By Mauricio Segura August 1, 2025
Six colossal sculptures have rolled into Golden Gate Park, and they are not your usual garden statues. World‑renowned Mexican artist Betsabeé Romero has transformed discarded tires into towering public artworks along the JFK Promenade. Stretching between Conservatory Drive East and West, this bold new installation turns an iconic car‑free walkway into an open‑air gallery full of color, culture, and surprise.
Romero, who refers to herself as a “mechanic artist,” uses worn-out tires and other auto remnants as her medium. Each sculpture is etched with intricate patterns in a process she likens to tattooing metal, then painted with metallic hues to catch the shifting California light. Mirrors, wood, and metal elements complete the pieces. In her own words, Romero sculpts these works to honor movement, transformation, and reclaiming public space while making bold statements about sustainability and migration.
This latest installation is part of the JFK Promenade’s transformation since the roadway was made permanently car‑free in 2022. Once a traffic route, this 1.5‑mile stretch now hums with cyclists, families, street pianos, lawn games, murals, and rotating public art. The tire sculptures fit hand in glove with the park’s new identity as the “Golden Mile,” where large-scale art meets casual daily life.
Romero’s sculptures will remain in place through March 2026. Residents and visitors can trace their steps along the promenade to encounter these totems of discarded rubber elevated into symbols of resilience, heritage, and dialogue. Romero’s carvings evoke pre‑Columbian icons as well as contemporary street aesthetics, linking ancient motifs to issues that resonate today, like migration and environmental renewal.
This project is a collaboration between the SF Recreation and Park Department, the arts nonprofit Illuminate, production agency Building 180, and the Sijbrandij Foundation. The Sijbrandij Foundation’s Big Art SF initiative aims to bring 100 large-scale artworks into public view across the Bay Area by 2027. Building 180, a women-led art production studio, often tackles complex public art logistics and has delivered other monumental works across the city.
In Golden Gate Park, this installation joins an evolving tradition of surprising and oversized art, like the recent arrival of Naga, a glowing 100‑foot sea serpent created for Burning Man that now inhabits the pond beneath Rainbow Falls. Together, such works reinforce San Francisco's reputation as a laboratory for experiential, outdoor public art.
Standing beneath Romero’s tire sculptures, visitors may find echoes of ancient totem poles and industrial machinery in the same glance. There is an unexpected rhythm to the carved rubber treads, a silent story of travel, trade routes, urban decay and reinvention. It is hard to pass by without pausing, touching a mirrored surface or tracing a pattern with your finger.
Romero’s artistic journey spans continents. Born in Mexico City in 1963, she earned degrees in communication, fine arts, and art history, including studies at UNAM and training at Paris’s École des Beaux‑Arts. Her work has appeared in over 40 solo exhibitions worldwide and is held by major institutions from LACMA and the British Museum to Daros Latinamerica in Switzerland.
In San Francisco, her work brings rare gravitas and vibrant commentary into shared city space. By working with deconstructed car parts, Romero aims to turn noise and pollution into something that embodies beauty, healing and movement. She seeks to shape narratives rooted in sustainability, resilience and shared humanity, all through the unlikely medium of discarded rubber.
For the curious parkgoer, it is a chance to rediscover Golden Gate Park, not just as a green doorstep to cultural landmarks like the de Young Museum or Conservatory of Flowers, but as an evolving canvas. Here on the JFK Promenade, between painted tires and playful benches, every stroll can become an encounter with art, memory and the possibility of transformation.
So next time you bike or walk along JFK Promenade, pause to marvel at these huge tire totems. They are, in Romero’s words, stories carved in rubber, rolling into the future with cultural depth and visual flair.
