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Visitors to India Basin Shoreline Park in San Francisco check out \u201cWhispers of Waste,\u201d a 13-foot monument made out of reclaimed metal and industrial parts at the Box Shop in\u00a0Bayview-Hunters Point.<\/p>\n
Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
\u201cR-Evolution,\u201d a 45-foot-tall sculpture by artist Marco Cochrane at Embarcadero Plaza, was placed by the public art facilitator the Big Art Loop, which is helping put 100 oversize installations in place around San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Naga the sea serpent is illuminated last July during its introduction in San Francisco\u2019s Golden Gate Park.\u00a0Naga is a creation of Cjay Roughgarden, who originally created it for the Playa at Burning Man.<\/p>\n
Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019s the Ball,\u201d an installation of giant jacks on the\u00a0JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park, is part of the Big Art Loop of oversize installations.<\/p>\n
San Francisco Recreation and Park Department<\/p>\n
Carol\u00a0Gould of Bernal Heights was leading some friends from Concord on a three-park hike along San Francisco\u2019s southern waterfront when she looked over her shoulder toward the bay and saw something that stopped the hike before it had even started.<\/p>\n
It was a 13-foot-tall African mask hung on a pole and standing all alone in the middle of the dock at India Basin Waterfront Park<\/a>. Gould instructed her charges to make a hard right, and they went down a flight of stairs for a closer look. Their final destination of the Ramp for lunch on the sundeck would have to wait.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw that thing, and it wasn\u2019t here the last time I was here,\u201d Gould said. \u201cIt\u2019s very striking and located in the exact right place. It is very evocative and raises lots of questions.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Luckily, the person to answer those questions was seated on the base of the artwork, Zulu Heru, 31, an Army veteran turned sculptor with a studio a block away from India Basin.\u00a0<\/p>\n The artwork, titled \u201cWhispers of Waste,\u201d is made of 5,000 pounds of industrial materials, mostly recycled. Its installation at India Basin for one year is a function of the Big Art Loop<\/a>, a public art facilitator that has assigned itself the role of putting 100 oversize installations around the city to form a 34-mile trail. Initially funded by the Sijbrandij Foundation,<\/a> the Big Art Loop has already invested $2 million in the plan as curated by Building 180, a female-led art organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n San Francisco sculptor Zulu Heru displays \u201cWhispers of Waste,\u201d formed from 5,000 pounds of industrial materials, mostly recycled. The tribal mask sculpture was originally commissioned for Burning Man last summer.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n \u201cThe Big Art Loop is about putting public art into the neighborhoods,\u201d said\u00a0Aliza Marks, the organization\u2019s CEO. \u201cAll of these sculptures are existing works of art. We are bringing them out of storage and into public view.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The most prominent example of their work thus far is the nude woman sculpture at the\u00a0Embarcadero, which was recently extended for six months<\/a>, and the water-spewing sea serpent<\/a> in a lake along JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Just this month a series of\u00a010 pointy jacks<\/a> made of galvanized steel, like the playground game kids play, was installed along the JFK Promenade. There is no little red rubber ball to go with it, hence the title \u201cWhere\u2019s the Ball\u201d by the art collective Misfit Toys.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhispers of Waste\u201d became the 20th installation along the Big Art Loop and the first in\u00a0Bayview-Hunters Point in organic fashion. Heru is a crane operator who was installing a giant whale along the Embarcadero for the Big Art Loop when Shannon Riley of Building 180 <\/a>yelled up to him on the crane, wanting to install one of his own artworks. It was a question he could not immediately answer because operating the crane to place the whale, called \u201cEchoes\u201d by Mathias Gmachl<\/a>, required total concentration. Once that was done, he yelled back his answer from the cab.<\/p>\n \u201cI said \u2018Hey, I\u2019m actually putting a piece at India Basin this weekend. You should come look at it,\u201d Herus said. That installation happened to be the next day, Nov. 8, 2025.\u00a0Heru came straight from the whale installation to India Basin to set up \u201cWhispers of Waste.\u201d Riley did come see it, and that\u2019s how a one-day exhibition became a one-year installation, paid for by the Sijbrandij Foundation in partnership with Building 180 and the Recreation and Park Department, which owns most of the sites along the Big Art Loop.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people of India Basin loved the sculpture, so it was very serendipitous,\u201d he said. \u201cTheir requirement is that the artist be from the neighborhood, and my studio is one block away.\u00a0 None of this was supposed to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n It would have been easy just to leave it in place, but after three weeks on site, Heru had to remove the sculpture with heavy machinery to get city permission to put it right back where it was. As part of the process, the community was engaged.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThey wanted it to reflect the community and be from someone in the community,\u201d Marks said. \u201cThey wanted a Black sculpture.\u201d<\/p>\n San Francisco sculptor Zulu Heru used high-voltage insulators in his piece \u201cWhispers of Waste,\u201d a 13-foot sculpture of an African mask and the latest installation of the public art facilitator Big Art Loop.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n \u201cWhispers of Waste\u201d premiered at Burning Man last summer, where it was commissioned as a site-specific installation at the base of \u201cThe Man\u201d itself, the 68-foot-tall wooden and neon sculpture. It had taken two months to build at the Box Shop, a series of containers that have been converted to art studios.<\/p>\n His idea for the position of honor was a 13-foot sculpture welded of scrap metal, concrete and industrial parts, all sourced from the local environment to create what he calls \u201cmy rendition of a traditional mask worn by the Senufo tribe of the Ivory Coast.\u201d<\/p>\n About 70,000 Burners saw it in its first iteration. Heru trailered it back and put it into storage while he worked on commissions for a solo exhibition at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes, and the Butter Art Fair in Los Angeles. On Thursday, April 2, he will open \u201cBalanta Born,\u201d a solo show of his sculpture and his discovery of his African ancestry, at One Market Plaza, off the Embarcadero.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n All that is after hours to his full-time job as a crane operator and member of Local 3, Operating Engineers, using skills he picked up during a nine-year career operating heavy machinery in the U.S. Army.<\/p>\n The unveiling of \u201cWhispers of Waste\u201d on March 21 was attended by 200 people \u2014 not Burning Man numbers, but as a neighborhood event it was well attended. There were dancers, skateboarders, rope jumpers and a fleet of kayakers.\u00a0<\/p>\n San Francisco sculptor Zulu Heru sees his giant sculpture \u201cWhispers of Waste\u201d as \u201cmy rendition of a traditional mask worn by the Senufo\u00a0tribe of the Ivory Coast.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n \u201cBoth \u2018Whispers of Waste\u2019 and the park itself tell stories of transformation,\u201d said Sarah\u00a0Madland, interim general manager of Rec and Park. \u201cPost-industrial brownfield to healthy shoreline; reclaimed materials to powerful public art. It\u2019s poetic and fitting, and it invites people to connect more deeply with this place and the community that helped shape it.\u201d<\/p>\n It is Heru\u2019s first public artwork in San Francisco. He had a speech written and rehearsed in his head, but he ditched it when he saw the number of neighborhood kids in attendance.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThey reminded me of myself, and I realized how important it is for them to see a sculpture who looks like them, as a visual example of what is possible,\u201d he said. That speech, entirely spontaneous, has led him to offer an apprenticeship to three to five kids from Bayview-Hunters Point to help him build his next piece, a sculpture to be called \u201cFarmer: The Rigger,\u201d a 21-foot African mask that is a self-portrait of his journey as an artist. The piece already exists and is being refurbished for display on Mare Island in May.<\/p>\n Counting \u201cWhispers of Waste,\u201d that makes two steel African masks, adding up to 15,000 pounds at the north end of San Pablo Bay and toward the southern end of San Francisco Bay.<\/p>\n \u201cThis shows that the city is making a meaningful effort to support local artists,\u201d Heru said. \u201cThe serendipity couldn\u2019t have happened without an effort.\u201d<\/p>\n On Sunday morning, Bayview resident Jason Dewes and his son, Paxton, were walking along Innes Avenue by India Basin Waterfront Park when they stopped to admire the African mask.<\/p>\n \u201cIt looks really nice and fits in perfectly with the neighborhood,\u201d the father said.\u00a0 Paxton, being 14, was more pragmatic. \u201cMy hope is that we can get a grocery store down here,\u201d he said, reasoning out that \u201cif it attracts more publicity, then more people will come down here to see it and there will be more of a need for a grocery store.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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