Ocean Avenue utility boxes will get makeovers by students participating in a program put on by Youth Art Exchange. | Anne Marie Kristoff/Ingleside Light
More utility boxes dotting Ocean Avenue’s sidewalks will soon get artistic makeovers.
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Youth Art Exchange (YAX), a nonprofit organization that creates a shared practice for professional artists and public high school students, is working on another utility box improvement project. Aside from the completed project in 2018, callled “Ocean Bloom”: and depicted mixed media black and white portraits with colorful native plant collages, the most recent update was in May 2024 when San Francisco-based visual artist Mike Ritch worked with YAX on one set of boxes near Plymouth Avenue.
“I think it's wonderful that the community is supporting the beautification of their neighborhood and there's such a vibrancy along Ocean Avenue so to be both a part of it and celebrating the vibrancy through this project is really exciting,” YAX’s Director of Development and Communications Reed Davaz McGowan said.
Similar to the ones completed in 2018, the boxes will include anti-graffiti and weatherproofing by Clean Slate Group and use screen printing. It will also include colorful block print collage designs by youth that will go around roughly 10 boxes.
YAX’s printmaking faculty member Leonard Riedelbach collaborated with students from various San Francisco public high schools this past spring at their studio on Geneva Avenue to create concepts that involve people gathering and public transportation, traits that Davaz McGowan said reflect the core of activities along Ocean Avenue and that celebrate San Francisco’s iconography.
“The way I think about it is like it's a snapshot right, a Muni snapshot and that's also a snapshot of the city and as Reed was saying a snapshot of that vibrancy and just to watch the students kind of collaboratively come up with the ideas and then work together really closely to make them happen was great,” YAX Director of Programs and Education Andrea Guskin said. “The faculty member was really fantastic about elevating their creative voice and you know the direction they wanted to go.”
The project is funded through District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar's Participatory Budgeting program, which awarded $75,000 for the overall program and in support of this project. They have also partnered with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, Ocean Avenue Association and the Mission Cultural Center for the makeovers.
"These neighborhood improvements are exactly the purpose of the Participatory Budgeting program that I champion as the District 7 Supervisor,” Melgar said. “With each project, we can bring a little more brightness, a little more joy and a little more neighborliness to our city's streets. I am so grateful to the neighbors for spearheading this project, and it was my honor to make sure the city was behind this neighborhood project every step of the way."
YAX also predicts the project will be installed by Fall 2024 and will go before the San Francisco Arts Commission for approval in the next few months.
“It's really exciting to have this work that San Francisco public high school students did and have them get to see it in the landscape of their lives and in the city and that they get to feel like they're a part of it,” Davaz McGowan said. “There’s something about seeing your work in public, that you pass by, that's this real incredible feeling of joy and pride that a lot of people get to feel ownership over too. I think that that’s exciting.”
Correction: The post was updated to correct the spelling of one participant's name.
Anne Marie Kristoff (she/her) is a recent graduate from San Francisco State University's journalism program. She enjoys writing about the arts, entertainment and nature.
