Client: Glide Economic Development Corporation and Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation

Overview

INTERTWINED was created for a low-income housing development for the chronically homeless in downtown San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. It is aesthetically significant as it both integrates with the physical qualities of the building architecture and the social commitment this new housing reflects. This artwork is a hand-cut and glazed ceramic ribbon that wraps the 8 story building starting at the entrance and then around the side to the top of the building. Within this “Intertwined ” ribbon hands open in gestures of sharing, grace and community. “Intertwined” is influenced by Poethig’s three decades of creative collaborations with communities in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, with the Vietnamese Youth Development Center, children at Boedekker Park, murals for the Southeast Asian Refugee Resettlement Center and the “Tenderloin National Forest”, the 509 Cultural Center’s alleyway revitalization project.

Goals

“We have made history in the year 2009 at 149 Mason Street. Our commitment to the poor is again expressed in this building providing more than shelter from the elements, but a quality of life for dignity, empowerment, and justice.”
Rev. Cecil Williams and Janice Mirikitani

Process

The words were selected in collaboration with the Glide Community. Glide is “ radically inclusive, just and loving community mobilized to alleviate suffering and break the cycles of poverty and marginalization”.