Dozens of faces have appeared in artwork that, when finished, will be one of San Diego’s most impressive murals. The 263-foot mural is being spray painted on a long wall at the south end of Teralta Neighborhood Park, directly over Interstate 15!
Unity in the Community is the name of the new, very colorful City Heights mural, and it’s being created by San Diego graffiti artist Sake.
In addition to important City Heights landmarks like the Euclid Tower, Silverado Ballroom, City Heights/Weingart Library and Central Elementary School, the mural depicts many faces from this diverse San Diego community.
As I walked along the mural from right to left, I saw images of children in playground swings and riding bikes, musicians playing instruments, kids playing volleyball, basketball and soccer in the park, happy dogs, smiling families, youth graduating from school, and proud neighborhood residents from all walks of life.
The mural, which is being painted in an area known for gang activity, is meant to inspire those who see it with its positive, hopeful, unifying imagery.
I took these photographs several days ago. I plan to post additional photos as the mural progresses.
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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!
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Three years ago I enjoyed an amazing tour of artist James Watts’ studio in downtown San Diego. See those photos here.
The small creative space (home of what he calls on his Instagram page The James E Watts Institute of Artistic Behavior) is one of the most fantastic and inspiring places you’ll ever visit. Every inch is crammed with inexhaustible imagination and obvious love of life.
Whenever I walk down Seventh Avenue past the James E. Watts Studio, I peer into the front windows to see what works he has chosen to display.
This morning I was delighted by an explosion of art…
Choose happy.
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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!
Monumental public art debuted late last year, when the new San Diego Fire-Rescue Department Station 50 opened in University City. I saw the artwork for the first time on Saturday and took these photographs!
The huge metal sculpture on the building’s side represents “blue” Rose Creek running through “coppery” Rose Canyon, which the fire station is positioned above!
The artist, Susan Zoccola, has an assortment of great photos on her website, including images taken at night when the sculpture is lit. (I had to take my own shots into the sunlight. A little photo editing produced the results you see here.)
At first sight I thought the bluish wire-like tubes that compose the river represent smoke! Or perhaps the tall grass by the sidewalk! But, no. The vertically arranged river runs across perforated copper layers that intentionally appear like a topographic map–the type of map firefighters often use.
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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!
Lorena Correa, a tattoo and mural artist from Bogotá, Colombia, completed painting a very cool mural a couple weeks ago at Super Cocina in City Heights!
If you like her detailed artwork, check out her Instagram @lorenaskunkrocker. You’ll see lots of hyenas!
This cool mural fills in a wall that features some earlier murals. It’s the latest addition to San Diego’s big outdoor art gallery that continues to grow in City Heights, on University Avenue between I-805 and I-15.
To see a couple other murals on the same wall at Super Cocina, click here and 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!
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!
Here’s an idea to consider if you’d like to help neighbors who could use a little food assistance.
While out on a recent walk, I spotted a refrigerator and some shelves in front of the Normal Heights United Methodist Church. A sign on the fridge stated FREE FOOD. I had to check it out.
Members of the church are participating in the SD Fridge Project, and the canned food and fresh vegetables near the church entrance are free for the taking. If anyone in the community is in a difficult place and could use some food, they are more than welcome to help themselves.
I read the info on a sheet taped to the refrigerator and learned more about the SD Fridge Project (@sdfridgeprojects). I took a photo so you can read it and perhaps become involved, too!
You can find the enlarged email address in an upcoming photograph, if you’d like to participate!
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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!
Today I watched an amazing demonstration of some hardcore martial arts!
I was walking around the North University Community Branch Library in University City when a flurry of action caught my attention. Several members of the San Diego Korean Karate Club were practicing in a space outside the building!
The super friendly guys got talking to me and when they learned I’m a San Diego blogger, they consented to do a demonstration for my camera!
The fighting style I saw was ridiculously fast, powerful, and absolutely impressive. They were demonstrating Chung Do Kwan, which, according to the San Diego Korean Karate Club website, was “taught to the Korean military by Master Won Kuk Lee and Master Duk Sung Son…” It’s some deadly serious stuff.
Of course, the San Diego Korean Karate Club, which operates at the Nobel Recreation Center and Athletic Fields, doesn’t engage in lethal moves, but they will teach you kicking, sparring and conditioning drills, plus self-defense situations and tactics. They also offer special self-defense classes for women.
I photographed 6th Degree Black Belt Master Joe Montanez sparring with 2nd Degree Black Belt Junior Instructor Santosh Jois and have selected a few pics.
Their moves and counter-moves were so fast I could barely follow the action. In combat I would have succumbed to either one of them in a matter of seconds!
Check it out!
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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!
An unusual mural was painted in Normal Heights this year. It can be viewed on Adams Avenue, in a nook where this Prince mural used to be, and across from this Kobe Bryant mural. It was painted by local street artists Hasler and Shark, who also created the nearby Kobe Bryant artwork.
I say this mural is unusual, because street art is usually more like graffiti or contemporary artwork–abstract, extremely bold, and with a typically rebellious vibe. One doesn’t expect to see the recreation of a traditional Old Master painting.
The image that dominates this mural is of Italian artist Caravaggio‘s religious painting Saint Jerome Writing, 1605–1606. Words spray painted in the background are the Caravaggio quote: “All works, no matter what or by whom painted, are nothing but bagatelles and childish trifles unless they are made and painted from life, and there can be nothing better than to follow nature.”
Caravaggio usually painted realistic human forms, with dramatic lighting that emphasized emotion. His very popular work would influence other famous Old Masters like Peter Paul Rubens, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Rembrandt.
I wonder what Caravaggio would think if he visited San Diego today and looked around. Probably that he’d been transported to an alien world!
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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!
City Heights is one of San Diego’s most culturally diverse communities.
Over the decades, immigrants have arrived in waves from different parts of the world, making this neighborhood in east San Diego their new home.
So it’s not surprising to find public art in City Heights that celebrates diversity and the dynamic interaction of people who have converged from different places.
Cultural Fusion is an abstract sculpture that stands near the entrance of the La Maestra Community Health Center in City Heights. The public art was created in 2015 by local artist Jim Bliesner, in collaboration with Victor Chavez Metal Works.
I took these photographs today!
To me, the colorful shapes that compose Cultural Fusion appear like symbols and ideas and fragments of life that continually collide and intermix, joining in places, producing new offshoots, creating endless combinations of complexity and beauty.
It sort of looks like music.
That’s what happens when many people with very different life stories come together in one place.
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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!
If you’re a San Diego resident or visitor, I recommend going on a historical walking tour of Encinitas.
The free guided walks, which are led by a member of the Encinitas Historical Society, typically occur every two months and begin inside the society’s headquarters, a restored one-room 1883 schoolhouse. For the location, and to see the dates of upcoming walking tours, check out their website here.
Last Saturday I and a couple dozen others gathered at the old schoolhouse for the tour. The sky was overcast with May gray, but the cool temperature was perfect for a very active one and a half hour walk.
Our group headed south from the schoolhouse, checking out the two iconic Encinitas Boathouses and a few other historical homes and buildings. After a short eastward leg, we continued farther south down Coast Highway 101 to view the Golden Lotus Towers of the Self-Realization Fellowship from a distance, then headed back north passing numerous historical buildings until we reached Cottonwood Creek. Turning west, we followed the creek, climbed to a spot overlooking Moonlight Beach where we admired a Heritage Tree, then headed south a few blocks back to the old schoolhouse.
These photographs include sights I’d seen during a past walk in Encinitas. Back then I was on my own, wandering about randomly while knowing very little. The guided tour last weekend was extremely informative and I’ve provided a little bit of what I learned (and managed to jot down) in the photo captions.
If you want a great experience make sure to go on the tour yourself! Like every other beach city in San Diego’s North County, Encinitas has a rich history that is often surprising!
The unique Boathouses of Encinitas were built in 1927-1928 and were once called The Arks. They were constructed with recycled lumber from a dance pavilion and bath house that used to be located at Moonlight Beach.The Petrie House, in the Tudor-Cotswold Revival architectural style, was built in 1931. Every cement block was made by hand.The Self-Realization Fellowship Temple was originally the 1916 Mission School. The old Spanish architectural influences are still visible.To the south down Coast Highway 101 we could see the distinctive golden towers of the Self-Realization Fellowship ashram.The 1949 County Realty Building, now home of Encinitas 101 Main Street Association.A surfboard bench and photo of Main Street, Encinitas, California, looking west, circa 1947.Beautiful wood interior of the 1925 Payne Cleaners building. It is home to the longest laundry service business in San Diego County.Rustic-appearing buildings across the Coast Highway at The Lumberyard shopping center were inspired by history. Trains running on nearby tracks once delivered lumber to Encinitas here.Beautiful original glasswork decorates a historic building.The Daley Double saloon was called the Rendezvous in the 1930’s. It once housed an illegal poker parlor and boxing ring.Murals painted by Micaiah Hardison, born and raised in Encinitas.The original Encinitas sign was erected in 1928, removed in 1937 for a highway widening project, then duplicated and returned to the same location in 2000.The famous La Paloma Theater, also called Aubrey Austin Building, opened in 1928. Built in a Spanish Mission/Art Deco style.The sculpture Encinitas Child was created by local artist Manuelita Brown. A young girl was killed on the nearby road years ago.The popular, very colorful Surfing Madonna mural.
Last year I blogged about the Surfing Madonna mural with additional photos and information here.
Encinitas owes its origin to Cottonwood Creek, a source of water and wood on San Diego’s arid north coast. Trains coming down from Los Angeles stopped here. In 1881 the town of Old Encinitas was established.Members of our tour group look down at a huge frog at the edge of the creek.A large, rare Torrey pine tree, on a hilltop not far from the Pacific Ocean.The 2nd Heritage Tree of Encinitas. Planted in 1952, the huge Star Pine is lit during the holidays and Santa arrives on a firetruck from nearby Fire Station One.One of many quaint beach cottages built by the ocean in Encinitas.
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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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