Tag: artists

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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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!

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.

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!

Winter solstice sand sculpture at Hotel del Coronado!

The winter solstice occurred early this morning. The days will now begin to grow longer. Christmas is nearly here.

On the beach by the Hotel del Coronado, Bill Pavlacka, The Sandcastle Man, created a unique sand sculpture today that pays tribute to the 2024 winter solstice!

His fun sand sculpture, and another that rises a few steps away, also celebrate the holiday season! Season’s Greetings!

This is the 17th year that The Sandcastle Man has been making sand sculptures in Coronado. Whenever I walk along the ocean side of the Del, I always look for his latest creation!

Some photographs…

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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 Flag Raising at Escondido Charter High School.

Five students made of bronze stand around a flagpole in front of Escondido Charter High School. They watch reverently as the American flag is raised.

At the base of the flagpole are two plaques.

Flagpole Donated in Honor of

Ray T. Graddy, LT US Army 1942-1946

William W. Patrick, SR. CPO USN 1948-1969

For their Dedicated Service in the U.S. Military

Phyllis Peuker Raynes, The Flag Raising, Bronze, August 2003

Commissioned by Escondido Charter High School

I took these photographs during my most recent walk in Escondido.

Here’s an article concerning the Valley Center artist, sculptor Phyllis Peuker Raynes, and her creation of this patriotic public art.

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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!

San Diego canals, survival ideas, and a sky mirror!

I didn’t know what to expect when I recently visited the La Jolla Historical Society‘s museum to experience their current exhibition Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work.

The exhibition is described as a retrospective about the work of husband-and-wife team of Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison, who were among the earliest and most notable ecological artists. Founding members of the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego, Helen and Newton were local San Diego artists for nearly four decades, where they developed their pioneering concepts of Ecological Art.

Would I see paintings? What exactly was this ecological art?

What I discovered was unexpected and thoroughly thought-provoking!

The walls of the La Jolla Historical Society’s museum–the Wisteria Cottage–were covered primarily with technical drawings, maps and designs that conveyed innovative environmental ideas the couple developed over many years of working together.

If you love invention and human creativity, you’ll want to view this exhibition. You’ll see how human genius can create previously unthought-of technology that can benefit both people and the planet. You’ll observe how our understanding of nature and the ecosystems we all live in might conceivably be improved.

There were dozens of surprising ideas. I saw a proposal to create flood-reducing canals around downtown San Diego, practical Survival Pieces intended to create self-sustaining ecosystems (including a portable fish farm), and even a huge, Earth-orbiting sky mirror!

The Harrisons’ work is so expansive and full of variety that it’s hard to describe it all. So you’d better check it out yourself!

Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work is actually a multi-museum exhibition in San Diego County. The La Jolla Historical Society’s part of this exhibition is sub-titled Urban Ecologies, and traces the Harrisons’ collaborative practice during the late 1960s-1990s.

Additional parts of this exhibition can be viewed at the California Center for the Arts Escondido, and at the San Diego Public Library Gallery. Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work continues at all three locations through January 19, 2025.

If that’s not enough, this exhibition is part of a much larger Southern California event now underway: the Getty’s 70+ institution PST: Art and Science Collide!

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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!

A dazzling indoor Christmas display in San Diego!

Jewels of the Season has returned to the Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park. The elegant lobby of the museum is decorated with over a thousand of jewel-like ornaments, creating perhaps the finest, most dazzling indoor Christmas display in San Diego!

Take a look at these photos. I’ll let you judge for yourself.

These one-of-a-kind ornaments were hand crafted by artists Florence Hord and Elizabeth Schlappi over the course of decades. Many of these precious works of art include colorfully embroidered and sequined patches that feature the San Diego Zoo, the Padres, the Star of India and other local attractions.

Visitors might stand in the museum lobby and simply stare with astonishment at the richly decorated Christmas tree, or the ceiling from which many ornaments hang like glittering stars.

Jewels of the Season can be freely enjoyed during the Timken‘s open hours until December 29, 2024. If you love Christmas, it’s a can’t miss for the entire family!

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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!

San Diego artist James Watts and 100 Paintings!

Have you visited the downtown studio of San Diego artist James Watts (@jewattso)? The experience will blow your mind!

I’m personally inspired by James Watts. Like a perpetual motion machine, he happily creates, creates and creates. His studio is so jam-packed with creative genius that you don’t know in which direction to turn your eyes.

That’s going to be more true than ever, because he’s now in the middle of a new project. He’s creating 100 Paintings!

James showed me his work yesterday when I happened to walk by the open door of his magical studio. He has finished 18 of the 100 paintings so far.

His paintings are in groups of five; each group includes a still life, a nude, a portrait, a cityscape, and a symbolic or literary painting. He intentionally emulates the styles of different famous painters.

Gazing about his studio, you’ll notice that many works of art–paintings and sculptures–depict characters from classic novels, history or mythology. When he was a kid, James loved to sit in the library and read comic books and magazines. Today, as an accomplished visual artist, he brings the written word to life in new, fantastic ways.

For some reason, James reminds me of science fiction and fantasy author Ray Bradbury. His energetic love of life. His love of everything–from pop culture to the classics. His smile and enthusiasm.

Up next is a painting showing James Watts’ studio. Do you recognize it? Look for the art-filled windows (and his cats) in downtown San Diego on 7th Avenue between C Street and Broadway.

A couple of photos of new paintings inside the studio…

The next photo shows a painting inspired by Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis! (Lying next to it is a lamppost just outside the studio.)

James loves to use wood and other materials for his myriad projects. The next photo shows wood block finger puppets painted with images from the Epic of Gilgamesh!

Endless wonders fill the downtown studio of San Diego artist James Watts!

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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!