Glen Park is known for its canyon. Its public art sits somewhere else. Over the past four years, nearly every new mural, mosaic and painted surface here has gone onto concrete that was poured for a practical purpose: a retaining wall at the end of Burnside, a low wall along Elk Street, two utility boxes near BART, and a pedestrian overpass on Bosworth.
The work so far has stayed on those edges. The next round, paid for by grants awarded this year, moves it onto Arlington's street corners and into the center of the village at Diamond and Bosworth.
A neighborhood that paints its infrastructure
The pattern starts with Glen Park Beautiful, which the Glen Park Association describes as the work of three volunteers, Renee Berger, Libby Reder and Beth O'Leary. The association credits them with "a knack for finding ugly and making it pretty." Berger first led the effort to turn the two-story concrete wall at the foot of Burnside into a mural with tiled steps. After that came the low concrete wall that runs along the bottom of Elk Street.
Glen Park Beautiful's own completed projects list is a record of surfaces that had a structural job first. Every finished piece on it except one bench is painted or tiled onto public infrastructure.
The finished pieces, where to find them
| Piece | Where | Artist | Finished |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Reclaiming Islais Creek" mural | Retaining wall at the Burnside Avenue cul-de-sac by Paradise Avenue | Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong, Twin Walls Mural Company | September 2022 |
| Islais Creek tiled steps, 69 steps | Same Burnside and Paradise site | Aileen Barr and Colette Crutcher | October 2024 |
| "Our Canyon" mural | Retaining wall at Elk Street and Chenery, Glen Canyon Park | Sirron Norris, with neighbor painters | May 2025 |
| "Bello's Bellisima Bench" | Bello Coffee & Tea | Christopher Duderstadt, Public Bench Project | May 2025 |
| Owl utility box | Bosworth and Diamond | Vanessa Shive | June 2025 |
| Butterfly utility box | Diamond and Monterey Boulevard | Vanessa Shive | June 2025 |
| Bosworth Pedestrian Bridge | Bosworth Street and Lippard Avenue | Ross Holzman, Create Peace Project, with students | May 2026 |
The Burnside site has two parts, and they took two years apart to finish. The mural shows Glen Canyon's nature and the neighborhood's history. Next to it, the mosaic stairway carries a stream and its wildlife up all 69 steps. Viewed together, the wall and the steps tell one story about Islais Creek.
"Our Canyon," on Elk Street, shows the park's plants, animals and landmarks on the wall that borders it. Neighbors painted it alongside Norris, and the Glen Park Association reported about 100 volunteers at the April 27 community painting day.
The two utility boxes are the smallest pieces on the list. They also belong to the largest program. Shive's Art Nouveau-style owl and her butterfly were funded by the Civic Joy Fund. Its Paint the City program reports funding 322 painted utility boxes across San Francisco by 49 local artists. Glen Park has two of those 322. Everything else on the list was organized from within the neighborhood.
The bridge, Glen Park's newest finished piece
The Bosworth Pedestrian Bridge used to be plain gray concrete over a busy road. Its span and ramps are now painted in two shades of bright blue. Its five pillars are covered in mosaics inspired by Indigenous designs from around the world, which Holzman made with students from the school next door. Individual donors paid for it. Glen Park Beautiful celebrated the bridge on September 26.
Gardening has continued at the base of the bridge, a slower job than the paint and tile. Volunteers cleared ivy there during District 8 Beautification Day in June 2025 and came back for later days to mulch and plant native species. The group set November 7 for clearing the remaining ivy on the Glen Park School side and preparing a native plant garden under the span. The Glen Park Beautiful homepage lists upcoming workdays.
This year's grants move the work into the street
Until now, the art has been on walls and structures at the edges of public space. The next projects, according to the Glen Park Association, are on the street and in the commercial center. The association reports that Glen Park won more than $65,000 this year from Avenue Greenlight, a nonprofit that funds projects to enliven, clean and improve San Francisco's commercial corridors. The association lists three awards:
- $25,000 to the Glen Park Association for murals and planters on the Arlington Slow Street
- $25,000 to Glen Park Beautiful to refresh the Welcome to Glen Park sign and paint a mural on the nearby fence
- $20,000 to the College Hill Neighborhood Association for a series of banners on Mission Street from Appleton to Bosworth
Arlington's corners become the canvas
Arlington is a four-block Slow Street. The association describes it as having "whizzing traffic, battered signs and bent bollards," with pedestrians sticking to the sidewalk. On May 31, about 30 neighbors made signs and planters and set them beside the existing Slow Street signs. The street is also a "bike bus" route that families ride to school.
The grant money goes through SFMTA's new Community Corners program. The SFMTA board approved it in June 2026. State law already bars parking at "daylighted" corners near crosswalks, and SFMTA explains the details on its daylighting page. Under Community Corners, those no-parking areas can hold murals and planters. The association notes that the project neither removes parking nor changes traffic patterns.
"This grant will really help us expand who feels comfortable using the Slow Street," John Francis, one of the project's lead organizers, told the Glen Park Association.
According to the association's fall 2026 meeting summary, SFMTA is working out the dimensions of the area that can be painted. Artist Dahlia Gustafson, who grew up on Arlington, is designing the corners using feedback from neighbors.
The village center gets its own pieces
Glen Park Beautiful's grant pays for work at the center of the business district. The patio mural will be a mosaic on the fence at the back of the patio next to 2860 Diamond Street, which the property owners at 2852 to 2860 Diamond agreed to host. The target for installation is spring 2027. Artist Dana Albany presented a first draft at a community comment meeting at the Glen Park library in October.
The Welcome to Glen Park sign on Bosworth at Diamond is due for a refresh, also planned for spring 2027. When both are done, the corner with Shive's owl box will also have a new sign and a mosaic a few doors away.
The freeway edge is next
The concrete under I-280 is the largest surface in the area and has the least art so far, which makes it the logical next site. The Glen Park Association reports that EvolvedSF, the screenprinting company at 3922 Mission Street run by Thalia Leon and Fernando Ramirez, has been working with Sophie Constantinou on a mural for the freeway overpass at Lyell and Bosworth. Constantinou led the green overhaul of both sides of the Bernal Cut. She also won the College Hill banner grant, and she told the association that "our grant will be a gateway to Glen Park."
On another part of the I-280 underpass, the Glen Park Association wrote a letter supporting the Bernal Cut Project's proposed Islais Creek Watershed Storytelling Project mural. That educational mural would go with two other murals proposed for the opposite side of the underpass. The Bernal Cut Project is a collaboration that includes Citizen Film, the College Hill Neighborhood Association, the Glen Park Association and the California Native Plant Society's Yerba Buena Chapter.
Islais Creek connects much of this work. The creek runs through the Burnside mural and down the tiled steps, and the proposed underpass mural would tell its story on the freeway that now crosses its watershed.
If you'd like to hear more about how Glen Park's corners, walls and stairways shape the neighborhood, Cheryl Bower is happy to talk it through. She can also share what she sees in homes near these blocks when you're ready for a home valuation.
