A free, family-friendly event was held today at Chula Vista’s Memorial Park.
The annual Arts in the Park festival brought the community together to enjoy music, artists, dance, food and all sorts of cultural fun! The event was presented by Chula Vista’s own Onstage Playhouse and CARPA San Diego.
So many smiles! So much creativity!
Take a look!
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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!
I’d never heard of the expression “spiritual dolls” until I visited Balboa Park last weekend.
KOKORO NO KATACHI | Image of the Heart is an exhibition of spiritual dolls at the Japanese Friendship Garden. It features the work of Kimiko Koyanagi and Michiko Stone, artists who combine traditional Japanese doll-making with contemporary art.
The two sisters are third-generation ningyo doll-makers, descendants of the Japanese Doll-Making Muraoka Family of Tokyo. Their work has been exhibited internationally.
The dolls on display are beautiful in their simplicity. The sculptural figures appear serene, pure of spirit, almost angelic.
According to the JFG website’s description, these dolls are meant to be poetic. They convey deep emotion and philosophical meaning.
Many of the spiritual dolls are thin and elongated. To me their soft forms seem to have emerged from inside growing wood, or bone, or from living beams of light.
One fascinating display shows the many steps taken to make these unique dolls. If you’re a crafty person, you certainly want to see this!
Image of the Heart can be experienced in person inside the Exhibit Hall at the Japanese Friendship Garden through October 30, 2022.
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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 amazing mural depicting wildlife was created earlier this year at SDG&E Park in Chula Vista. The artists of Ground Floor Murals, assisted by students from nearby Castle Park High School, painted a sunset scene filled with beautiful wildlife!
You might recall that several incredible Padres baseball murals visible in communities around San Diego were also painted by Ground Floor Murals.
This very colorful work of art can be found on the side of a building in San Diego Gas and Electric Park near Hilltop Drive.
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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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Around noon today, chalk artists were doing their thing at the 25th Annual Lemon Festival in Chula Vista!
The enormously popular community event is taking place today in Chula Vista’s historic downtown, along Third Avenue.
I paused to admire the half dozen creative works, most of which were in progress.
As you might expect, all this lemony artwork required a fair amount of yellow chalk!
Sweet!
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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!
There’s a sculpture garden open to the public in La Jolla that’s very easy to miss.
Large numbers of tourists, walking along the Pacific Ocean, south of Children’s Pool near Cuvier Park, pass this sculpture garden without even realizing it.
This park-like space isn’t readily noticed from Coast Boulevard. Curious eyes might observe an unusual sculpture made of many boats mounted on the building behind it. That building is home to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego!
Look for the gate in my upcoming photographs. Walk through it and up the curving path. You’re now in the museum’s Sue K. and Charles C. Edwards Sculpture Garden. See what your eyes will see.
My own eyes saw these particular sculptures months ago. Yes, these images have been lingering in my computer for much too long. While I’m self-isolating recovering from mild COVID-19, I’m finally getting around to posting them!
Whether these same pieces are on display right now, I don’t know. Over the years, I’ve noticed that some of the outdoor sculptures in MCASD’s collection are shifted from place to place.
Ready for our walk? Here we go!
If you’re curious about that mural in the distance, you can see more of it here.
If you want to see quotes by artists written on the opposite side of these directional signs, click 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!
Yucateca Sentada is a beautiful bronze sculpture slightly off the beaten path at UC San Diego. It can be discovered by observant students passing down the Ridge Walk through Thurgood Marshall College, by the Administration Building. A walkway leads west to a bench that faces the life-size sculpture. (It isn’t far from Sojourner Truth, another bronze sculpture beside the Ridge Walk.)
Yucateca Sentada (Seated Woman of the Yucatan) was created by renowned Costa Rican-born Mexican artist Francisco Zúñiga in 1976. It was donated to UC San Diego in 1983 by Elsa Dekking and UCSD physics professor Keith Brueckner. That was back when Marshall College was called Third College.
Here’s a photo taken right after its installation, with Chancellor Richard C. Atkinson providing a few words. There’s also an article in the October 3, 1983 issue of The UCSD Guardian concerning the dedication. You can read that here on page 7.
When I first saw this beautiful piece, so radiant with elemental humanity and silent dignity, I thought it might be a work of famed San Diego artist Donal Hord. It’s similar to two works I’ve seen by Hord, Spring Stirring and Aztec.
Then I realized I’d seen another very fine sculpture by Francisco Zúñiga in San Diego. His Mother and Daughter Seated can be found near the front entrance of the San Diego Museum of Art.
I photographed Mother and Daughter Seated back in 2016, as it and various other sculptures were being installed in Balboa Park’s outdoor Plaza de Panama. You can enjoy those photos here.
…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 tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday. It’s relatively mild. I’ve been home self-isolating all week.
Unfortunately, I can’t go out on my walks. It’s a bit depressing.
One thing I can do–when not sleeping or listening to the Padres or reading a book–is scroll through my blog. To me, Cool San Diego Sights is almost like a journal. (A good reason for you to start your own blog!) The thousands of photographs and written descriptions help me to remember all the things I’ve experienced during past walks. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been doing this blogging thing for almost nine years.
So here I am, wondering this Friday morning if there are some old images I could easily repost. Then thinking: there are so many butterfly pics!
How appropriate. Butterflies are symbols of hope, transformation and healing.
These bright butterflies were spotted all over San Diego, from Escondido to Imperial Beach, from Mission Bay to El Cajon, and everywhere in between. How many do you recognize?
Fortunately, I still have many unused photos in my computer. So this weekend don’t be surprised if you see blog posts concerning past walks in La Jolla, Carlsbad, Old Town, Balboa Park, and perhaps elsewhere!
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An exhibition of fine tempera paintings created by San Diego artist Marianela de la Hoz is now on view at the Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park.
Destejidas – Unwoven showcases the carefully crafted work of the Mexican born painter, who was an artist in residence at the Timken earlier this year. Visitors to the museum had the ability to watch her complete the piece Penelope’s Hands.
Marianela de la Hoz incorporates surprising symbols in her very personal artwork. Figures taken from literature, mythology, fairy tales, world history and religion are often inserted into more contemporary scenes. The many disparate elements can be jolting. They reveal the inner character of her subjects. The strange combinations might make us consider our own lives.
Human experiences in this complex world are cleverly combined with well known stories that were first told long ago. Our own secret stories are unwoven, then rewoven.
Destejidas – Unwoven can be enjoyed at the Timken Museum of Art through September 4, 2022.
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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!
Every Comic-Con, it seems, Peanuts has a heart-warming activation in the Gaslamp outside the San Diego Convention Center.
For 2022, their special offsite supports The Armstrong Project. You can find it by simply walking with the Comic-Con crowds along Martin Luther King Jr. Promenade.
Peanuts fans know that Franklin Armstrong was one of many beloved characters created by Charles Schulz. Visitors to the activation will find displays explaining how the idea of introducing Franklin came about. They’ll also learn how others were inspired by the new character . . . including a future cartoonist also named Armstrong.
I recommend visiting. Read the thoughtful displays and become inspired, yourself.
Here’s a sample…
If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click 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!
There’s a modest exhibit at the Comic-Con Museum that previews a much larger exhibition that is coming later this year. Those visiting the museum to see Spider-Man during Comic-Con should head down to the lower level and check out Hemingway in Comics!
I love reading literature, and Hemingway is one of my favorite authors, so I was pleasantly surprised when my curious eyes spied this comic art today.
The styles that are represented are quite varied, and the fictional stories involving the celebrated American author can seem fantastic and implausible, but that is art! And it’s all very cool!
I really look forward to seeing the full exhibition when it opens at the Comic-Con Museum this coming September.
Read the sign below to learn more….
If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click 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!
Cool San Diego Sights! 