CREATIVE ARTS 350, "Visual Treasure Hunt", Fall 1977

Instructors: Susan Kornblatt, Thor Johnson, Ralph Putzker

San Francisco State University, September 1977

Visit a junkyard or an automobile wrecking yard.

Go to the Arboretum in Golden Gate Park and find the place with the guinea pigs

Visit the ground floor of Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill and look at the murals

Go to your neighborhood fire station and ask them to show you around

Walk somewhere that you always drive/ride to.

Go through an entire evening at home without using ANY electric appliances (lights, radio, TV, etc.)

Visit Mission Dolores, and find Casey's tomb

Unfold/disassemble a "six pack" cardboard soft drink carrier so that it reverts to a flat state.

Find some really funny graffiti at a bus stop, in a rest room, etc.

Go to a Goodwill/St. Vincent DePaul/VFW Thrift Shop/Etc. and find an article of clothing that fits you.

List all of the things that you find in one day that come in threes.

Visit the Morrison Planetarium, or the planetarium here on campus.

Visit at least two of the following:

the DeYoung Museum

the Palace of the Legion of Honor

the San Francisco Modern Museum

the Oakland Museum of Art

the U.C. Museum of Art in Berkeley

the University of Stanford Art Gallery

(or any museum of equal caliber)

Find, build or design a container that will take a message from you out to sea, and do it.

Find a drug store with a fountain, and have an ice cream soda

On a clear day, watch a sunset from a high place by facing AWAY from the sun. Watch for at least a half an hour after the sun goes down.

Find an intense blue flower.

Walk from Hallidie Plaza on Market Street east to Powell, north to Geary, east to Grant, north to Union and west to Columbus. (This is about three miles). Window shop, look at walls, people, restaurants, trucks, food markets, etc.

Find all of the classes of things that are in an "empty" vacant lot.

Go to the VFW hall "the Beach Chalet" on the Great Highway near Fulton Street (on the western edge of Golden Gate Park).

Find, in one day, ten "kitsch" object

Take the guided tour of Alcatraz Island

Spend fifteen minutes in or near the checkout line of your neighborhood supermarket the day before Thanksgiving Day.

Find a child's drawing.

Go to Fort Point, under the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge, go inside the fort, go to the second and third levels and look at the bricks.

Find, in one day, ten objects with handles that surprised you.

Go to the southeast corner of Gough and California Streets, face northwest.

Collect twenty pieces of discarded paper from the gutter on your side of the street in your block. What do they tell you about your neighbors?

Go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco or to the Lawrence Hall of Science on the U.C. Berkeley campus and find three things/objects/process that interest you.

Go to a big Flea Market on a Saturday or Sunday.

Make a list of all the wet things you find in one day.

Visit a frankly commercial art gallery (e.g. "Starving Artists, Inc.")

Go to the east end of Sagamore Street in San Francisco, face west, and look at the wires.

Have a meal or a snack in an ethnic restaurant that, culturally, is totally new to you.

Spend fifteen minutes in the Greyhound Bus depot at 7th and Market Streets in S. F.

At what exact minute on what day did you see the first Christmas decorations for 1977?

See a foreign motion picture.

In some way, observe/participate in the Halloween festivities on either Polk Street or the area around Castro and Market Streets.

Find a place where there are many layers of posters pasted one over the other.

Buy a local newspaper in a language that you cannot read and study the advertisements, or buy a newspaper from a Bay Area community that you have never read before, and study the classified ads.

List all of the things that you find in one day that are yellow and round.

Find "street murals" in the Mission District of S. F. in Palo Alto, etc.