A 2,000-pound gold star landed next to the Old Mint in San Francisco on Tuesday — a new piece of public art intended to honor the massive historic building’s Gold Rush legacy and help brighten the area around it.
The star, 12 feet by 13 feet and made of powder-coated stainless steel, was bolted together to become a permanent installation under the authority of the San Francisco Arts Commission. The piece, called “Aurum” — the Latin word for gold — will be lit at night, casting geometric patterns on Mint Plaza between Fifth and Mint streets in the South of Market area.
“The artwork is intended to activate the plaza in the evening so that the space is more welcoming to enter at night,” the Arts Commission said in its project proposal.
In recent years, the plaza has presented a challenge as a destination, ringed by three restaurants but also known as a hangout for homeless people and the site of a now shuttered Blue Bottle Coffee.
“We imagine the artwork as a way to bring light to the plaza, as a beacon of public safety and a way to revitalize the area,” said artist and co-creator Yelena Filipchuk, who won the commission as a result of a contest conducted in 2018, and who was on hand for the installation Tuesday.
The budget is $250,000, paid for by the Martin Building Company through the 1% Art Program, a public art trust managed by the arts commission.
“We hope it evokes a sense of wonder and curiosity about the natural environment and the history of San Francisco,” Filipchuk said.
The original San Francisco Mint was built in 1854 on Commercial Street near Montgomery Street and relocated to Fifth and Mission streets in 1874. After the 1906 earthquake and fire, everything around it was destroyed — but the mint was still standing and holding one-third of all the gold in the United States, in a granite vault in the basement.
The mint moved again to a fortress off Upper Market in 1937, leaving vacant the stately sandstone Federal classic revival landmark known as the Old Mint.
Though it did not open until after the Gold Rush was played out, the romantic notion of having winnings from the gold fields in the Sierra Nevada stored there is what inspired Filipchuk, 37, a Ukrainian refugee who grew up in Chicago and works in partnership with Serge Beaulieu, 43, under the collective Hybycozo.
Formerly based in San Francisco, Hybycozo now operates out of Venice Beach in Los Angeles. The studio’s large scale public art pieces are on display in Dubai, and in the courtyard of the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey. This is its second major Bay Area public commission, following a geometric representation of an oak tree at a mixed-use development in Oakland.
Aurum was approved by the visual arts committee of the Arts Commission. A construction permit was issued by the San Francisco Department of Public Works, after an August 2023 hearing that drew only one comment, asking how the artwork would be maintained.
An Arts Commission representative responded that the Friends of Mint Plaza would conduct routine cleaning, while the commission would handle maintenance and work involving art expertise.
A Public Works presentation at the hearing noted that the sculpture’s cutaway pattern and small holes are a deterrent to graffiti and litter, and that its assembly and coating are designed to be durable and easy to clean.
Though to some viewers, Aurum might resemble an oversize gold nugget that washed down from the Sierra foothills, “an exploding star is what it really is,” said Filipchuk, a 2010 graduate of the department of conservation and resource studies at UC Berkeley. She does deep research for her projects, in this case, all the way back to the Big Bang.
“Six billion years ago, the explosion of super-heavy stars shot gold out into the primordial ooze,” she said, as she watched the star slowly take shape. “That is how the gold got to what would become the Earth and would eventually change the course of California history.”
“Aurum” will be open to the touch, day and night, in a warm white LED lighting configuration meant to evoke candlelight.
“Light and shadow will spill out of the sculpture to remind viewers that there is a light within each of us,’’ Filipchuk said. “I hope this helps people experience a moment of transcendence and beauty in their day-to-day lives.”
