I’m not sure when the Cat Cult mural was painted in North Park, but it’s been on a parking lot wall off Ohio Street just north of University Avenue since at least 2013. The colors have faded and in places the paint has peeled away.
As far as I can determine, this cool mural is the creation of widely known artists Surge and Persue–I do recognize the latter’s Bunny Kitty character. I’ve also read Cat Cult is a graffiti/street art collective that operates primarily in Los Angeles.
Whatever it’s exact history might be, this mural is definitely awesome!
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The nation of Australia presented the City of San Diego with many beautiful plants in 1976 for the United States Bicentennial. These plants can be found in Balboa Park’s seldom visited, little known Australian Garden.
Should you drive into the heart of Balboa Park by turning from Park Boulevard onto Presidents Way, you’ll glimpse the top of the Australian Garden to your right. To see most of the native Australian trees and shrubs, however, you must drive or carefully walk down winding, slightly steep Paseo de Oro, which motorists pass just before they reach the large parking lot behind the Spreckels Organ Pavilion. Look for the Gold Gulch Remote Parking Lot sign. There’s no sidewalk!
You can also reach the Australian Garden by walking south down Gold Gulch Trail, which begins near El Prado at the Zoro Garden. The trail passes under the Space Theater Way bridge near the Fleet Science Center and continues along the east side of the Japanese Friendship Garden. Once you see a fenced area where the green Balboa Park shuttles are stored, you’re there!
Plants in the Australian Garden, according to this page, include: “Grevellia, Acacia, Callistemon, Banksia, Hakea, Stenocarpus, Leptospermum, Melaleuca, and Eucalyptus.” There are no signs in Gold Gulch Canyon at the garden, but apparently there are plans to create trails in this area of Balboa Park and erect an informational kiosk.
In 1935, this small canyon was the home of Gold Gulch, a popular attraction at Balboa Park’s California Pacific International Exposition. According to Wikipedia, Gold Gulch was an “Old West mining town-ghost town re-creation for fairgoers to experience the atmosphere of a mining boomtown… Gold Gulch inspired and influenced subsequent Western theme parks…Examples include the Calico Ghost Town…and the “Ghost Town” section of Knott’s Berry Farm… and Frontierland by Walt Disney.…”
The above photo of the “hidden” Australian Garden was taken from a point above the canyon, behind the WorldBeat Cultural Center and Centro Cultural de la Raza.
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Here’s the Cool San Diego Sights main page, where you can read the most current blog posts. If you’re using a phone or small mobile device, click those three parallel lines up at the top–that opens up my website’s sidebar, where you’ll see the most popular posts, a search box, and more!
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High school students attending The Waldorf School of San Diego were painting a large, colorful mural in City Heights today!
I swung by the corner of University Avenue and Wilson Avenue this afternoon to see how their public art project is progressing.
The Waldorf School has teamed up with the organization Love City Heights to spread culture and beauty and positive messages in this east San Diego community! I’m told more murals might be forthcoming!
This particular mural was designed by members of the school’s Social Justice Club.
The inspiration is American author Audre Lorde. According to Wikipedia: “As a poet she is best known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life. Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, illness and disability, and the exploration of black female identity…”
I observed that lots of students have participated in creating the mural.
Each hand, holding a paintbrush, has spread human kindness.
UPDATE!
I checked out the completed mural a couple days later!
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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!
I walked through the Gaslamp Quarter this afternoon and noticed several bars, eateries and shops are ready for St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow! All sorts of Irish green could be seen as I walked down the sidewalk.
(Unfortunately, I also noticed numerous places appear to have closed permanently, most likely due to the prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns.)
Lucky’s shamrock isn’t green, but apparently it’s lucky anyway!I’m not sure if that’s a case of green beer, but it seems worth a video, anyway!
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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!
Perhaps you remember a blog post from years ago, when I shared photographs of the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial in La Jolla, with its beautiful sculpture of a young girl dipping her finger into a pool of water. For photos of the sculpture, and to learn more, click here.
On Saturday I headed to La Jolla again to photograph playful images carved on the back of the nearby marble bench. I added contrast to my photos, so you can see the fine, fluid carvings of children making music and dancing, and the lines from Robert Louis Stevenson’s beloved A Child’s Garden of Verses.
Like the original sculpture, which was commissioned by the City of San Diego (and which went missing in 1996, to be replaced by a different sculpture) this curved marble bench was created by James Tank Porter in 1926. Inscribed in the front of the bench are the words: “Presented to the people of La Jolla by the people of San Diego, in honor and appreciation of Ellen Browning Scripps.”
The happy, carefree carvings make me wish I were a child again.
The world is so full of a number of things……I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.
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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!
On Saturday I enjoyed another meandering walk through the Village of La Jolla. I had only one destination in mind: the rear of a bench at the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial. You’ll see why in a coming blog post!
As I walked along I photographed whatever caught my fancy. The murals you see here I haven’t documented in the past.
The Bishop’s School tower. Designed by noted architect Carleton Monroe Winslow, the Bishop Johnson Tower was added to St. Mary’s Chapel in 1930.Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial by the La Jolla Recreation Center. (Stay tuned for photos of beautiful public art on the other side of that bench!)Looking out at the Pacific Ocean from the edge of Ellen Browning Scripps Park.Many people stop to look at sea lions down on the rocks.People walk along or buy treats on a Saturday by La Jolla Cove.Gazing down at popular La Jolla Cove.Mermaids drink free!The Cave Store is where you can enter Sunny Jim’s Sea Cave through an old bootlegger’s tunnel.Raymond Chandler at the Whaling Bar, 2018, Raul Guerrero. One of the Murals of La Jolla.Unity in Diversity. Mural by Gennaro Garcia.La Valencia Hotel seen from across Prospect Street. The Pink Lady of La Jolla has been a destination of the Hollywood elite, built in 1926.St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church. The 1928 tower was designed by Louis Gill, based on images from Campo Florida in Mexico.Front of La Jolla Woman’s Club. California’s first tilt-up concrete building, it was designed by pioneering architect Irving Gill in 1912.A mural I spotted on Pearl Street.Fresheria mural on Pearl Street, by @el_pekaso
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This blog now features thousands of photos around San Diego! Are you curious? There’s lots of cool stuff to check out!
Here’s the Cool San Diego Sights main page, where you can read the most current blog posts. If you’re using a phone or small mobile device, click those three parallel lines up at the top–that opens up my website’s sidebar, where you’ll see the most popular posts, a search box, and more!
To enjoy future posts, you can also “like” Cool San Diego Sights on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.
Today I noticed that two more SDG&E utility boxes are being painted for the San Diego Museum of Art’s cool project Young Art: Outside the Frame!
These two boxes can be found on Park Boulevard, just north of the City College trolley station. They are located in front of several large colorful murals by @ladieswhopaint that I blogged about here.
These are two boxes of 25 total that will be painted. To see five other boxes that I’ve already spied, and to learn more about Young Art: Outside the Frame, check out two recent blog posts here and here!
The box you see in the first few photos is being painted by professional artist Alyssa Stewart. She showed me a copy of the original artwork that was selected from many pieces in the San Diego Museum of Art’s upcoming Young Art exhibition.
The second utility box is being painted by artist Lucy Helle. Check out her Instagram page here. She also showed me a copy of the original youth art she is working from.
I plan to post more photos as I discover more boxes, and update as boxes are completed! Stay tuned!
UPDATE!
I swung by a few days later and these two boxes appear to be finished!
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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!
Stand by the water at La Jolla Cove and look up toward the buildings on the hill above you. Is that the ocean up there, too?
See that lone palm tree painted on a building with a cloud shaped like a brain hovering above it? That’s one of the Murals of La Jolla, and it’s the creation of an internationally famous conceptual artist, John Baldessari. His Brain/Cloud (with Seascape and Palm Tree), 2011, can be viewed up close by diners at the George’s at the Cove restaurant.
John Baldessari explained: “A brain can look like a cloud if you manipulate it in the right way. We see things in clouds. It looks like it’s hovering almost from outer space. I like banal images and I can’t think of anything more banal than a palm tree and an ocean.”
In the present day, with the rising importance of artificial intelligence and cloud computing, this curious image might suggest something quite different!
Born in National City, Baldessari grew up in San Diego. According to Wikipedia: “In 1959, Baldessari began teaching art in the San Diego school system. He taught for nearly three decades, in schools and junior colleges and community colleges, and eventually at the university level. When the University of California decided to open up a campus in San Diego, the new head of the Visual Art Department, Paul Brach, asked Baldessari to be part of the originating faculty in 1968…” He passed away last year.
Baldessari’s work has been the subject of over 200 national and international solo exhibitions, and his awards are numerous. His provocative art often poses unusual questions, poking at accepted norms, directing the viewer’s perception and mind in unexpected directions.
In the past I’ve photographed a couple other representations of his art, which you can see 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!
I was walking through La Jolla’s scenic Ellen Browning Scripps Park, gazing at the ocean, when I came upon a friendly artist selling some prints and a decorative surfboard. I soon learned that she is also a muralist, and that she has painted a very colorful mural in La Jolla’s Arcade Building!
So afterward I guided my feet in that direction!
Melanie Sojourner-Truth Atesalp is the artist’s name. Now that I’ve read her bio, I can see why her smile is so deep.
Her unique background and life experiences can be read at her website here. She’s all about imagination and laughter, healing and wisdom. She designed the large mural at the new SDSU Healing Garden and Meditation Space. Right now she’s concentrating on creating graphic novels and writing children’s literature.
If you like the mural you’re about to see, check out her website where there is art you can purchase!
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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 last standing part of old San Diego Stadium, once home of the football Chargers and baseball Padres, is about to fall. Meanwhile, San Diego State University’s new Mission Valley campus has begun to rise!
I took photos this morning from the west side of the now vanished stadium parking lot that show the final section of stands being demolished. In the foreground, you can see the grading and initial construction work that will ultimately result in SDSU Mission Valley!
I posted photographs of earlier stages of the stadium’s demolition that were taken from its east side here.
To learn more about the future SDSU Mission Valley, its new Aztec Stadium, River Park and more, check out this web page!
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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!
Cool San Diego Sights! 