Contest: The city wants to utilize your artwork on a corner utility box

On the left, a Surface Mounted Facility (aka utility box. On the right, one that has been wrapped with artwork.

It wasn’t too long ago that SF Beautiful was leading the fight to regulate the cumbersome AT&T utility boxes that now sit on some of our neighborhood’s corners. Formally known as Surface Mounted Facilities, the large, refrigerator-size boxes house the hardware for AT&T’s U-verse/Lightspeed video television service. There are hundreds of them on street corners across the city.

But this week, SF Beautiful announced an initiative that signals a new approach to the eyesore boxes – cover them up with art!

This is a chance for a neighborhood artist to get their work wrapped in vinyl around ten different utility boxes (see map below) throughout the Richmond District. Each box is nearly 5 feet wide by 5 feet tall, and contest rules state that the submitted artwork should “represent the unique aspects of the district and community”.

Anyone is welcome to enter the contest, but they must live in the Richmond District. Artists can submit more than one proposal to the contest. Only one winning artist will be chosen in District 1, and their final artwork will adorn ten utility boxes across the neighborhood. They will also receive a $500 prize.

Art or photography must be submitted by 5pm on Friday, June 1, 2018. Initial submissions should be sent in JPEG or PDF file format to peter@sfbeautiful.org. Artwork will then be selected by a committee and the winning artist will be notified by June 18.

Good luck to our neighborhood artists!

Sarah B.