This evening, shoppers at the Fashion Valley mall enjoyed dragon and lion dances! It’s another fun celebration of the Lunar New Year in San Diego!
I swung by after work to experience the festive scene.
Members of the Southern Sea Dragon and Lion Dance Association performed near the center of the mall, then marched up and down past shops on the ground level, attracting a crowd of onlookers.
Drums and cymbals followed the energetic procession. Kids were delighted. Dollar bills were being placed into lion mouths to bring good luck in the new year. One small lion was aglow with colored lights!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Near the center of Lindo Lake stands the Boathouse, originally built in 1887.
I walked around the charming boathouse last weekend. It was like strolling through a gentle, pastoral painting.
The canvas was painted with water, trees, white roses, mountains, blue sky and many birds, including Canada and domestic geese, egrets, and mallard ducks.
Enjoy these photographs of tranquil beauty on a winter’s Sunday.
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Healthy food, art and books are easily accessible to residents in National City’s Old Town neighborhood. Take a look!
During my incredible tour around National City last month, Patty Corona of Olivewood Gardens and Learning Center showed me how positive changes have come to a community that has been historically underserved.
Many liquor stores in National City now offer fresh fruits and vegetables, thanks to students at San Diego State University who operate nonprofit BrightSide Produce Distribution. National City residents who rely on fast food restaurants, or who have difficulty traveling to distant supermarkets, are able to purchase fresh produce within several blocks of their home. The availability of fruits and vegetables at many corner liquor stores has made it easier for lower-income residents to find healthy, nutritious food.
In the case of Big B Market & Deli in National City’s Old Town neighborhood, not only are fresh veges available, but a whole lot of inspiring art has been installed around the building! Mosaics on planters and walls and a very colorful mural were all created with the help of A Reason To Survive (ARTS), an organization in National City that uplifts and inspires at-risk youth.
And there’s a cheerful little free library box outside the store that promotes literacy, too!
At the corner of 16th Street and Coolidge Avenue, many good things are in reach for body, mind and soul!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Colorful mosaic art can be found all around Kimball Park in National City. I spotted this wall covered with cheerful mosaics during one of my recent adventures in the South Bay.
The low wall, on the north side of Kimball Park, is filled with bright, beautiful trees and houses and animals and musical notes. The designs are fashioned from tiles, bits of ceramic and glass. I believe it was another project of A Reason To Survive (ARTS) whose building rises just a few steps to the north.
The lighting wasn’t ideal with alternating bright sunlight and shadow, and the artwork appeared dulled by time and weather, so I’ve altered my photographs slightly, in an attempt to make the colors more vibrant.
You can check out several other amazing mosaics in the immediate area by clicking here or here or here!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Here are my photographs from the mural in an Ocean Beach alley that I mentioned about a week ago!
While I was walking along Bacon Street, I thought I saw what appeared to be colorful graffiti down an alley. So I checked it out.
This delightfully crazy mural depicting a fisherman off Sunset Cliffs, a guy eating a sandwich while riding a shark, and what appears to be a lobster mariachi, was spray painted on the north side of OB Quik Stop Liquor & Deli. You have to proceed down the alley behind the building to view it.
I saw what might be a signature, but I’m not really sure who created this cool street art. According to Google Street View it has existed for at least a couple years.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
The small mountain will rise from The Map of the Grand Canyons of La Jolla, in a plaza filled with educational artwork at Kellogg Park.
I learned about this wonderful project on Saturday during my walk along the La Jolla Shores beach boardwalk.
The sculpture will depict canyons running from Mount Soledad down deep into the Pacific Ocean. Those visiting The Map of the Grand Canyons of La Jolla Educational Plaza will be able to visualize in three dimensions what is shown in two dimensions in the large, colorful mosaic at their feet.
The Grand Canyons of La Jolla project is the work of the Walter Munk Foundation For the Oceans, which is responsible for the The Map mosaic in the plaza, plus signs and another nearby sculpture.
The Map mosaic is the plaza’s extraordinary centerpiece. It beautifully represents the local shoreline and underwater canyons in the San Diego-La Jolla Underwater Park Ecological Reserve.
Lines drawn in The Map concern ocean wave dynamics, calculated by Walter Munk, a world-renowned scientist who worked and taught for many years at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Over a hundred sea creatures also appear in the mosaic.
Signs at one edge of The Map detail the birds, fish and other marine life one might see above or below the water off La Jolla. A second completed sculpture, near the place where the small Mount Soledad will appear, concerns the Kumeyaay in the coastal region. It also shows intertidal sea life, cast in bronze.
Should you walk down the boardwalk (honorary Walter Munk Way) at La Jolla Shores beach, make sure to visit The Map. And watch for the coming of a second small Mount Soledad!
Walter Munk developed ocean wave prediction theory.
To learn more about Walter Munk’s scientific contribution during World War II, his groundbreaking work at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, his worldwide recognition, and why surfers love him, click here.
To watch a Walter Munk Foundation video concerning The Map click here.
Read an article about the mosaic’s debut in 2020 (replacing an earlier “map” at this location) by clicking here.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
I have no idea what this seat carved from a tree trunk at Lindo Lake County Park in Lakeside is called. Or whether it even has a name. So, for the fun of it, I’ll refer to it as the Leaf Throne!
Sit in this high chair near the southwest corner of Lindo Lake and you’ll have a perfect view of action at the Lakeside Skatepark!
Who created this? Apparently it was carved from a dead tree.
Very cool!
The mighty Leaf Throne commands this view:
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Look what I discovered during my travels today! New public artwork is now being painted on two low walls by the trolley station platform at the Euclid Transit Center!
When I saw the distinctive style, I guessed that the artist is Maxx Moses, who has other trolley station murals here and here. When I got home, I found this article confirming my suspicion!
And Maxx Moses will be painting a big wall at the nearby 47th Street trolley station, too! It’s part of a cool MTS project to enliven the Orange Line!
This Euclid Avenue Station art, titled Blossom, will eventually include many painted marigolds. Marigolds represent life’s fragility and spiritual endurance in Mexican culture. You often see these flowers during Dia de los Muertos.
I’ll post updated images at some point in the future!
UPDATE!
I visited the Euclid trolley station again in late February and took some more photos. I’m not sure whether the artwork is finished or still a work in progress…
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
There’s a fascinating exhibition now showing at the La Jolla Historical Society’s Wisteria Cottage Gallery. San Diego artists, after viewing artifacts in the La Jolla Historical Society’s archives, have created pieces that are inspired and informed by the past. The exhibition is titled Memory Traces: Artists Transform the Archive.
I visited the gallery inside the historic Wisteria Cottage yesterday. It’s free to the public and worth the time if you’re curious about local history or the creative process–or philosophy.
According to the La Jolla Historical Society’s description here: The exhibition draws its title from a 1925 essay by Sigmund Freud, in which he explored the way remembrance functions . . . The exhibition proposes that the archives’ contemporary value may, in fact, lie in its malleability . . . for critique, for expanding understandings of experience and of history, for transformation, and the creation of new narratives…
As I walked about looking at the pieces, I could see how this world we live in is a continuum, where past, present and future are entangled and inseparable, not unlike all the moments in our own lives.
I took photos of two examples of the artwork…
Historical photo of Spanish artist Eduardo Chillida’s sculpture Our Father’s House, installed in La Jolla Village in 1989 as part of an outdoor art exhibition. A study for a larger work later installed in Guernica, Spain, honoring lives lost during the Spanish Civil War.their father’s house, by artist Joe Yorty, 2022. A wood replica with photos and newspaper clippings concerning the building, movement and destruction of local buildings. An homage to past lives, including the artist’s own father.Cloth banner with words Matinee Today that was once used at La Jolla’s historic Granada Theatre.Matinee Today, by artist Allison Wiese, 2021. Photos of material from the past being used in present life in many different ways. The past persists. Nothing ever truly goes away.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Perceptive people strolling down the boardwalk at La Jolla Shores beach might encounter something both unexpected and wonderful.
Decorating the north and south sides of the La Jolla Shores Lifeguard Station are colorful tile mosaic panels that depict the sun and sea. The public art is titled Shorelines.
Shorelines was installed in 2012, and was created by award-winning San Diego artist Mary Lynn Dominguez.
I really like this beachy artwork! It’s swirly and bubbly and captures the mood of the nearby beach. Looking at the panels is like glimpsing a bright, abstract world through horizonal windows.
You can learn more about Shorelines, which is part of San Diego’s Civic Art Collection, here!
At the front of the lifeguard station, facing the boardwalk, I also noticed a plaque. It remembers Ron Trenton.
The plaque is a bit corroded, as you can see in my photograph. It reads:
Now Comes the Lifeguard, Back to the Sea, Where He Found Action, Where He Found Peace, Where He Saved Others With Selfless Devotion and Where He Risked All With a Smile of Emotion
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
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