Tag: east village

Two fun sculptures at the Central Library!

Downtown San Diego’s Central Library is filled with all sorts of public artwork. Walk around the various floors with your eye on the walls and you’ll make frequent unexpected discoveries!

A couple weekends ago I was walking around the library’s 5th floor when I came upon two abstract sculptures by internationally renowned multimedia artist Italo Scanga. They are titled Music I and Music III. Both were created using oil paint, wood and found objects. And what appears to be symbolic imagery. Much of Scanga’s work incorporates elements of mythology.

Italo Scanga was born in Italy. He lived the later part of his life in San Diego. His pieces can be found in many museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Read a Wikipedia article about Italo Scanga here.

Both of these fun, very colorful sculptures, Music I and Music III, are in the City of San Diego Civic Art Collection.

Enjoy a few photos!

…

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!

Has the Earth moved at Fault Line Park?

Fault Line Park in downtown San Diego’s East Village neighborhood made its debut a little over six years ago.

Has the Earth moved since then?

More specifically, has the Earth on either side of the Rose Canyon Fault System rupture just under the park moved since then?

Very unique public art in this city park helps casual observers determine whether any such movement has occurred. I first blogged about Fault Line Park and its two giant spheres in September, 2015. Revisit that old post by clicking here.

Back then I took a photograph through one of the spheres. The twin stainless steel spheres stand on opposite sides of the shallow underground rupture. Should the ground on either side move over time, the targeting crosshairs inside the one sphere will shift in relation to the other sphere.

Here’s a photo I took over six years ago…

Compare it to the next photo that I took early this morning.

Something is now stuck inside the sphere’s hollow tube, but you can see how the crosshairs still roughly center on the opposite sphere:

I know this isn’t scientific, but if there has been any movement of the ground on either side of the fault line, it appears to be very slight!

I’ll have to take another photo a few years from now!

…

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!

She is LOVED, FREE and STRONG in East Village!

I spotted this uplifting, encouraging mural early this morning as I walked down J Street in San Diego’s East Village. The artwork is located on a wall between 16th Street and 17th Street.

I believe the mural was painted about a year ago. I don’t know by whom.

The three positive messages are: She is loved! She is free! She is strong!

…

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!

Mosaic at God’s Extended Hand building.

There’s an elaborate, quite beautiful tile mosaic mural outside the old God’s Extended Hand building in San Diego’s East Village. You can see it at the corner of 16th Street and Island Avenue.

The colorful mural is overflowing with compassionate messages and religious imagery, including Christ as a shepherd carrying a lamb.

The God’s Extended Hand ministry endured for 96 years, feeding the homeless and hungry, until it closed down a few months ago. Father Joe’s Villages will be redeveloping the site, creating more affordable housing and support for the homeless downtown. I don’t know whether these mosaics will be preserved.

I walked past part of the artwork this morning and took these photos. I only photographed the wall along 16th Street. Some people camped on the sidewalk were by the other wall on Island Avenue.

…

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!

Swarming gulls, Horton’s new skin, and a relic.

I observed a few interesting things in downtown San Diego during my morning walk.

First, a parking lot in East Village was swarming with hundreds of seagulls. Someone was tossing the gulls a large quantity of crumbs. It was quite a spectacle, as you can see in my photographs.

Of course, feeding birds downtown makes them more of a potential nuisance. And the people who’d parked nearby might have something to say…

Next, as I walked past old Horton Plaza, I noticed its redevelopment is progressing right along. The exterior of the now enlarged building at the corner of G Street and 1st Avenue, former home of a Nordstrom department store, has some new skin!

If you want to see how the project appeared about a year ago, with the once popular shopping mall stripped and gutted, click here!

If you want to see how the new mixed-use high-tech downtown campus will appear when finished, click here!

Finally, check out the following old relic.

How many pay phones remain in the city? I never see them anymore. I did find one here, at the Convention Center trolley station, next to a brand new high-tech PRONTO ticket machine!

Put that pay phone in a museum!

…

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!

Replica WWII incarceration barrack at Central Library.

Just inside the entrance to the Central Library in downtown San Diego stands a life-size model barrack. It accurately replicates barracks that were used to incarcerate Japanese-Americans during World War II.

The model barrack was built by Frank Wada, who was sent to the Poston “Relocation Center” in Arizona, before being released to fight in the war. He was ultimately awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

In 1942 ten prison camps were built in the United States to incarcerate those with Japanese ancestry. About 120,000 people were imprisoned in these camps. The model barrack shows what life was like for those who were forced to live away from their homes, with little comfort or privacy.

An exhibit in the Central Library’s 9th floor Art Gallery, titled Call to Serve: Clara E. Breed and the Japanese American Incarceration, is on view through January 30, 2022. It documents how San Diego city librarian Clara Estelle Breed was an active opponent of Executive Order 9066, the internment policy instituted by President Franklin Roosevelt in February 1942.

On Saturday afternoon I rode the elevator up to the library’s rooftop to see the exhibition, but for some reason the Art Gallery was closed. I’ll try again in the future!

…

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!

Ladies Who Paint create Hotel Z murals!

Four large, very colorful murals are presently being painted on the rear of Hotel Z in downtown San Diego. The art comes from the hands of Ladies Who Paint (@ladieswhopaint)!

I was walking down Seventh Avenue this morning when I spied the new artwork. I then met artist Sarah Tate. You can see her smiling on a lift in an upcoming photograph.

Over the years, the Ladies Who Paint have produced numerous amazing murals all over San Diego, particularly in East Village. You can see some of their past work here and here and here and here!

UPDATE!

I swung by a couple days later to see how the murals are progressing…

Painted by @lindsaysochar
Mural in progress by Thao French (@thaofrenchart)
Live in the sunshine Swim in the sea Drink in the wild air — @heysarahtate

UPDATE!

And several days later, the murals appear to be finished!

Mural painted behind Hotel Z by @enchi.art.

…

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!

Take care of each other in East Village!

I spotted this mural for the first time this morning as I headed down Ninth Avenue, through downtown’s East Village neighborhood. I hadn’t walked that way in a long while.

The fun, very colorful mural has a positive message: take care of each other. It was painted by Hanna Gundrum (@littlehouseink).

The mural is located on G Street, on the east side of Bear Republic Crossfit.

…

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!

Bike and scooter murals in East Village.

Two colorful murals in East Village promote riding bicycles and scooters. They’re painted on the north side of the old Farkas Store Fixtures building, on G Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenue.

The murals encourage motorists to get out of their cars to clear the air of pollution, save energy and enjoy San Diego’s beautiful outdoors!

I took these pics the other day during a downtown walk…

…

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!

A huge, amazing mural is hidden in East Village!

There’s a 7 story tall mural that was painted three years ago in East Village that practically nobody sees!

The mural, painted in a nook of Broadstone Makers Quarter, is titled Growing Harmony, and it was created by talented local artists Carly Ealey and Christopher Konecki.

If you’ve ever driven downtown east on E Street, to merge via that curving ramp onto southbound I-5, you might have barely glimpsed the hidden mural in your rear view mirror. From certain high spots in Golden Hill and Sherman Heights you might be able to see it in the distance. But the absolute best view is from the small, little-used 17th Street bridge that passes over the freeway onramp, just south of Broadway. I took these photos from that bridge.

A hand holds a hummingbird’s house made from many objects, some natural, some artificial. Human creativity can sustain and uphold life.

…

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!