From Subway to Shining Sea

Passengers on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (Muni) traveling by the future site of the Central Subway in Chinatown Station may be used to viewing construction – but from the half block of Washington to Clay streets, the landscape briefly changes to something much more appealing.

Artist Kota Ezawa, known for his animated videos, designed “Panorama,” a mural of 16 panels that each capture a stand-alone scene from newspapers and books, forming a continuous pattern from the North Sea to the South Pole to the Pacific Ocean. Each image connects at the horizon line of land and sea.

Ezawa submitted his digital files to Ferrari Color (www.ferraricolor.com) in Emeryville, California, where the print shop used its Durst Rho 350 roll-to-roll UV printer with Durst inks to output the images onto 3M Controltac 180C vinyl with a luster finish, totaling 154 feet in width (640 square feet).

The prints were then installed onto a plywood wall of the covered walkway, which sits six feet off the ground in the construction site.

“Panorama” was installed in January and will be up for one year as part of a rotating series by the San Francisco Arts Commission.