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\u201cI\u2019m afraid of crows and ravens but still find them fascinating,\u201d said Suki Frigarb, visiting from Los Angeles. \u201cSomething that makes you afraid, you can\u2019t stop looking at.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Champion, the artist, developed his fascination with the Corvidae species while at Burning Man more than a decade ago. He was on the all-night crew building the eponymous wooden temple to be torched when he noticed that the lighting at the construction site on the playa attracted all forms of worm and bug life. When the sun came up, a flock of crows would swoop in to eat the bugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started playing with perspective,\u201d said Champion, who ended up making a dozen aluminum crows, each 5 or 6 feet tall, at his studio in Oakland. All of these crows found homes, at winery exhibitions and sculpture gardens. He made more out of bronze, including \u201cAn Attempted Murder,\u201d which premiered at an art museum in Laguna Beach (Orange County).<\/p>\n
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Susanna Young, her son Julien Mandelbaum, and their dog, Koda, interact with \u201cAn Attempted Murder,\u201d a new art installation on the Golden Gate Park Panhandle.<\/p>\n
Jess Lynn Goss \/ For the S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Lucinda and Tom were recruited to San Francisco by Building 180, an arts company that is\u00a0curating the Big Art Loop. The company finds locations, gets feedback from neighbors and then submits it to the Recreation and Park Department for approval. Artists are paid a fee for loaning and installing their work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Big Art Loop is about putting public art into the neighborhoods,\u201d said Aliza 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<\/p>\n
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The most prominent examples of the project thus far are the nude woman at the foot of Market Street at the Embarcadero, which was recently extended for six months, and the water-spewing sea serpent in a lake along JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t ask for a better setting,\u201d Champion said while standing off to the side of his Panhandle crows. \u201cThere are constantly people here interacting with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Joseph and Jacqueline Martinez interact with a newly installed art piece by Jack Champion called \u201cAn Attempted Murder\u201d on the Golden Gate Park Panhandle. Both live in the area and said the art piece is refreshing. \u201cYou don\u2019t really see art much around here,\u201d Jacqueline said.<\/p>\n
Jess Lynn Goss \/ For the S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Dogs bark at them from afar, and some approach warily to sniff the tail feathers. Kids are not as wary as some dogs and most parents. At first sight, Grace Hood, 2, clambered out of the stroller being pushed by her mom,\u00a0Marnie, and took off running toward the corvids. She didn\u2019t stop until she had reached into Lucinda\u2019s beak and patted her tongue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see a crow like this every morning outside her bedroom window,\u201d\u00a0Marnie said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be coming this way a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Kat Lin was waiting to meet with a couple to teach them dance steps for their upcoming wedding. She took the whole thing as a sign.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will have them channel the crows in their first dance,\u201d Lin explained. \u201cThey will be in the wedding in spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ramee Opperude would like to see the birds go from the Panhandle to Skylawn Memorial Park, the San Mateo cemetery where he works.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Phoebe Johnson, 4, and her brother Eli, 2, play with the large crow statue. The statue is part of a piece called \u201cAn Attempted Murder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jess Lynn Goss \/ For the S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
\u201cThey would work really well down there,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a nice addition to what could be a plain green space.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The crows are contracted to stay on the lawn, just west of Masonic Avenue and east of the playground, for one year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope they stay permanently, frankly,\u201d said Mary Helen Briscoe, who lives across the street from the Panhandle. \u201cI think it is fabulous.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the time spent installing and observing the art, Champion has noticed a pattern among real birds in the park. The crows, which have pretty much decimated the local pigeon population, hang around. The wild parrots will come through to laugh at it all in mockery, but they keep moving.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crows are the thugs of the neighborhood,\u201d he said. \u201cThey rule this place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grace Hood, 2, checks out the black crow sculptures on Golden Gate Park\u2019s Panhandle on Sunday. Grace lives…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,2224,241076,227,3805,2356,229,88,5284],"class_list":["post-663319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-arts-and-exhibits","tag-artsanddesign","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-san-francisco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}