ode to SKY (Rigo 23) / ode to GROUND (Rigo 23) pocket edition (2011)

in 1998, then Bay Area artist Rigo 23 painted two giant murals on two sides of a building in San Francisco (on the corner of 3rd  and Mission St). with text inside an arrow (referencing ONEWAY roadsigns), one mural pointed up to the SKY, the other pointed down to the GROUND. in April of 2001, while walking out of SF MoMA and into the crosswalk in front of the museum on 3rd street, i saw a crane looming in the sky above Rigo’s SKY mural, and took a photo. 

after that, i visited this mural often, watching, and sometimes photographing, as a giant condo building filled the sky above SKY

i continued watching, and photographing, as a luxury hotel development then swallowed the SKY mural itself.

and also absorbed the GROUND mural

along the way, i met Rigo 23 (on the street, while he was photographing GROUND), and he helped me gain access to SF MoMA’s fourth floor roof, from which i was also able to document detailed modifications to the mural.

collected highlights from my photo studies of the disappearances of SKY and GROUND in San Francisco in the early 2000s. 

cmyk offset with pigment based inks on matte recycled paper; 24 pages (5 x 5” pages); staple bound; edition of 500