Mission artist animates green utility boxes with a flock of birds
Read Mission Local often?Help grow our newsroom during end-of-year fundraising, joining the hundreds of San Franciscans who support us by donating below. Chestnut-backed chickadees, yellow warblers and other feathered birds have landed this winter on the unassuming green utility boxes along South Van Ness Avenue and Bryant Street in the Mission.The 20 feathered friends are the creation of Claudio Talavera-Ballón, a Mission-based Peruvian painter sponsored by the nonprofit Paint the Void sponsored to paint 10 Mission utility boxes, part of a project to remake 250 utility boxes across San Francisco.It’s an effort to color the utility boxes that store infrastructure for nearby traffic lights across the city. Elsewhere, dozens of artists have covered the “municipal green” boxes with pandas, a girl on the swing, and a naughty astronaut. Talavera-Ballón’s flock, all Bay Area species, can be seen at almost every intersection […]