Photo Essays

Treasure Island, named for the imagined gold embedded in the mud dredged from the Sacramento Delta to build the manmade island, offers an oasis for some in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Yerba Buena Island, to the east, has sweeping views of the East Bay.

SoMa is growing up, literally.

The neighborhood, bordered by Market and South Van Ness streets, has seen the most recent growth in high-rise construction in the city. In the past three years, about eight high-rises were built in the neighborhood and blueprints for more, namely the Transbay Terminal redevelopment area, are reshaping the skyline.

Thousands of people, including college, high school and elementary school students, plus parents, teachers and other activists, converged in streams on downtown San Francisco to protest cuts in public education Thursday afternoon. Organizers said that more than 4,000 people marched down Mission and Valencia streets to Market, and then to the Civic Center Plaza.

For Artopia competitor Phillip Hua, a digital media instructor at the Academy of Art, his piece, “Re: action,” is a mixed-media work using everyday objects such as newspapers (The Wall Street Journal), plastic and aluminum. His creation tells the story of the environment and its relationship to the economy, and how everything is related and degrades over time. The quality of the other finalists’ art “is great here, I do feel a little intimidated but it’s been fun.”