
On Saturday, the Bonita Museum and Cultural Center brought part of their Border Blasters exhibition to the World Design Capital’s temporary Exchange Pavilion in Balboa Park!
Border Blasters is an exhibition by artists from Mexico and the United States that explores the impact of Tijuana and San Diego radio, television and music in the region. As experienced by those who live on either side of the border, the diverse media coming via the airwaves is seen and heard by many eyes and ears.
The art of Border Blasters celebrates this unique, shared culture.
As I walked through Balboa Park yesterday, the first thing that attracted me to the Exchange Pavilion (the orange structure that stands at the center of the Plaza de Panama) was a gigantic skull! The skull has a name: Francisco!
The colorful sculpture, made of paper mache and other materials, was created by artist Maricruz Alvarado. That’s her above, standing by Francisco!


Francisco is hollow and very light. He can be wheeled around! I stepped inside the big skull and this is what I saw. Images of the band La Cruz!


Next, I noticed what appeared to be rows of seashells arranged inside the Exchange Pavilion. They were created by Endangered Concepts. I learned they are actually composed of compressed unrecyclable plastic!
One of the sculptures I was shown was made to appear like a Pacific Triton Conch. Blowing through it produced a trumpeting sound!



Next, I spied a strange musical invention. It’s called QUADRA. The conceptual art piece is by multi-disciplinary artist and San Diego native Jason Soares. You turn the square dials and different electronic sounds are generated!
Jason was still setting everything up when I took these photos.
As one sign explained, QUADRAs FRONTERAs configures the QUADRA for the first phase of a multi-location quadraphonic autonomous zone that seeks to connect multiple geographic locations together. All I know is the generated sound coming from the speakers was very cool!




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