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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Indians Take Over San Francisco Beach


I was driving out by Ocean Beach on Tuesday, on my way to meet a couple of artist friends for lunch. I noticed a band of Indians in full battle dress lined up all along the shore. Whoa!

Not really...it's "art." This guy, Thom Ross, made a bunch of paintings of Indians from the Buffalo Bill show of 1902 and they are installed at Ocean Beach until September 14. Here's the artist in full Western regalia being interviewed on camera.


I took a bunch of photos of the paintings. It was so unusual.


There was a photo taken in September, 1902 of the whole Wild West troupe on Ocean Beach, which inspired Thom to make these paintings. Here's Buffalo Bill in the center.


On close view, the paintings are somewhat loose and stylized.



The studs on their costumes are actually thumbtacks. The artist must have painted some of the costume "beading" with paint squeezed out of fine-pointed tubes.



They had some riders on real horses galloping along in front of the wooden Indians. I think it was for the documentary they were making.



People were walking up and checking out the Indians. They even had one you could climb up behind and it had a cutout for the face, so you could have your picture taken.


You can see Seal Rocks behind them and some cargo ships on their way back and forth from China.


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