The San Franciso Chronicle reports on the open-air billboard exhibition of Sri Chinmoy’s 13' x 25' Jharna-Kala painting ‘Journey’s Battle Victory’, at the Embarcadero in San Francisco, California. The billboard was installed on November 1st.
Billboards with a Fine Touch
Seventeen “fine art billboards” that don’t advertise any discernible merchandise are catching motorists’ eyes through this month at scattered locations in the North Point, Fisherman’s Wharf area.
The showing was arranged by the Eyes and Ears Foundation, which tries to find new ways to broaden attention to California painters and poets.
The foundation’s president, painter Paul Whitehead, did the whale painting — transcribed with a verse by Neell Cherkovski — near Pier 41 on the Embarcadero.
“Imperial Message” (“Repent”) is Rick Griffith’s 14-foot by 48-toot acrylic at Bay street and the Embarcadero. A guest artist from New York — United Nations Meditation Center Director Sri Chinmoy — created the 12-foot by 25-foot abstraction that occupies a billboard on North Point between Taylor and Jones streets.
Sri Chinmoy, a prolific painter, writer and composer cut a colorful figure in his yellow silk robes at a Museum of Modern Art reception last week tor the Eyes and Ears Foundation’s “Billboard Artists.” He told Whitehead, “I am not an artist — I am just a vehicle” — to which Whitehead responded, “that’s how we artists feel, too.”
Caption:
Mystic Sri Chinmoy who says he’s ‘not an artist’ painted the above abstraction
Published in San Francisco Chronicle, 113th Year No. 259, Monday, November 14, 1977