Three years ago I enjoyed an amazing tour of artist James Watts’ studio in downtown San Diego. See those photos here.
The small creative space (home of what he calls on his Instagram page The James E Watts Institute of Artistic Behavior) is one of the most fantastic and inspiring places you’ll ever visit. Every inch is crammed with inexhaustible imagination and obvious love of life.
Whenever I walk down Seventh Avenue past the James E. Watts Studio, I peer into the front windows to see what works he has chosen to display.
This morning I was delighted by an explosion of art…
Choose happy.
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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!
Lorena Correa, a tattoo and mural artist from Bogotá, Colombia, completed painting a very cool mural a couple weeks ago at Super Cocina in City Heights!
If you like her detailed artwork, check out her Instagram @lorenaskunkrocker. You’ll see lots of hyenas!
This cool mural fills in a wall that features some earlier murals. It’s the latest addition to San Diego’s big outdoor art gallery that continues to grow in City Heights, on University Avenue between I-805 and I-15.
To see a couple other murals on the same wall at Super Cocina, click here and 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!
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City Heights is one of San Diego’s most culturally diverse communities.
Over the decades, immigrants have arrived in waves from different parts of the world, making this neighborhood in east San Diego their new home.
So it’s not surprising to find public art in City Heights that celebrates diversity and the dynamic interaction of people who have converged from different places.
Cultural Fusion is an abstract sculpture that stands near the entrance of the La Maestra Community Health Center in City Heights. The public art was created in 2015 by local artist Jim Bliesner, in collaboration with Victor Chavez Metal Works.
I took these photographs today!
To me, the colorful shapes that compose Cultural Fusion appear like symbols and ideas and fragments of life that continually collide and intermix, joining in places, producing new offshoots, creating endless combinations of complexity and beauty.
It sort of looks like music.
That’s what happens when many people with very different life stories come together in one place.
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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!
Yesterday, before meeting at the Encinitas Historical Society’s 1883 Schoolhouse for a guided walking tour, I was heading along the sidewalk up West F Street when I saw all sorts of cool art in one alley, and near it on a building across the street.
This alley runs between JARPR Studios (which appears to be home of the Johnny Rock Band and the MUSIC MUSIC Special Needs Music School) and American Legion Post 416.
Check out the fun, very colorful artwork! I see a whole lot of love, peace, kindness and creativity.
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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!
How many shops have an enormous hat sheltering their front entrance?
The Village Hat Shop in Hillcrest does!
They also have three great murals above windows that are brimming with fantastic hats!
Back in April, when I was researching the artist who created a civil rights mural in Mountain View, I learned that Rik Erickson of Murals Fantastic had also painted these three small but very delightful murals at The Village Hat Shop.
The Village Hat Shop was founded in 1980 in San Diego and now has several locations around Southern California.
If you’re a hat lover, you might enjoy paying a visit!
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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!
This weekend I stepped into the San Diego Art Institute in Balboa Park to view their current exhibition, which is titled Measurements of Progress.
Graduating students (and a couple of professors) from UC San Diego’s 2021 Masters of Fine Arts program have contributed artwork that primarily concerns the ongoing human struggle to achieve certain ideals, particularly peace, liberty, and justice.
Given how the subject matter is largely political, it’s not surprising that some of the student art is ideological and simple. I was drawn to other more subtle, mysterious works that encourage the viewer to look open-eyed at a complex world and inward with questioning wonder.
A couple of pieces I really loved are sculptures made of fabric. Touched by soft light, they seem to hang in space like organic abstractions, sinuous, fragile, evocative, full of memory. One contains poetry.
Another strange, thought-provoking work is a series of prostheses that explores the “limited and flawed nature of human perceptions and the manner in which bodies experience the world…”
Another piece explores the cosmos in the artist’s own body. I’m not exactly sure what the 3-channel video depicts–possibly dyed slides under a microscope–but watching the movement of living cells in our immensely complex selves can make one less political, more philosophical.
Measurements of Progress is well worth checking out if you love endlessly fascinating productions of human creativity–particularly contemporary art.
The exhibition is free and will continue at the San Diego Art Institute through May 30, 2021.
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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!
This afternoon I attended an inspirational event in the heart of City Heights. Local artists, community leaders and excited residents gathered for a fun celebration in the newly opened “Characters” outdoor sculpture garden!
You might recall I posted some photos of this cool art installation a while back before it was completed. Since then, more creative sculptures have been installed! I also noticed small signs have been added to each piece, with information about the artist and artwork.
I arrived early and watched as the crowd slowly grew, mingling among the diverse Characters sculptures. And before my eyes the number of smiling characters increased!
Everyone enjoyed food and live music, and there was juggling and stilt-walking by a member of the Fern Street Circus. After a little while various community leaders spoke, including local artist Jim Bliesner, the curator of Characters.
He introduced the neighborhood artists who created each sculpture, and many of the stories were inspirational. Every piece, like every person in the life of a community, is special and unique.
During the event I also learned that in two years this now vacant lot at the corner of University Avenue and Interstate 15 will be developed into affordable housing. When finished, a five-story building, the project of Wakeland Housing & Development and the City Heights Community Development Corporation, will be located conveniently near the City Heights Transit Plaza.
What I learned above all, however, is that City Heights is becoming an ever more vibrant community, with the help of many hands and hearts.
Edwin Lohr poses beside his sculpture Covid Calamity.
The sculpture was created using scarves that belonged to Ruth, a City Heights neighbor, friend, and victim of COVID-19.Kay Aye poses for a photo by her sculpture titled Speaking for Silent Majorities/Fruit of My Heart.Kay Aye was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. Her art speaks of the oppression that has been going on for years in her native land.Member of the Fern Street Circus engages in performance art! Different color paints dribble down 2020 Man, a sculpture made of tangled branches by Jim Bliesner.Twisted, chaotic broken branches form a human shape. 2020 was a year full of twists and turns!Art brings even more life to a vibrant City Heights community.
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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’ve published another very short work of fiction. This piece is titled The Fight. It’s about living and dying . . . and laughter.
Perhaps you’ll enjoy this little story. It includes life experiences that are relatable.
Getting this simple story to work has been a struggle. I published The Fight prematurely a couple weeks ago, then pulled it down. A tale about life and death should be written carefully.
During my walk in La Mesa last weekend I spotted a girl strolling with numerous dogs down the sidewalk!
Happy dogs of every type were walking with her past Village Antiques, as a curious cat watched from the shop window. And all of this was happening at the corner of La Mesa Boulevard and University Avenue . . . on a painted utility box!
I saw that this fun but somewhat faded street art was created by Margo Parks and Yvonne Rose.
As I tried to do a little research about the artists, I made a big discovery. This street art is part of a larger La Mesa beautification project called the Walking Art Trail.
The Walking Art Trail was created by the La Mesa Arts Alliance (LMAA) in partnership with the community. Local artists painted a variety of utility boxes around La Mesa, and a brochure which you can see here shows the locations of each colorful box!
Back in 2017 I photographed a number of these painted boxes without realizing they were all part of a larger project. You can see my photographs here.
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Very unique public art with an environmental theme can be seen (and activated!) in the northeast corner of Mission Trails Regional Park. Fountain Mountain is located just outside the recently completed East Fortuna Equestrian Staging Area Field Station.
Fountain Mountain was created by renowned San Diego artist Roman de Salvo in 2020. The drinking fountain not only quenches your thirst after a hot day of hiking, but it’s the source of water for two small meandering rivers carved into a mountain-like boulder!
Instead of going down a drain, fountain water that escapes your thirsty mouth comes to life as it streams and sparkles down the small mountain!
According to this page from San Diego’s Civic Art Collection website: “De Salvo’s artwork references the archeological remains of grinding rocks used by the Kumeyaay, who were the first people to extensively live on and make use of the land that became part of the park. For de Salvo, these grinding rocks embody a sense of history, timelessness, and a connection to human activity in the park…”
To learn more about Roman de Salvo, check out this Wikipedia page.
I’ve photographed a number of his works around San Diego. To see more of his inventive, often often playful sculptures and public artwork, including a fun riddle encountered by riders of the San Diego Trolley, click here and here and here and here and 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!
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