Ben Wood

Ben Wood, born 28th August 1980 is a British visual artist living and working in San Francisco, California. Over the past decade he has carried out noteworthy public projects in San Francisco, and exhibited in Mexico City, Honolulu Hawaii, and the United Kingdom. Many of his projects use digital media to display images in the built environment[1]

An early public project was to reveal a hidden 18th century mural in San Francisco's Mission Dolores. In 2004 he worked with Archeologist Eric Blind to capture the first photographs of the mural, keeping the 1796 reredos intact. He then projected digital images in a public display onto the interior dome of the Mission Dolores Basilica.[2]On April 14, 2011 a recreated version of the mural was unveiled on San Francisco's Bartlett Street as part of the Mission Community Market.[3][4][5]

Since 2004 Wood has conducted a series of video projections at Coit Tower, re-occurring in 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2009, and mostly illuminating the native San Francisco and California heritage.[6][7]

While a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Wood carried out a project to revive the famous destroyed mural of Diego Rivera.[8]Also while a student at MIT he created a documentary about MIT's oldest graduate dormitory Ashdown House.[9]

References

  1. ^ Bing, Allison (2006). "Ben Wood: Making New Art from Ancient History". Stretcher Magazine. http://www.stretcher.org/features/ben_wood_-_new_art_from_ancient_history/i. .
  2. ^ Nolte, Carl (2004-01-29). "Centuries-old murals revealed in Mission Dolores". San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/29/MNGC74KEA71.DTL#ixzz0z25ir2Bi. 
  3. ^ Tucker, Jill (2011). Mission Dolores mural now a piece of art history. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/13/BA5H1J0167.DTL.  |publisher=San Francisco Chronicle
  4. ^ Pringle, Max (2011). Welcome to the neighborhood, museum mural. KQED News. http://www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision/2011/04/15/welcome-neighborhood-museum-mural. 
  5. ^ Donahue, Caitlin (2011). Mission Dolores Native American Mural Replica. San Francisco Bay Guardian. http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2011/04/15/mission-dolores-native-american-mural-replica/. 
  6. ^ Bloom, Anna (2009). http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-11-23/bay-area/17182135_1_coit-tower-projectors-film. 
  7. ^ Burton, Justin (2011). http://bayarea.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/movie-on-the-outside-coit-tower-tonight.  |publisher=NY Times Bay Area Blog
  8. ^ Schorrow, Stephanie (2011). http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/grad-rivera-tt0613.html. 
  9. ^ Campbell, Scott (2006). http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/ashdown.html.