These two cool murals can be found close to the train station in Encinitas.
One mural, in my first two photographs, is painted on a wall at the Moonlight Marketplace flea market venue, which, when not in use, appears like a dirt lot west of the station platform. The butterfly and face artwork was created by Chloe Becky (@elsiethecowww).
The second mural is in the alley one block directly south of the Encinitas train station. It’s on the back of a building near the corner of Founders Drive and E Street. The smiley face in swirled colors was spray painted by DJ NEFF (@djn3ff) in 2024.
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A new art gallery recently opened in downtown San Diego. Juried works by diverse artists can be freely viewed from the sidewalk in front the Edward J. Schwartz United States Courthouse!
From behind several large windows, works by local artists greet the curious eyes of those walking down Broadway. This new Courthouse Gallery of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California is now displaying The Art of Freedom.
The courthouse website describing the project and a call for submissions explains: The inspirations for this on-going, rotating art display are: making art more accessible to the public, enhancing civic engagement through the arts, and creating an opportunity for local artists to increase exposure to their work. The gallery will be featuring emerging and established artists 18 and older residing in San Diego and Imperial Counties.
It’s difficult to photograph through these windows with the reflections. Enjoy several pieces…
Woman Charging I by Cathy Deibler.Forest Dance, by Leah Schaperow.Remember When We Were Free by Cynthia Sue Kelly.
Years ago, these same windows displayed artwork created by students for San Diego County Bar Association’s Law Week Poster and Video Contest. See three years of those displays here and here and here.
Over the years, my photos of those Law Week posters have been viewed thousands of times through Google search–quite possibly by teachers and students around the nation and world. Amazing.
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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.
Have you ever experienced the WOW (Without Walls) Festivals, put on every year by the La Jolla Playhouse? If not, you’ve missed out on some super creative art installations and theatrical performances.
The WOW Festivals over the years have been held at different venues in San Diego, including Horton Plaza Park, Liberty Station, and the Rady Shell. This time, like last year, everything is taking place inside the UC San Diego campus. Many of the unique (and sometimes rather weird) performances are free, and it all begins tomorrow!
WOW 2025 will run Thursday April 24 through Sunday April 27. Find everything you need to know, including the event schedule, by clicking this La Jolla Playhouse link.
Curious what sort of stuff goes on at these festivals? You’re in luck! I’ve taken loads of photographs over the years!
The Art of Autism: A Different Lens is an exhibition now showing at the Oceanside Museum of Art. More than a dozen neurodiverse artists have pieces in the museum, and their work is truly eye-opening. The brilliant creativity of special artists who possibly see the world differently than you or me is off the charts.
The exhibition is a collaboration between the Oceanside Museum of Art and The Art of Autism, a non-profit whose mission is to empower and connect individuals within the autism community through participation in the Arts.
By viewing these works of art, visitors to the museum will appreciate how people on the autism spectrum and others who are neurodivergent have the ability to depict the world in uniquely insightful ways. Of course, interpreting our world in very different ways is what art is all about.
I enjoyed my experience of the exhibition last weekend. Here are a few photos to give you an idea of the fine work you’ll discover.
What you see here is a traditional Swedish Dala horse. It’s one of many crafts created by members of the House of Sweden in San Diego’s Balboa Park.
I stepped into the House of Sweden‘s cottage today when I noticed it was open. Even though it’s Tuesday and most of the International Cottages are closed during weekdays, a few were open because school students were having a field trip in the park.
Inside the cottage I was greeted by a group of friendly ladies sitting around a table, hard at work crafting small gifts that will be sold during the House of Sweden’s Midsummer Festival later this year. Among other items, they were creating yarn dolls and flower wreaths!
The ladies call their group Pysselgruppen, which in Swedish means “Craft Group” or “Activities Group.” They invited me to join them, but sadly I had to say no. My efforts would be a disaster!
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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.
The Universe at Coronado High School is so awesome. I’m speaking of the mosaic archway that shines with our Earth, planets, moons, comets, nebulae, stars and galaxies.
As students move through the cosmos, they are reminded that “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known…”
I saw this incredible, extraordinary work of mosaic art during my visit to the San Diego Writers Festival earlier this month. The Universe was created on the Coronado High School campus in 2009 by student artists, under the direction of award-winning Visual Arts teacher Laura Hill.
“THE UNIVERSE”
WE DEDICATE THE UNIVERSE TO KARL MUELLER WHOSE SUPPORT SHINES ON, LIKE THE MOON, AND THE STARS, AND THE SUN — 2010
STUDENT ARTISTS – THEY’RE OUT OF THIS WORLD
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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.
I discovered two very cool murals during my latest walk through Chula Vista!
The first mural promotes Southwestern College and features the stylized head of a Jaguar–the name of Southwestern’s sports teams. A stack of books, a flask, paintbrushes, a drone, and other objects useful in career education also appear in the mural.
The colorful artwork can be spotted on the side of State Farm Insurance at 460 3rd Avenue. Artist signatures and a year indicate the mural was created by Nick McPherson (Nicholas Danger) and Eddy Berducido (@Beavster) in 2024.
The next mural appears to show wolves. The artwork was painted at the north end of a construction fence in front of Chula Vista’s old, closed Vogue Theater.
You might recall other images previously painted on the same fence: the Padres’ Swinging Friar and Chula Vista’s own celebrity superstar Mario Lopez!
I don’t know who painted these two wolves, or when. Within the past year, if I had to guess. Leave a comment if you know more than me!
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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.
Billowing Bait is a kinetic sculpture on Shelter Island, mounted near the entrance of Nielson Beaumont Marine. I spotted it during a recent walk in Point Loma.
The sculptor is Jon Koehler. His shimmering work of art features over 300 small stainless steel elements that move together but independently with the wind. Created in 2013 according to its webpage (2012 according to the nearby plaque), the sculpture is part of the Port of San Diego Public Art Collection.
The shining sculpture is meant to resemble a school of small bait fish . . . or a billowing spinnaker sail. You can learn more about it here.
If you ever walk past 2420 Shelter Island Drive on a breezy day, pause to watch Billowing Bait come alive!
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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.
What’s that star-like sculpture sitting on the grass near the box office of California Center for the Arts, Escondido?
It’s *!
The cool creation, named * (pronounced star), is a 30 foot diameter great stellated dodecahedron created by Escondido’s own Glass House Arts. According to posts on their Instagram page, * appeared at Burning Man last year! If I understand correctly, the sculpture was called MOOT (Matter Out of Time) back then, and said to be a time machine!
By night, 30 programmable LED floodlights illuminate the fabric sails, transforming the piece into a glowing beacon. I saw * in the daytime during my visit to the California Center for the Arts, Escondido, and thought it was pretty cool as it was!
The sculpture will be on view through May 17, 2025. It celebrates Escondido Arts, Culture & Creativity Month!
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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.
Self-Portraits with Underwear Pulled Too High, Matthew Freedman, 1995. Acrylic on plaster.
Today a new exhibition opened at the museum of the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. Everything in Its Place: Selections from the Permanent Collection features a surprising variety of pieces.
The museum’s webpage explains how these works explore the shifting relationships between abstraction, the human form, and the environments we inhabit. In other words, the art explores just about everything and anything.
I found myself pausing before certain complex pieces, enthralled. And so many different materials! One unusual sculpture is made almost entirely of glass. There are creations on cardboard and on linen. One piece, created during the museum’s inaugural artist-in-residence program, is a ten-foot wall of open wooden boxes containing found objects–like thoughts or memories in the compartments of one’s mind.
I took photos of a few examples.
There’s humor, too. Look closely at my first photograph!
Untitled, Mark Jackson, 1983. Oil on cardboard.In the Sun’s Blood, Doris Bittar, 1997. Oil on linen.
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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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