You know how the windows of Sweet Things Frozen Yogurt at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront are painted every year for Comic-Con? The same artist, Shirish Villaseñor (@shirishtheartist), has painted beautiful scenes from around the San Diego area inside the yogurt shop!
I noticed the colorful art a few days ago when I dropped in to purchase something to drink. So I took photos of this unexpected treat!
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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 X.
Today is World Photography Day. I didn’t realize that until I met a photographer in Balboa Park, aiming an interesting camera at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion.
What sort of camera is that? I asked. Anton told me he was using a daguerreotype camera. He was utilizing photographic technology that was revolutionary and popular in the mid-1800s!
Daguerreotype was the first publicly available photographic process, producing the black and white images you’ve probably seen in historical exhibits or documentaries.
If you’d like to check out Anton’s fascinating The Photo Palace blog, here it is. His site features a variety of cool photographs he has taken.
Anton explains in his blog: Working with analog photographic methods, with concentration on daguerreotype and wet plate collodion methods, Photo Palace offers original art, commissions on location and in studio, as well as workshops, magic lantern shows, and other interactive programs.
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Enjoy several photographs of the beautiful mural at Foodshed’s new location in City Heights. It was painted by Rachel Venancio (@rachelmurals) earlier this summer. It’s dedicated to female farmers and mothers everywhere.
Foodshed is a small farm cooperative. They provide underserved neighborhoods with fresh, healthful and affordable food from over 40 farms.
They have a market open here at 4089 Fairmount Avenue on Saturdays from 9 am to 12 pm. It’s called the City Heights Food Farmacy.
Foodshed also offers Farm Box Subscriptions with food pickup locations around San Diego County, or delivered to your home or place of work.
A Farm 2 School program is coming soon.
Learn all about Foodshed’s programs at their website here.
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
The Guam Artist Collective exhibited some of their work today in San Diego. The public could meet four of the collective’s artists in Balboa Park’s Hall of Nations during the House of Chamorros Hafa Adai Festival!
The Guam Artist Collective seeks to recruit more members in San Diego and beyond. The Guam Artist Collective showcases the vibrant talents of 10 passionate Guam-based artists, celebrating the island’s unique artistic culture.
If you’re curious to learn more about the Guam Artist Collective, here’s their Instagram page.
I also found two pages concerning the group and their 19Forgotten exhibition, where you can see some fine examples of their work. Here and here.
Neeko David had his great art posters on display.Zard Apuya Art fills this table.Magnets are used by Kenneth Paulino Jr. of Kottura Innovations to create animated videos concerning Chamorro legends.Jenna Aguon Makaka-Bali Tres, a tattoo artist, shows some of her artwork in Balboa Park’s Hall of Nations.
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
What will the city of San Diego look like 100 years in the future? I was curious how today’s generative AI might picture it.
I used the prompt “San Diego 100 years in the future” with the AI Drawing Assist on a Samsung Galaxy phone. The images that were produced were rather startling!
Futuristic buildings, exotic elevated walkways and new modes of transportation…but how realistic is it to believe such radical transformations could be made in only one hundred years? (Um…anti-gravity?)
Nevertheless, this is pretty cool!
I see identifiable aspects of the present city skyline are incorporated into images, as well as San Diego Bay. Notice how certain recognizable buildings are arbitrarily positioned or weirdly altered by the artificial intelligence?
I love how lush green vegetation sprouts everywhere including the roofs and sides of many buildings. I love how curvy and absurdly complicated some of the conjectured architecture is!
(Earlier this year, I performed a similar experiment. I used the term “Balboa Park at sunset” to produce generative AI images in the same way. The results were bizarre. This is what I got!)
Okay–now for today’s experiment. AI draws the future of San Diego…
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
The old Barracks 5 at Liberty Station might seem abandoned and lifeless if it weren’t for beautiful fiber art decorating a row of screened windows.
Tied is the title of this public art.
Fashioned from 550 knotted cords in 2022, the colorful patterns were created by Cat Chiu Phillips of San Diego, spouse of a USMC veteran. You can see a description of Tied and other current works of public art at Liberty Station by clicking here.
Tied blends traditional rigging and knotting techniques with various fiber art techniques as a nod to US Navy’s seamanship training. It pays honor to the Naval Training Center’s historical significance…
Many years ago I documented more artwork created by Cat Chiu Phillips. That art was on display in downtown San Diego at Horton Plaza before the shopping mall was shut down. See those photos here.
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
When I was a kid, one of the best things about Sunday morning was opening up the newspaper to find the funny pages. Lying there on the carpet, going through the comic strips, was like falling through two-dimensional doors into so many magical universes.
I must admit that as a boy I often skipped over the comic strip Luann. But now I have a new appreciation for the Luanniverse, because yesterday I enjoyed an exhibit at San Diego’s Comic-Con Museum: Growing Up Luann.
I hadn’t realized Luann’s universe was so vast and complex. Luann herself, and the strip’s large cast of characters, experience evolving relationships, lifelike troubles and humorous situations that stimulate in the reader a range of emotions. But Luann’s essential happiness is never far away.
The award-winning strip was launched in 1985 and continues to this very day. That’s forty years of living. Fortunately, time in Luann’s universe unfolds very slowly!
What interests me most about the comic strip is its evolution–both the art and Luann’s story. By reading the displays, one can follow the creative process undertaken by Luann’s creator, writer and artist Greg Evans.
Visitors to the exhibit learn how fleshing out a beloved character and her universe took years of dreaming, experimentation and work. And how the effort has resulted in worldwide popularity and the National Cartoonist Society’s ultimate award, a Reuben.
Are you fascinated by the creative process? Do you love art? Do you love Luann?
Pay this exhibit a visit!
A bit of what you’ll discover…
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Super cool! These great comic book paintings at the Comic-Con Museum were created by students from Westview High School!
Students of Westview art teacher Keith Opstad produced these speed paintings during the San Diego Comic-Con Museum’s First Annual Educator’s Night in 2024.
These really are speed paintings? Made while teachers from around San Diego watched? Wow–that’s truly amazing!
Iron Man, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn and Batman make a splash on a wall inside the museum’s second floor Makerspace.
I noticed that today, in the Makerspace, guests could use beads to create a starry sky and constellation, then tell a story about it! The activity is called Constellations Across the WHOniverse. Why? An epic Doctor Who exhibition is now showing at the Comic-Con Museum!
UPDATE!
During my next visit to the Comic-Con Museum, I noticed Superman had appeared, too!
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Should you walk down University Avenue in City Heights, you might notice bright, colorful artwork in the alley just east of Mid-City Church of the Nazarene. Turn into the alley and you’ll discover three positive murals that promote love and hope!
I made this discovery myself on Saturday, as I walked through City Heights during the Beautify the Block community cleanup. When I circled to the rear of Mid-City Church of the Nazarene, I met one of the friendly pastors engaged in their twice a week food distribution. She told me the artwork was completed very recently!
I know you’ll enjoy seeing these murals, too.
I notice the first mural, Better Together, is signed @littlehouseink and is a collaboration with Mid-City Nazarene and LoveWorks. That name is appropriate. In essence, the work of art is about love.
This next mural with rainbows threading through a heart contains Hope in many languages. It’s signed Rachel Venancio and Loveworks.
(I walked past this second mural for the above alley photo. You can glimpse the first mural in the distance to the right, next to University Avenue.)
And a bit farther down the alley we have a wise quote by Martin Luther King Jr.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Cool San Diego Sights! 