Tag: art

Sea life mosaics installed at Chula Vista trolley station!

Gorgeous glass mosaics depicting sea life were recently installed at the E Street trolley station in Chula Vista. The artwork was created by Rainforest Art Project (@rainforestartproject). The mosaics are meant to inspire people traveling through San Diego’s South Bay. Eyes are encouraged to look out at the world with a sense of wonder.

The mosaics are part of the Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) Color the Corridor project. You might recall that a long mural has been painted on a wall just north of the same trolley station. See my blog post concerning that by clicking here.

A short video concerning these new sea life mosaics can be viewed here.

Many of the glass mosaics aren’t readily visible to passengers waiting for a trolley on the E Street station platform. As you can see from my next photograph, most of the fish, whales, birds and turtles overlook Interstate 5 below.

Hopefully drivers whizzing down the busy freeway or heading up the nearby off-ramp observe this incredible public art!

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Library exhibit celebrates Hubbell art in Mexico.

The Otay Mesa-Nestor Library currently has a great exhibit in their community room. Informative displays concern the work of renowned San Diego artist, architectural designer and sculptor James Hubbell in Mexico.

The exhibition, Architecture of Jubilation: Lado a Lado, was supposed to conclude in 2024, but has been extended. A librarian told me they’re hanging onto the exhibit as long as they can!

This afternoon I visited the library and gazed at photographs and descriptions of Hubbell’s amazing, organic architectural work in Mexico, including the elementary school Colegio La Esperanza in Tijuana, which he and thousands of community volunteers built.

Another display concerns his Kuchumaa Passage art park, which honors our region’s native Kumeyaay people. Hubbell, with artist Milenko Matanovic, assisted by more volunteers, created beauty on the grounds of Rancho La Puerta fitness spa and resort in Tecate, Mexico. The community-built art park would lead to the creation of Hubbell’s later Pacific Rim Park projects. (The one on Shelter Island–Pearl of the Pacific–can be seen here.)

Other Hubbell projects covered by the Architecture of Jubilation: Lado a Lado exhibit include the Museo Kumiai in Tecate, and Jardín de los Niños in Tijuana.

As one poster explains: Tijuana and San Diego are important cities that exist side by side, along a border that both divides and connects. James Hubbell honors this contradiction by using his art to bridge the border and build a tapestry of community. Thread by thread, Hubbell invites everyday people from Baja California and San Diego to join him in creating spaces of beauty and importance…

James Hubbell passed away last year, but his work will inspire many people and brighten our world far into the future.

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Historic mural inside La Jolla Post Office!

A stunning mural decorates the lobby of the United States Post Office in La Jolla. The historic mural is titled Scenic View of the Village. Completed in 1936 by renowned artist Belle Baranceanu, the 15′ x 12′ oil on canvas painting depicts part of La Jolla, looking down curvy Hillside Drive toward the Pacific Ocean.

Belle Baranceanu lived much of her life in San Diego. She painted several public murals locally for the Works Progress Administration. A past exhibit at the San Diego History Center celebrated her contributions. See my old post concerning that here. I’ve also photographed her mural The Progress of Man in Balboa Park. You can view it on my now inactive blog “Beautiful Balboa Park” by clicking here.

Baranceanu’s work has been exhibited in many of the nation’s finest museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Carnegie Institute, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Denver Art Museum.

She produced the La Jolla Post Office mural for the Section of Painting and Sculpture, a New Deal project that added artwork to numerous public buildings.

Would you like to see this beautiful mural with your own eyes? The address and lobby hours of La Jolla’s post office can be found 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.

Thank you for sharing!

Solana Beach street art along Lomas Santa Fe.

Enjoy street art that I discovered during a recent walk in Solana Beach down Lomas Santa Fe Drive.

These photos begin near Rios Avenue and proceed east to Solana Hills Drive, a block before Interstate 5.

The Solana Beach mural you see above is on the north side of Minute Shop Liquor. I believe it’s fairly new.

The other street art decorates electrical boxes. To bring out more color, I increased the contrast when I prepared the following images…

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Murals at Solana Beach Gateway Business Center.

You’ve possibly seen these large murals while driving along Interstate 5 at Lomas Santa Fe Drive. The beautiful artwork decorates several walls of the Solana Beach Gateway Business Center.

I took a very long walk through Solana Beach several days ago and made it a point to check these out!

The murals were painted by Encinitas resident Kevin Anderson. They are obviously inspired by local coastal scenes. Looking at the artist signatures, I see they were completed individually over the course of years.

Here’s the artist’s website. You’ve enjoyed photographs of Kevin Anderson’s art previously on Cool San Diego Sights. Here and here and here.

As you approach the Solana Beach Gateway Business Center building via its main driveway, you see this:

The next mural was completed on 9-25-20:

It appears that the next one, with the mermaid, was completed in 2021:

The next one showing a family walking down to the beach was painted in 2022. Is that Fletcher Cove?

I found no date for the last one. It’s my favorite. I see a Coaster train passing under the bridge at Torrey Pines State Beach!

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Meet children’s book illustrators at La Jolla library!

On Sunday, January 5, 2025, the public has the rare opportunity to meet professional children’s book writers and illustrators. The free event takes place in the Community Room of the La Jolla-Riford Library from 3 to 5 pm.

If you can’t make this very special event, swing by La Jolla’s library during its open hours to see artwork by these creators. They’re all members of the San Diego Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Dozens of their pieces are now displayed on the walls of the Community Room.

You can view this wonderful library exhibit, which is titled Stories Imagined, through February 24, 2025. All of the pieces can be purchased, too!

I checked out the imaginative art yesterday and took photos of several pieces I liked…

Orb Weaver’s Tightrope Dance, by Cheryl Boeller.
Beaver Hydrologist, by Michelle McCunney.
Distracted, by Livna Genchel.
Parental Unit (Betty Builds It), by Julie Hampton.

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Fourteen colorful, smiling faces in Hillcrest!

I love these electrical boxes in Hillcrest, on First Avenue near the entrance of Florence Elementary School!

Fourteen smiling faces were colorfully painted on the boxes years ago. I’m guessing young students held the brushes.

I finally got around to photographing the happy street art yesterday!

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

The Splinter in the Eye–of La Jolla.

The provocative title of the current exhibition at La Jolla’s Athenaeum Music & Arts Library is The Splinter in the Eye. Does artist Carlos Castro Arias want the viewer to remove the log in their own eye before offering criticism?

The mixed media, sensory installation challenges a naïve view of the world. To me, it appears to highlight historical disruptions and destruction resulting from developments brought on by civilization. It also suggests the ultimate failure of human ambition–the materialism and the conceits.

One thing is certain. These works by the artist can make one feel uneasy.

Severed limbs, the severed head of missionary priest Junipero Serra in a birdbath, visions of dripping blood and a baptismal pool of blood, bloodlike crosses projected onto the floor as if through the stained glass of a cathedral, dead taxidermy birds from a museum, fractured relics, plants growing through skeletons and blue jeans…all framed by rigid two-by-fours, as if the unstoppable construction of new things divides and overwhelms all.

Pieces in the exhibition have bizarre titles like Eating the Guts of Those Who Loved Me, Botox Against the Machine, Caffeine Overdose, and (don’t shoot the messenger, please!) Borderline Retarded. Yes, the effect of it all is rather depressing. Apart from representations of the ancient and the natural world, there seems to be little or nothing envisioned that is hopeful.

I know, many artists like to shock people with criticisms of modernity–in particular Western Civilization and its Christian heritage–but is the world of today really that bleak?

My question is: has the artist removed the log from his own eye?

Now I’m in trouble, I suppose.

Perhaps my attempt at interpretation is terribly uninformed. Perhaps I’m overreacting.

If you’d like to explore this bold artwork and come to your own conclusions, head on down to the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla before the exhibition ends on January 11, 2025.

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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.

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Frogman statue coming to Navy SEAL Museum San Diego!

A large bronze statue that honors Navy frogmen is planned for the new Navy SEAL Museum in San Diego, which is scheduled to open later this year at downtown’s America Plaza.

The impressive statue will stand south of the museum entrance, in an outdoor space that is adjacent to the America Plaza trolley station. (You might recall, how years ago, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego had their Hammering Man sculpture located in the same spot.)

I’m told the diver statue should resemble one now situated at the original Navy SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce, Florida, in front of their Memorial Wall.

The statue that is coming to San Diego will stand atop a granite pedestal inscribed with the BUD/S classes that become plank owners of the new museum.

The museum’s Plank Owner BUD/S Class Campaign is presently underway. Those who contribute will become part of a legacy that will motivate and inspire generations of Americans for years to come.

As this webpage explains, the museum is reaching out to the Navy SEAL community. Donations are being accepted of any size to help with the construction of the Museum which will preserve our history and tell our stories to the nation.

Every donation will receive recognition on the museum website here. For those Classes reaching the $5,000 goal, the Class Number will be permanently etched into the granite pillar which holds the bronze Navy SEAL Sculpture.

Would you like to inspire future generations, and help build the Navy SEAL Museum in San Diego? Visit their website by clicking 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.

Thank you for sharing!

Discover secrets of the Grinch at Seaport Village!

Did you know that the holiday season television animated classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas received a censored edit due to “inappropriate” language? And that the Grinch’s green color was likely inspired by a rental car?

Those are just two of many fun facts you’ll learn about the Grinch should you visit The Chuck Jones Gallery, which recently relocated to San Diego’s Seaport Village!

The surprising “Did You Know?” display stands next to works of collectible Grinch art created by Theodor Seuss Geisel, also known as beloved children’s author and cartoonist Dr. Seuss.

I happened by the gallery today and enjoyed viewing a wide variety of classic pop culture art, and learning some surprising Grinch history!

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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.

Thank you for sharing!