For the Super Bowl’s golden anniversary, Annice Jacoby is making a blanket.
The blanket doesn’t show the insignias of the two competing teams. The handmade bed covering doesn’t bear much at all, in fact, aside from the symbol of two hands raised palms-up, silk-screened in black and white.
While Super Bowl 50 will attract a deluge of well-heeled tourists to the Bay Area over the next few weeks, Jacoby's blanket art project attempts to draw attention to a part of the city people would much rather ignore: those struggling with homelessness.
In response to Mayor Ed Lee's plans to move the homeless community out of the streets in preparation for the Super Bowl, citing safety and legal issues, Jacoby, a co-founder of the art organization City of Poets, teamed up with several local partners including Coalition on Homelessness to create a series of handmade blankets to give away to people living on the streets.
“What we’re doing is geared around the fact that the city has chosen to have a clean sweep to make the city a little more appealing for the Super Bowl party,” Jacoby says. “The intense escalation of the issue has created a public numbness. Our goal is to use creativity to unite.”