Cameron Adams / Flickr

This didn't make the cut.

At its best, public sculpture is stirring and inspiring. At its worst, it's an assault on the senses -- a visual blight that prompts passers-by to avoid eye contact or (in extreme cases) attack the art with invective, graffiti, or even legal threats of removal. San Francisco has its share of divisive sculpture. Consider Cupid's Span, the giant red bow and arrow on the Embarcadero, which is a classic case of good intentions gone awry. Done in 2002 by the New York-based team of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, the sculpture -- "inspired by San Francisco's reputation as the home port of Eros" -- is whimsical but way too trivial for its size and placement. Life is too short to stand in front of works like Cupid's Span. Instead, visit these free public sculptures, which should resonate with art lovers of all tastes.

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Kere Keys

Hunky Jesus? Yes please.

It's hard to believe that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are "ruining it for everyone," as some detractors have claimed. Over 33 years, they've raised untold amounts of money for charitable causes, crusaded against bigotry and hatred, and for a few years they even brought order and focus to Halloween in the Castro. All this while holding a prominent spot on the pope's official list of heretics. The Sisters again invite the community to converge this Sunday on the birthplace of their order, Dolores Park, for their annual birthday party and Easter celebration.

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This eye- and mind-bending display of light and sound called Origin recently appeared at Fort Mason. The work, which appeared in New York City last year and was originally built for the Coachella music festival, was created by UnitedVisualArtists, an art-and-design practice based in London.

It's the largest interactive work made by the group to date, measuring 40 feet square. People were invited to enter the sculpture and lay down, viewing it vertically from the inside. The creators used software to program the metal sculpture to respond to a score composed for the project by electronic musician Scanner.

It was part of the San Francisco 2012 Creators Project, put on jointly by Intel Corp. and media company Vice.

The Museum of Craft and Design's new home

When Brett Levine left the Visual Arts Gallery in Birmingham to become the first full-time curator at San Francisco's Museum of Craft and Design, he bid farewell to a permanent space and faced the realities of a wandering museum. Once located on Sutter Street in Union Square, the museum found itself homeless in 2010. Seizing the opportunity to expand its audience and function in a time of peril, the Museum launched a series of pop-up museums in temporary locations throughout San Francisco. In the past two weeks, it was announced that the Museum of Craft and Design will move into the historic American Industrial Center at 2569 Third Street.

Levine arrived in December 2011, and we spoke to him recently to see how he's adjusting to the life of a pop-up curator, and what the new space means for the future of the museum's pop-ups.

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The cheekily named Can Film Festival which screens Thursday (Oct. 6) at the Roxie won't feature red carpets with petulant celebrities tumbling through press-baiting antics, but it will showcase the sequel to a seminal new-school graffiti movie. Jon Reiss' Bomb It 2 (see a short behind-the-scenes video clip above) began life as a web series and travels to even farther-flung places than its predecessor in search of vibrant street art, in cities such as Jakarta, Melbourne, Copenhagen, Tel Aviv, and Bethlehem.

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"The Peace Keeper" by Erik Otto

We went to Rome once. One thing that blew our minds was the public art. There's so much of it that some has been reclaimed by the needs of everyday life. You see people taking lunch, for example, sitting on what's left of an ancient fountain or a big sculpture that anywhere else would be surrounded by those little laser-beam things that trip an alarm when you walk through them. Today, pretend you're in Rome with "The Peace Keeper," an installation in a new outdoor parklet gallery at Fabric8 that's all about reclamation.

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Hanna Quevedo

In recent years, nature's running joke at the Folsom Street Fair has been to make it either blindingly sunny and unbearably hot or the first cold and rainy day of the fall -- neither one good for lots of exposed skin. But Sunday -- Folsom Street Fair 2011 -- was damn near perfect for what we consider to be (aesthetically speaking) the best day of the year in San Francisco to be bisexual -- because, well, let's just say there's lots to look at.

Read on to see a sample of the images collected by Hanna Quevedo, and see all 56 in our slide show.

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One of Andy Golub's models on a subway platform.

Being naked in public is a crime, right? Well, not always (unless you're in Berkeley). Which is to say, sometimes it can be a crime (if you're in San Francisco), but you probably won't get arrested. Then again, sometimes it clearly isn't a crime (if you're in New York), but you get arrested nonetheless.

What are we talking about? A New York City artist named Andy Golub, and how his recent run-ins with the NYPD further illustrate the complexities of public nudity, free expression, what the law is, and how it's applied. California law prohibits public nudity when it offends someone, but cops in San Francisco have a hard time enforcing it. New York's law, we're told, allows public nudity for artistic expression, but at least one member of the NYPD seems to have intentionally overlooked that.

Let us explain.

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Rebar

​It's hard to find parking in San Francisco -- so tough that, once you find a space, you might want to do something to it more permanent than just ditch a car. Why not put grass and a park bench in the spot?

Inspired by a lack of green space in our fair (and parking-constrained) city, PARK(ing) Day

aims to inspire residents to flex their creative muscle and retake metered parking spaces as public spaces. This year, PARK(ing) Day is Friday, Sept. 16, and anyone can host a spot.

The concept began with a single space in San Francisco in 2005 and has since spread worldwide -- last year, 30 countries hosted a total of 850 spots, with installations ranging from political seminars to free bike repair shops. "The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat," according to the event's website.

Hit the jump to see this year's spaces and to learn how you can host your own.

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Bad news is all that many people hear coming from Mexico these days. But artist Jet Martinez wants to change that through his new mural on a wall of Mission Market on Bartlett near 22nd Street.

"I wanted to address some of the other aspects of Mexican culture without getting bogged down in the politics," he says.

His mural, Amate Mission, will be dedicated Thursday evening at the weekly farmers' market that takes place in the area, Mission Community Market.

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