reach the sun via San Francisco’s (secret) mosaic staircase…:-)

Well, that’s what I’m gonna do next time in SF… 🙂 Street art is best known as ‘murals’ that cover entire walls – and sometimes even the buildings themselves. It has the incredible ability to turn the neighborhood into an outdoor gallery, but there’s one surface that has often been ignored: staircases. When painted, public stair art is a stunning and unexpected canvas for portraits, geometric patterns, and intricate mosaics. Each rise of a step is one fraction of a larger image. When viewed at the base of the staircase, the individual elements come together for an awe-inspiring effect…
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more @ http://www.tiledsteps.org/

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Just as artists have assistance when painting big murals, these types of stair projects are often completed with the help of many people like the 16th Avenue Tiled Steps in San Francisco, which has been a community effort. Ceramist Aileen Barr and mosaic artist Colette Crutcher worked with about 300 volunteers over a 2 1/2 year period to finish up their project. The steps display a picture of the sea flowing into the sky. A colorful ‘twist’ of water and sea-life swirls up the steps to land with flowers, plants, birds, frogs, and ends with a lovely sky, with stars and a massive sun… 🙂
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N.B. once up there, I’ll recall Rudyard Kipling’s wise suggestion:”Never look backwards, or you’ll fall down the stairs.” 🙂