The new 39-acre Sweetwater Park opened earlier this month in Chula Vista. It’s located on the edge of San Diego Bay, adjacent to Sweetwater Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. It you’ve had a chance to visit the public park and walk its nature trails, you’ve no doubt seen a towering 25-foot tall sculpture that looks exactly like a wishbone!
The steel sculpture, created by artist Roberto Salas, is titled Rigors of Flight.
Why the wishbone shape? The wishbone is a forked bone found in most birds. It strengthens the bird’s skeleton, helping it to withstand the rigors of flight. Birds are plentiful in the park!
I walked through Sweetwater Park yesterday and approached the sculpture. I took these photographs.
…
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 huge mural you see in my first five photographs is relatively new, I believe. Today was the first time I saw it, while riding the Orange Line of the San Diego Trolley.
The cool artwork has been spray painted on the corner of SA Recycling, at the corner of Commercial Street and 30th Street. It includes images of masked lucha libre wrestlers.
I’ve tried to find out more about the mural, but no success yet, apart from seeing graffiti artist signatures @killadoom422 and @misterhir.
If you know more, please leave a comment!
UPDATE!
I later learned, during an event at the Comic-Con Museum, that the large lucha libre mural depicts Rey Mysterio, his uncle Rey Misterio, son Dominik, and wrestlers Psicosis and Konnan. It was painted by artist Dentlok!
Awesome stuff!
Another mural is being painted on the side of the same building, but facing Commercial Street. No artist was there when I happened by.
Outlined are musicians and more wrestlers.
If I see this cool art completed in the future, I’ll post photos in an update!
Speaking of SA Recycling, the long fence around the opposite (east) end of their facility features lots of superhero spray paint art. I took photographs back in late 2018 when that art was being created. Check it out here!
…
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.
This beautiful mural was painted in 2023 at the Copley-Price Family YMCA. The title is It Takes a Village. I saw it today for the first time!
The colorful artwork was designed by muralist Hanna Gundrum (@littlehouseink) and painted by over 175 members of the community. The theme is “It takes a village to raise a child.”
You can find the mural on 43rd Street, just north of El Cajon Boulevard, on a fence outside the preschool.
According to a posted sign, the mural serves to tell a story about the importance of community care and advocacy, through sheer resilience, nurturing, and hope when it comes to navigating the challenges and triumphs of child care.
You can read an article about the mural’s creation by checking out this webpage. The mural project was led by ArtReach in partnership with Children First Collective San Diego and the Copley-Price Family YMCA.
Look how bright and vibrant the mural is!
I took the following sequence of photographs moving left to right…
Written inside the heart: Well-being is the pursuit of mental, physical, social, financial, spiritual and environmental health.
…
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.
A free art contest and exhibit for seniors in San Diego will be accepting submissions in a few days!
The City of San Diego’s AgeWell Services Art Contest & Exhibit will welcome artwork in these six categories: Acrylic, Mixed Media, Oil, Pastel, Watercolor and Drawing. Participants in the free contest must be age 60 or better.
You still have plenty of time! One entry per person will be accepted between April 11 and April 28, 2025.
Drop your creation off at the Cathy Hopper Friendship Center, PDLC Community Center, Balboa Park Senior Lounge, Bay Terraces Senior Center, or the San Ysidro Teen Center. For the days and times each location is open, see the above photograph of the contest flyer.
For even more information, you can phone AgeWell Services at 619-525-8247.
Feeling inspired?
…
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.
Fashion Redux 2025 will soon be opening at the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park!
The extraordinary exhibition will include opulent garments created by renowned designers (including Hollywood’s legendary Irene Sharaff) worn between 1940 and 1988 during iconic San Diego events. They will be displayed along with unique creations by San Diego Mesa College students, who were inspired by the past styles and elegance.
I was wandering through the History Center yesterday when I noticed the exhibition is being set up in one gallery. I snapped the above photo.
Fashion Redux 2025 will be ready to go on April 10th–that’s this coming Thursday!
If you’ve never been to the San Diego History Center, located near the center of beautiful Balboa Park, why not go check it out? It’s a museum full of history, culture and amazing, important works of art!
…
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 Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park has opened a fascinating exhibition titled Reconsidering Bierstadt: Kent Monkman. Visitors to the fine art museum are encouraged to compare two similar but very different works: Albert Bierstadt‘s 1864 painting Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall, and First Nation Cree artist Kent Monkman‘s 2012 work The Fourth World.
The photograph above shows Kent Monkman’s painting (on loan from the Denver Art Museum) which reimagines the Bierstadt piece in the light of a different perspective.
Bierstadt’s oil painting conveys a sense of rustic tranquility and natural beauty; the somewhat shocking bottom portion of Monkman’s bolder, brighter acrylic piece shows bison being frightened and funneled in Yosemite through sheer steel walls by white men with guns.
Monkman’s contemporary painting clearly expresses that an environment can be forcibly altered by the actions of humans. Like any good art, the image ignites complex thought.
I’m no expert when it comes to the history of Yosemite. Doing some online research, I was surprised to learn that, according to a National Park Service Facebook post: Here in Yosemite, though, bison have never roamed.
Here’s the bottom portion of The Fourth World:
The next photograph is of Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall. It’s darker, vaguer, somehow more sublime. (The docent thought perhaps the painting needs to be cleaned.)
This Smithsonian website has a better photograph and explains: Bierstadt was inspired to paint Yosemite after seeing Carleton Watkins’s photographs in a New York gallery in 1862…In 1864, the year Bierstadt painted this view, President Abraham Lincoln set aside Yosemite as a protected reserve…
Head down to the Timken Museum of Art when they’re open and observe both canvases up close. When I visited, a friendly docent was standing by to answer questions and provide more insight.
The Timken, which contains many painted masterpieces, is always free! The exhibition will continue through June 8th, 2025.
…
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.
It’s sad that the Ocean Beach Pier has become so storm damaged that it is now permanently closed and must be rebuilt. If there’s a tiny silver lining to this very dark cloud, it’s that the locked gate at the pier’s foot has become the home of OB LOVE.
Ladies at the Ocean Beach Main Street Association informed me this mosaic art was created by members of the OB community a year ago. A San Diego lifeguard who was watching the pier agreed that it’s really cool!
Each small tile in the mosaic contains a photograph of Ocean Beach. I had to take a closer look…
…
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.
San Diego and its surrounding region is so beautiful. There’s the coast and the hills and canyons and mountains, all fantastic subjects for painters of landscapes. A group of artists from North County has captured some of this beauty.
The Rancho Santa Fe Art Guild is now presenting their exhibition Beautiful San Diego Landscapes in Balboa Park. The exhibit can be freely experienced by anyone who ventures into Gallery 21 of Spanish Village Art Center. The gallery hours are 11 am to 4 pm. The exhibition continues through April 7, 2025.
Most of the pieces I saw depict picturesque spots in San Diego, including beaches, Point Loma, La Jolla, San Diego Bay and the rugged landscapes of East County. I noticed flowers fill quite a few canvases, too.
I enjoyed a short talk with smiling artist Linda and learned all of the pieces in the exhibit are for sale. She confided that buyers can negotiate the price. If you’re searching for some very fine artwork you should come on by!
A few examples…
Flower Fields in Carlsbad, by Linda Bourne-Marcos.Torrey Pines at La Jolla Shores, by Laura Wheeler.San Diego Spring, by Anne Benkendorf.
…
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.
Each work by 35 Southern California artists is like a unique story that invites you to think, interpret, dream–and thereby become part of the same story. Your inclusion in each artwork’s story might be untold, but it is real.
The museum’s collection contains diverse pieces in different styles, some by highly renowned artists such as John Baldessari and James Hubbell.
I was surprised to learn the Baldessari piece in the exhibit was painted circa 1959, before the artist burned “all” of his work. His Wikipedia page explains: In 1970, Baldessari and five friends[8] burnt all of the paintings he had created between 1953 and 1966 as part of a new piece, titled The Cremation Project. The ashes from these paintings were baked into cookies… This painting survived.
Here are a few photos. If you’d like to become an integral part of these stories, visit the Oceanside Museum of Art by August 31, 2025.
(Forest), John Baldessari, circa 1959. Oil and mixed media on canvas.Star Stalker, Walter Wojtyla, 1996. Acrylic on canvas.Influx, Toni Williams, 2023. Oil on canvas.Untitled (Two Figures with Purple/Pink/Orange Skies), Janet Cooling, 1980s. Oil on canvas.
The following James Hubbell watercolor includes a poem that he wrote in 2004. To read it, visit the museum!
The exhibition also includes two small, typically beautiful Hubbell sculptures.
In the Beginning, James Hubbell, circa 2007. Watercolor.
…
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.
This cool street art painted on a long wall is visible from Highland Avenue at the Vision Culture Foundation in National City. When I recently walked by they appeared to be closed. I paused to take these photographs from the sidewalk just outside their gate entrance.
Here’s the Vision Culture Foundation website. The organization focuses on creative arts, and their center strives to empower and uplift youth and the community. They are a safe space that nurtures goals and dreams.
Check it out!
…
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! 