Excursion to Frisco

This series takes the viewer back to the turn of the 20th century with illustrations that capture monumental and often forgotten histories of San Francisco’s teen ages. You will find fantastically detailed memories of the gritty rubble and ashes of 1906, to the beautifully dramatic Panama Pacific worlds fair that shadowed over the Golden Gate. Generations after the prosperous Gold Rush, San Francisco was still rapidly changing with downtown buildings getting taller and neighborhoods growing in the southern and western parts of the undeveloped outside lands.

“An Excursion to Frisco”

watercolor, ink on antique paper

11" x 14"

2012 

“We came for gold and stayed on credit, built bars out of boats and shacks upon the slopes. This land was never ours but we claimed it so, the crowds flocked in, foggy dreams, high hopes and opium smoked. A quake shook us up but the fire brought us down, we rose up through the flames, a king with a new crown.” 

-Sir Clark Gordon 1917 

“The Damndest Finest Ruins”

watercolor, ink on antique paper

11" x 14"

2012

“Put me somewhere West of East street (Embarcadero) where there’s nothing left but dust, Where the lad’s are all a bustlin’ and where everthing’s gone bust, Where the buildings that are standin’ sort of blink and blindly stare. At the damndest finest ruins ever gazed on anywhere.” – Lawrence W. Harris 1906 

“Ostriches in The Zone”

watercolor, ink on antique paper

11" x 14"

2012

The Expo’s amusement area was called The Zone, complete with cultural attractions like the Samoan Village with native dancers, mini theme parks, wild west shows, a detailed reproduction of the Panama Canal, “Captain” the worlds smartest living horse who played songs on bells, along with an Ostrich farm exhibit, drawing crowds to see the strange birds. 

“The Burning of Carville”

watercolor, ink on paper

2012


Of all the re-purposed old horse and cable cars to inhabit the wind thrust sand dunes of San Francisco’s barren beach front, the Falcon women’s Bicycling Club hosted the most vibrant soirees. Carville was a beachfront community bohemian paradise for artists, beach buzzards, salty drifters and weekend bike riders alike. Until, in 1913, due to mounting pressure from encroaching church going types, the scrambled together unique getaways were blazed up, among July 4th bonfires. 

“Sundial”

watercolor, ink on paper

12" x 16"

2012

At 26 feet tall, the sundial in Ingleside Terraces was once billed by The Urban Realty Improvement Company “the largest and most magnificent sundial in the world.” In a ceremony complete with dancing “nymphs,” a live band, midnight supper, and two storks drawing baby buggies, the sundial was inaugurated on the evening of October 10, 1913 before a crowd of some 1500. 

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