music, and improvisation after a great deal of planning. These artists scripted and performed another opening for the ages.

Meanwhile, Defenestration’s fate lay in the balance as the City’s Redevelopment Agency (RDA) some months ago identified the building the artwork calls home as a good candidate for eminent domain. In the name of maintaining an iconic and historic piece of public art long on many City tourists’ must see lists, I urge the RDA to save Defenestration. For if we allow good public art like this to needlessly die, the spirit and message the Arts Commission sent by commissioning Language of the Birds will truly be threatened.

FCJ Editor

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