Early Days of Modern Courage, Pioneer Monument, Civic Center, San Francisco, CA
Early Days of Modern Courage
About the Design
At the end of 2019, a year after a statue group titled Early Days that was factually inaccurate and deemed dehumanizing to Native Americans was removed from The Pioneer Monument located on Fulton Street between Hyde and Larkin streets in the Civic Center of San Francisco, California, the plinth was still bare and in need of a new sculpture, so we designed a statue grouping to be placed there.
At that time, we were paying attention to the statues created by Spotify of Hip Hop artists and the exhibition of them at the Brooklyn Museum. We thought the statues to be superficial – fashion without substance – placed in an elitist museum setting. We felt we could come up with a statue group that addressed our criticisms of the Spotify statues. We set out to design something accessible, engaging, and meaningful with a pop culture sensibility.
We deliberated over who to depict in our statues. Lizzo and Lil Nas X were obvious choices at that time. We felt 6ix9ine was a dark horse who was staging a comeback, but representative of the problem of gun violence and gun culture.
Lil Nas X’s breakthrough crossover song Old Town Road inspired a Western motif for our sculpture composition, which featured a horse and guns. For symmetry, we featured 6ix9ine with guns, drawing inspiration from a silly video of him running in his underwear, waving a firearm, to present an accessible approach to the weapons charges for which he was incarcerated.
We made photogrammetry scans of the Pioneer Monument and the vacant plinth of the Early Days sculpture so we could place our 3D sculpture grouping in a virtual reality setting of the Pioneer Monument. We were prepared to make a proposal presentation to San Francisco Arts Commission for consideration of temporary display but abandoned the project at the time of George Floyd’s murder, shifting to a series of 3D-modeled busts, starting with George Floyd, that were made available for free download to Black Lives Matters protesters.
A draft of our unpublished press release regarding the statue includes the quote: “The emptied space inspired ideas for a monument depicting contemporary pioneers of courage. We’ve been riveted to 6ix9ine, Lizzo, and Lil Nas X, and the impact they’re making through aspects of courage. Lizzo inspires body-positivity and helps others to find the courage to celebrate themselves; Lil Nas X’s courage to be the first and only artist to come out as gay while having a number-one record is a landmark moment; and 6ix9ine’s perseverance to reemerge as a record setting Instagram personality after serving his time takes courage.”
Lizzo
Lil Nas X
6ix9ine
