One of the most visible aspects of our transformative neighborhood has to be the rotation of art sculptures in the center of Patricia's Green. Depending on the year, you might have seen anything from a bundle of twigs snaking in and out of the tiled concrete, to a giant female figure greeting the sky above her with open arms. These installations often last just a year, but this year the Hayes Valley Art Coalition is making an exception, extending the current piece until June 2014. This means we get to enjoy another 12 months of "Future's Past" in all its whimsically-stenciled steel glory.

New York City-based sculptor Kate Raudenbush designed the sculpture. Over the years, Kate has developed quite a name for herself, especially in Burning Man circles. She erects these gazebo-sized steel structures at the festival nearly every year. "Future's Past" debuted at Burning Man in 2010, and ended up in Hayes Valley last May. According to Kate's website, Future's Past is a "modern ruin, an architectural artifact found in the future. Once built as a monument to technological progress, this pyramid of system circuitry has been abandoned through unchecked consumptive collapse, but reclaimed by the resilience of natural forces, and evolved consciousness, symbolically represented by the roots of a sacred Bodhi tree, a symbol of Siddhartha’s seat of enlightenment, and our own." When we spoke to Kate about her thoughts on the additional year of residency in Hayes Valley, she expressed excitement. She also issued a plea to the patrons of the park: Please respect the art. Since its installation at the Green last year, the sculpture has frequently been vandalized. Original elements of Future's Past, such as an hourglass and metal-ringed chandelier, have been removed to avoid further desecration.

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This additional year will give the next featured artist, Mark Baugh-Sasaki, enough time to develop a custom-made piece for Hayes Valley. "We're doing again a collaboration through Mark's work to show people who are unfamiliar with this setting what it was like prior to it being a beautiful park,” Russell Pritchard, founder of the Art Coalition, said. “Because Mark can incorporate nature and industrial ingredients in his body of work, the piece is going to be representative of [both] what was there and now this gorgeous park." Mark is the only artist to be making an encore presentation at Patricia's Green since the program's inception in 2006. His previous work was the aforementioned tube of twigs encased in steel beams: While Russell and the rest of the Art Coalition prefer to buy art that is already constructed, he's excited to have a new piece that will tell the history of Hayes Valley through the eyes of a celebrated local artist. We weren’t able to reach Mark for comment about the upcoming installation, but Russell hinted that it's still very much in the "formulation stages." Stay tuned for more to come on the upcoming exhibit.