Tag: artists

Amazing chalk art in front of Timken Museum!

Take a look at this amazing chalk art! It was created in San Diego’s Balboa Park about a week ago. Still in good condition, the artwork can be found directly in front of the Timken Museum of Art.

The chalk art replicates Equestrian Portrait of Prince Tommaso of Savoy-Carignan, a fantastic painting by Kehinde Wiley.

Until recently, Wiley’s painting could be viewed inside one of Timken’s galleries. It was displayed among major works by old masters. Wiley’s painting is inspired by Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck’s equestrian portrait from 1634-35 depicting Italian military commander.

The chalk art was created by Erick Toussaint (@sidewalk_chalk_dad). You might remember his other work in front of the Timken in past years.

I’ll soon be blogging about the Timken’s newest exhibition, In Blue Time, so stay tuned!

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Cool new murals at Grossmont trolley station!

Two very cool new murals were recently painted at the Grossmont Transit Center in La Mesa. One mural, titled Float On, faces the trolley tracks, and the other, titled Succession, can be found on the opposite side of the same wall, facing nearby bus stops.

Check out these photos!

Both murals were created by San Diego graffiti artist Maxx Moses. He has already painted colorful art at several other trolley stations along the Orange Line: the Encanto station, 47th Street, Euclid Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue.

These two new murals at the Grossmont Transit Center are the latest additions to the Color the Corridor project of Metropolitan Transit System (MTS).

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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.

Painting a beautiful new mural in Barrio Logan!

A very beautiful new mural is now being painted in Barrio Logan, on the side of Barrio Market at the corner of Cesar Chavez Parkway and National Avenue.

I met the friendly mural painter today, who goes by the artist name Andrea Border Baby. She’s a high school math teacher in South Bay. It’s her first ever public mural!

I learned Andrea has been one of the artists helping with the Chicano Park Mural Restoration project.

I also learned the left half of the new mural, depicting La Virgen de Guadalupe, memorializes a deceased loved one, and the right half celebrates the community of Barrio Logan.

The finished mural is set to debut in a couple weeks, on Saturday, September 14th!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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.

Greetings from Oceanside surfer girl mural.

A beach scene mural that shows the Oceanside Pier, a woodie and three girls with a surfboard on the sand has appeared in downtown Oceanside. You can view it on the parking lot side of Finney’s Crafthouse restaurant. Postcard-like words read: Greetings From OCEANSIDE.

The artist is Jerry Ragg. The mural was painted in 2024 in memory of JT Ragg.

I spotted the cool artwork during my weekend walk in Oceanside and took these photographs into the sun. Consequently, I had to increase the contrast of each image quite a bit.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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.

Bold disruption at Oceanside Museum of Art!

Visitors to the Oceanside Museum of Art might have their view of the world suddenly disrupted! Nearly fifty paintings by Southern California artists challenge the way we view familiar things. The exhibition is titled More Disruption: Representational Art in Flux.

Flux is defined as the action or process of flowing. Flowing implies change, movement. These paintings are full of dynamism, drawing the viewer in with bold strokes and color, exciting curiosity with abstraction that can be strangely fluid.

The surprising art reveals unexpected contrasts and inner mystery. In the age of social media, where images flash by on a phone with the flick of a finger, these paintings might cause one to stand for a minute and consider.

The pieces chosen for display were selected from over 1,700 entries. As one sign explains: The concept for this juried exhibition was to present outstanding paintings by Southern California artists that showed signs of being disrupted, either formally or thematically. Disruption, in this framework, means that the forces of contemporary life and existence somehow altered or affected the way the work was created and challenged the norms of representation…

A very friendly museum docent struck up a conversation with me and shared some of her favorite pieces. She was amazed that one of the pieces, exuding youthful hipness, was painted by an 80-year-old artist. But that’s the limitless potential of human creativity!

By disrupting familiar things, reshaping what we know, our minds and hands can bring to existence anything that we imagine. We can change this old world–enlarge it–even make life more meaningful.

More Disruption: Representational Art in Flux will be on view at the Oceanside Museum of Art through September 15, 2024.

I can tell you this art is certainly not dull! My photographs provide a few examples.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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.

Art of Nancy Cheadle benefits Oceanside library.

Nancy Duncan Cheadle was an American illustrator and portrait artist whose work has graced the covers of many romance novels. She created over 160 original oil paintings. Perhaps you’ve seen her artwork on the cover of Silhouette Romance paperbacks.

Prints of Nancy Cheadle’s paintings are on display and for purchase in Oceanside’s wonderful Jane and Evie’s Used Books, with all sales benefiting the Oceanside Public Library.

You can see one fine example, from the romance novel Dream Bride, in my first two photographs.

As the sign explains, Nancy’s family would love for many people to share the experience of having one of her paintings–all proceeds will go to the Oceanside Friends of the Public Library.

Jane and Evie’s Used Books is located at 323 North Coast Highway. My next blog post concerns this awesome used book store!

Here’s another work of art by Nancy Cheadle that you can hang on your wall, while benefitting culture, knowledge and literacy in Oceanside…

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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.

Colorful street art by Mormon Battalion Sisters.

Many electrical boxes near the Mormon Battalion Historic Site in Old Town San Diego have been colorfully painted–I believe recently.

Artist signatures state Mormon Battalion Sisters. Many of the painted images show cactus-filled landscapes, aspects of the Old West, and what might be early San Diego history.

I took these street art photographs yesterday during my sunrise walk through Old Town.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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.

Birds, Stars, Our Lands represented in La Jolla.

A large, very beautiful mural in La Jolla shows three birds–a Black-throated Sparrow, a Rock Wren, and a Cactus Wren–in their native habitat. It’s titled Mukikmalim, Su’ulim, Chem-tema-ki’ay, which is in the Kupa language. It translates as Birds, Stars, Our Lands.

According to this article, it’s the first public display of the Kupa language. The artist, Gail Werner, who descends from three of the county’s native peoples, Kupa (or Cupeño), Luiseño and Kumeyaay, received her inspiration for the mural from her hikes in the Anza-Borrego desert, beyond the mountains east of San Diego.

The public art debuted in downtown La Jolla in 2023, and is part of the ongoing Murals of La Jolla project. I saw the artwork last weekend on Herschel Avenue as I approached the bus stop on Silverado Street.

According to the Murals of La Jolla website: The bird imagery is inspired by traditional Southern California Native American songs, called Bird Songs, and the accompanying dance, the Bird Dance. These songs and dance weave a story of how the people came to be where they are and the accompanying journey that brought them to this land, which is said to parallel the migration of the birds.

In my own opinion, Mukikmalim, Su’ulim, Chem-tema-ki’ay is one of the most beautiful murals I’ve ever encountered in La Jolla

The imagery transports me to wilder places around San Diego . . . to hikes I’ve enjoyed.

With all its buildings, streets and parking lots, it’s hard to imagine how La Jolla (or any San Diego neighborhood) might have appeared before the first Europeans and settlers transformed the natural world they found.

And now for my photographs–of unspoiled nature represented on a building, taken from across an asphalt parking lot…

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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 new Tony Gwynn mural in La Jolla!

Tony Gwynn, one of the greatest players in Major League Baseball history, is quite possibly the most beloved person in all of San Diego. Even years after his passing, tributes continue to pop up in communities throughout the city and beyond. He was loved not only for his legendary on-the-field heroics, but for his always sunny personality.

A very cool mural depicting Mr. Padre was painted in La Jolla this summer. It decorates one side of the Mandarin House restaurant in La Jolla. It was created by Ground Floor Murals, who’ve already painted many outstanding Padres baseball player murals.

Taking photos around San Diego for the past 11 years, I’ve documented various artworks and events that honor Tony Gwynn. You can see many of them by clicking here.

And now a bonus photograph!

There’s a second cool mural on the opposite side of the Mandarin House’s building! It depicts an Asian dragon in a watery setting. When I walked by today, I didn’t notice an artist signature…

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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.

Creating a giant 1980s sand sculpture in IB!

A gigantic sand sculpture now stands near the foot of the Imperial Beach Pier. The “Back 2 IB” retro sculpture, created using 80 cubic yards of sand, celebrates nostalgia from the 1980s. It’s the centerpiece of Imperial Beach’s family friendly 2024 Sun & Sea Festival!

Carved into the massive sculpture are images from the 1980s that many will recognize. Pac-Man. Ghostbusters. MTV. Rubik’s Cube. Cabbage Patch Kids. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Back to the Future. Nintendo Entertainment System. A video game arcade. A boom box. Music on cassette tapes…

Is this the coolest sand sculpture ever, or what? Why was it built? Each summer, during the annual Sun & Sea Festival, Imperial Beach is also known as Sandcastle City!

When I visited the festival late this morning, the local sand artists, including members of the Imperial Beach Posse Sand Carvers, appeared to be nearly finished. They’ve been working on their monumental work of art for several days.

I walked around the “Back 2 IB” sand sculpture and took these photographs of the sand sculptors hard at work…

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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.