Jerry Barrish - The Bayview Horn

Jerry Ross Barrish - Bayview Horn

[ARTIST BACKGROUND] Jerry Ross Barrish is a sculptor and fourth generation San Franciscan who works from his studio in San Francisco’s Dog Patch neighborhood. The studio is filled with large and small-scale figures of dancers and musicians as well as animals and birds. Barrish is a figurative artist whose early assemblages are made of found objects, actual plastic refuse and debris collected from his long walks along the southeastern shoreline. His more recent artworks are sculptures cast in bronze. Jerry Ross Barrish received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree and Master of Fine Arts Degree from the San Francisco Art Institute. His connection with the Bayview Hunters Point Shipyard is a personal one: during World War II his mother was a civilian working for the Marine Corps while his father served in the U.S. Navy and stationed in the South Pacific arena. For Jerry Ross Barrish, the commission to create Bayview Horn is his first permanent public art commission.

[PROPOSED ARTWORK] Jerry Ross Barrish will create a tall, lean realistic figure of a lone musician playing a horn. The Bayview Horn will be cast in bronze and tower approximately 15” tall in height towering over the new park.

[ARTIST INSPIRATION] The inspiration to the artist came after reading about a French film that takes place during World War I. On Christmas Eve, during an unexpected break in the fighting the soldiers hear haunting and beautiful music, suddenly the fighting ceases. Barrish found inspiration in the thought that all violence in the neighborhood would cease under the melodic and powerful spell of the music played by his sculpted lone figure of a musician playing his horn.

[YOUTH INVOLVEMENT] Barrish is committed to the Youth Program and invites youth participants to his Dog Patch studio for a day long workshop learning about figurative sculpture and experimenting with the many ways an artist can use found objects or discarded materials to create new sculptural visions.