Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: Sausalito

Bill Dan is a sculptor and performance artist specializing in rock balancing. He creates seemingly impossible, temporary balanced sculptures from un-worked rock and stone in public spaces near his home in Sausalito. Usually Bill Dan sets up shop on the weekends outside Piccolo cafe on Bridgeway. Dan was born in Indonesia, and worked as a warehouseman before discovering the artistic possibilities of rock along the San Francisco Bay shoreline and his emergent skill in manipulating them. Bill was initially inspired by rock piles he had seen on the Big Island of Hawaii, the cairns of the Inuit, and later by the work of Andy Goldsworthy. In 2004, he was featured on San Francisco public television station KQED as one of the artists in a show entitled "Collaborations with Nature." Since then, he has been the subject of interviews and shows on TV stations in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, as well as other U.S. stations. Bill Dan has frequently been asked about the "meaning" of his work, and he often replies that "Some people try to make things too complicated. This is the opposite."

The Viña del Mar Park In Sausalito is named for Viña del Mar, Chile, one of Sausalito’s sister cities. The park holds some interesting architectural elements: After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (and resulting fire) leveled parts of the city, the San Francisco Bay Area was chosen as the place to build an elaborate World’s Fair. In 1915, the city hosted the Panama-Pacific International Exposition to help in celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal. Over 18 million people visited the 1915 San Francisco World’s Fair. The Fair paid tribute to the various technologies that were modern at the time. In this vein, many types of temporary buildings and accents were created out of an industrial-strength paper mache product that was designed to last about one year. Artists from around the world contributed works and some 1,500 full-size sculptures adorned the 635-acre complex. Among the large sculptures on display were examples of classical-era art formats in fountains, statues and architectural accents. It was a large honour to be asked to create a sculpture for the Expo. The famous "Court of the Universe" complex at the Fair was designed by William B. Faville, from Sausalito. Faville commissioned twelve full-size African Gray elephants, decked in finery, to be produced by the well-known "McKim, Mead & White" design firm in New York City for his complex. Each paper mache elephant sat at the base of an elaborate 100-foot-tall flagpole around the outer edges of his full-size, elegant, paper mache temporary buildings in regal style. In 1915, the harmonizing of all elaborately decorated Expo buildings was achieved by colour-coding them. Thus, all of the tall flagpoles were painted in a pinkish-orange tone to properly stand-out during foggy conditions. The sculptures and statues were painted in lavish gold tones with antique greens and deep blues used heavily in accent colours. All over the Fair, twinkling rhinestone jewels were hung to create the feeling of being among riches beyond imagination. An estimated 109,000 gems were produced as decorations. At the conclusion of the Fair, the displays were destroyed to make room for more post-earthquake rebuilding efforts in San Francisco. William B. Faville could not bear the thought of his beautiful flagpole elephants being destroyed, so he used his position to ferry his favourite two elephants and one beautiful paper mache fountain across the San Francisco Bay to his Sausalito home. The triangle-shaped park: Viña del Mar, in Sausalito, holds the 1915 Faville treasures. When the two elephants arrived in Sausalito by ferryboat, they were placed in the park located near the ferry terminal. The town's children named the big paper mache elephants: "Jumbo" and "Pee-Wee" while the adults admired the stunning fountain that arrived with the Faville elephants. Against all odds, the industrial-strength paper mache materials remained intact for almost 20-years; however, during the mid-1930s, the Jumbo and Pee-Wee statues, along with the elegant paper mache fountain, started to decompose. During the first Great Depression, money was not available to have Jumbo and Pee-Wee professionally reconstructed out of original materials. Instead, the best Faville elephant was used to create a mold that was used to pour the two identical cement elephants that are found in the Viña del Mar Park today. The modern Viña del Mar Park elephants are among the most photographed sights in Sausalito. These highly-decorative and unusual outdoor sculptures are easily visited at the corner of Bridgeway and Portal, adjacent to the downtown Sausalito ferryboat pier.

On Thursday December 8, 1988 scenic bayside Sausalito, where posh waterfront restaurants serve up spectacular views of San Francisco as well as fish dishes swimming in Hollandaise sauce, labeled itself the nation’s first "cholesterol-free zone." The designation, meaningless as anything more than a health-education stunt by the City Council, was dreamed up by a local pharmacist and patterned after the recently popular idea of "nuclear-free zones" – cities and counties that outlaw the making, storage or use of nuclear bombs within their limits. Cholesterol has not been banned in Sausalito, just cast in public disfavor. The city has added its imprimatur to pharmacist Fred Mayer’s campaign to teach people to consume less fat in their diets and to exercise to keep their coronary arteries clear and healthy. Mayer, father of the Great American Smokeout and National Condom Week among other public-health campaigns, said he wanted to alert people in nuclear-free Sausalito that a danger more immediate than nuclear annihilation could be as close as their dinner plate. So Mayer asked the city to do to rich sauces and heavy desserts what it did to atom bombs. The City Council agreed, passing a resolution last week urging Sausalito’s affluent, trend-conscious residents to fight any fatty deposits in their blood vessels. On Thursday, Mayor Robin Sweeny made the city’s pioneering cholesterol-free designation official. "This is done in the spirit of trying to get the public’s attention. . . . If it gets a few laughs along the way, that is all right," she said, posing in a restaurant next to a display of low-cholesterol vegetables – before slipping off for a lasagna luncheon with the Rotary Club. ("Freddy would kill me if he knew that," said Sweeny, a former nurse.) Shanon Davis, chef at Scoma’s Restaurant, said he was not aware of Sausalito’s pace-setting status in the war against cholesterol, but added that, coincidentally, he has decided to drop salmon with Hollandaise sauce from the eatery’s menu. His substitute, he conceded sheepishly, will not be much of an improvement, cholesterol-wise. It’s poached salmon in a white wine-and-cream sauce. Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1988