I like the message in one newly painted mural that I spotted last weekend as I walked through Imperial Beach.
A lady surfer is catching a wave with a pod of dolphins, and written above are the words: “From the land to the sea, we are connected, you and me…”
This mural can be found near the corner of Palm Avenue and 3rd Street, on a wall behind the Pacific Realty parking lot. The art was created last month “for Katy” by Marissa Quinn (@marissaquinn).
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Today I enjoyed long walks in both San Ysidro and Imperial Beach. I captured many photos, which I’ll share in the next few days!
First up, I discovered this amazing mural in Imperial Beach at the corner of Palm Avenue and 2nd Street, on the side of a 7-Eleven. It was painted in 2018 and I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed it previously. It’s titled Mutt’Tipi–People of the Earth. The artist is Marissa Quinn.
MuttTipi is the name that some Native American Kumeyaay in our region have called themselves, and it translates to People of the Earth.
The mural’s spiritual and environmental message includes a variety of symbols, including the sacred sun and moon, once-endangered brown pelicans and healing honeybees. The pelicans have human legs, connecting them to past ancestors.
The mural itself has an earthy look, which appears to be by design. It is also the result of wind, soil, rain and sunshine, and time’s passage.
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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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Early this morning I made an interesting discovery!
I was walking along Pacific Highway in downtown San Diego when I noticed an electronic sign has been recently installed near the County Administration Center. This colorful City of San Diego sign appears to encourage bicycling.
Evidently the new electronic sign will show the number of cyclists that are on the road “today” and “this year.” If that’s the case, it will probably be an estimate.
Of course, I could be entirely wrong about the sign’s function. Once it’s activated, we’ll see what appears!
UPDATE!
And this is what I found early one morning a few months later…
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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!
Take a look at this enormous ship! I saw it today docked at San Diego’s B Street Pier, across from the Cruise Ship Terminal. The vessel, with what appears to be a helicopter pad high above its bow, is so huge I spotted it several blocks from San Diego’s Embarcadero!
The Normand Energy is a Pipe Layer vessel built in 2007, sailing under the flag of Norway. I was curious why such an unusual ship is visiting San Diego, so I searched the news.
It turns out the Normand Energy was chartered by Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR) to test the Patania II, a deep-sea mining prototype. But on April 25 Patania II became detached from its 5 kilometer (over 3 miles!) cable and became stranded on the Pacific Ocean floor!
According to this article, the “25-tonne mining robot prototype was trialed in the Clarion Clipperton Zone in the Pacific since April 20. The machine was supposed to collect nodules rich in cobalt and other battery metals…such minerals would be used to supplement in-demand electronic products and energy storage such as smartphones, laptops, solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles…”
According to this article, a recovery mission successfully retrieved Patania II on April 29.
Environmentalists including Greenpeace oppose deep-sea mining and the damage to the ocean bottom that would result, but ironically the rare earth elements that could be extracted are required for various components in clean energy technology.
If you’re curious about the whereabouts of the Clarion Clipperton Zone and what this “geological submarine fracture zone” is exactly, here’s a fascinating Wikipedia article.
Check out additional photographs of the Normand Energy that I took from various angles. The next two are from the Broadway Pier…
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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!
The San Diego Museum of Art’s unique project Young Art: Outside the Frame continues to expand!
Today I spotted even more SDG&E utility boxes that are being painted for the outdoor exhibition of youth art!
A total of 25 utility boxes are being painted around downtown by professional artists, taking their inspiration from the San Diego Museum of Art’s biennial exhibition of local student art, which this year is titled Young Art 2021: My World, Our Planet. The super nice people at Mindful Murals are coordinating the various artists.
The past few weeks I’ve posted photographs of many other boxes. To see them, and to learn even more about Young Art: Outside the Frame, click here and here and here and here and here. To see how some of the finished utility boxes compare with the original youth art that is now being exhibited in the museum, click here!
The first of the new boxes I spotted today are located on Broadway just east of Park Boulevard. Three stand together in a group. It appears the middle box hasn’t been started yet. I don’t know who has painted the boxes on either end, but I’ll provide an update when I learn!
The fourth box I spotted today is on A Street between Tenth and 11th Avenue, directly in front of the Shell gas station. It’s by abstract artist T. Jay Santa Ana (@tjaysantaana).
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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!
The San Diego Museum of Art’s new exhibition Young Art 2021: My World, Our Planet has opened!
At the title suggests, the museum’s biennial Youth Art exhibition has an environmental theme this year. Students from schools all around San Diego County have contributed.
There’s a new twist this time, however!
Professional artists, coordinated by Mindful Murals, are reimagining 25 works of this outstanding youth art by painting SDG&E utility boxes from Balboa Park down Park Boulevard into downtown San Diego. Every utility box “recreates” a canvas painted by a young person!
I’ve already photographed many of the utility boxes. So I was excited to see all the great original youth art hanging on the San Diego Museum of Art’s walls!
Wouldn’t it be fun, I thought, to compare some of the original art with the painted utility boxes? Of course it would!
The professional artists painting the boxes were encouraged to interpret the student canvases in their own unique way. You can see significant differences. (And painting an outdoor utility box that will be seen momentarily by passing motorists and pedestrians is very different than painting a canvas with a fine brush.)
To view photos of many more utility boxes, click here.
So, without further ado, here come the comparisons!
Plastic, Not Dinner, by Anjolie Ly, Westview High School. Large numbers of turtles are killed each year when they mistake plastic waste for jellyfish.Artist Brise Birdsong. A more perfect ocean environment.Strong Together, by Chloe Katz, Art Studio Light.Artist Amanda Saint Claire, mentoring Katie Flores.Turn Off the Light, by Anqi “Cici” Mei, Solana Pacific Elementary.Artist Nhuy Reid.2050, by Sheridan Liew, Sherry Art Studio/Canyon Crest Academy. A future of severe environmental pollution might look like this.Artist Lucy Helle.Wind Farm at Sundown on 8 East, by Arianna Larios, Homeschool.I don’t know the artist at this moment! When I learn, I’ll provide an update. UPDATE! The artist is Sean Hnedak.Oceana, by Alice Zhu, Westview High School. A girl’s serenity contrasted with her hair as an oil spill.Artist Alyssa Stewart.
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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 morning I spotted five more utility boxes that are being painted for the San Diego Museum of Art’s project Young Art: Outside the Frame!
These five boxes are all in downtown San Diego’s East Village neighborhood, along Park Boulevard between E Street and Market Street. Other boxes I’ve previously spotted are also along Park Boulevard, but to the north. To see those colorful utility boxes, click here and here and here!
The unique outdoor exhibition Young Art: Outside the Frame is a collaboration between the San Diego Museum of Art, SDG&E, and Mindful Murals who is coordinating the many artists.
Environmental artwork that has been selected from the museum’s upcoming biennial exhibition of local student art (this year titled Young Art 2021: My World, Our Planet) is being reproduced by professional artists on 25 SDG&E utility boxes. A map of the box locations is forthcoming, and I will post it!
The five boxes I spied today are in various stages of completion. I can identify one of the artists so far. The black box with the blue sea life is by Shelly S. (@fairywulf).
I’ll post updates as I learn and discover more in the days ahead!
(The upcoming photo is of a mural directly across Park Boulevard from the above box. It’s titled The Strength of the Women. It was painted by renowned artist Rafael Lopez years ago. I blogged about it in 2014. You can see those photos here.)
Now back to the boxes…
UPDATE!
The following weekend I took photos that show some of the above boxes are now finished.
I see the utility box with the flowers and the face on top is by Donovan Diaz (@drawntworks). The now completed black and white box with the wildlife is by Amanda Kazemi (@grayfractal). And the box with the wind turbines is by Sean Hnedak.
ANOTHER UPDATE!
The last box in this group is finished. I see the artwork is by Carlos Quezada and Melody De Los Cobos (@chicanalilly)!
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I spent nearly the entire day walking. Part of my journey was through a small part of the Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve.
Even my short, easy hike at Los Peñasquitos Creek just west of Black Mountain Road was awe-inspiring.
As I walked beside the water at the Ranch House Crossing, nature’s wonders enveloped me. The overhanging oaks and willows, their thirsty roots, sunlight in fluttering leaves….
Put on a pair of sturdy shoes and see for yourself!
Benthic organisms, or bottom dwellers, such as water snails and freshwater clams are a good indicator of the water quality in the stream.A riffle is an area where the water is shallow and moves fast. Rounded stones called cobbles are formed by ages of tumbling and water wear.
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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!
Riders of the San Diego Trolley might not notice any public art at the 70th Street station at first glance. This Green Line station in La Mesa, which opened in 2005, has a simple, practical appearance, with the usual benches and a nearby parking lot.
Curious eyes, however, will see a number of sculpted markers in the vegetation, and quotes written on the bases of 36 light poles on either side of the trolley tracks.
The cast metal markers relate the historical importance of native San Diego plants, and indeed these very plants can be found nearby–or at least it was that way originally. Most of the markers explain the importance of each plant to the Native American Kumeyaay people, who inhabited this land for thousands of years before the arrival of Spanish explorers.
This very unique public art was created by Nina Karavasiles. You can see more of her work here and here and here. She also helped design the Rosa Parks Memorial at a San Diego Mesa College bus stop, which I recently blogged about here.
Artwork at the 70th Street trolley station also includes bits of recycled colored glass embedded in the platform. Cobblestones from nearby Alvarado Creek that were obtained during the station’s construction were used to create planters and the bases of benches.
Girls tied redbud blossoms to their shoulders and waists for the spring ceremonial dance of womanhood.Deer grass. The principal foundation material for coiled baskets.This plant used as a diuretic medicine gets its astringency from tannic acid. Bear berry.Before going hunting the Diegueños rubbed white sage on their bodies to eliminate odor.Early miners used it to deter fleas. Coastal sagebrush.Fresh elderberry leaves produce a light yellow dye for baskets.Arroyo willow. Kumeyaay use shredded bark to pad cradle boards in which women carried their babies.The sycamore was an indicator to California natives that underground water or a stream was nearby.The oak can live for 250 years. It takes 8 months for the acorns to mature. A family of 4 would gather 500 pounds for the next year. They would travel here and set up temporary camp to harvest the acorns, collecting them in conical baskets. Acorns are 20% fat, 6% protein, 68% carbohydrates.
The following photographs show just a few of the quotes inscribed on the light pole bases. Most have an environmental theme, and of these, most concern the importance of water.
All the stones here have been gathered from the original Alvarado Creek.Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. Ralph Waldo EmersonThe average annual rainfall in La Mesa is 13 3/4 inches (2004). The average American uses 150 gallons of water a day.Many of the world’s people must walk 3 hours to fetch water.
Ready for some fun? Part of the answer to the cryptic Alvarado trolley station riddle (which you can see and solve here) can be found in one of the above quotes!
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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 I headed to Point Loma to walk by Famosa Slough, a protected wetland I have driven past on many occasions. This was my first time walking the trails of the slough south of West Point Loma Boulevard, and along the channel that runs north toward Interstate 8 and the San Diego River.
The more I walked along the water and natural vegetation of the Famosa Slough State Marine Conservation Area, the more birds I saw! There were bright white egrets, and gulls and cormorants and ducks and various shorebirds. As you’ll see in one photo, I also spotted an osprey!
My photographs begin beside the slough that motorists see from West Point Loma Boulevard, then I crossed the street and followed a dirt pathway north up the channel to the end of the path.
Famosa Slough is part of a statewide network of Marine Protected Areas. It includes open shallow water, riparian habitat, wetland upland transition habitats, and four treatment basins to protect water quality.
Here is where I crossed over West Point Loma Boulevard. First I checked out the following information signs near the path up the Famosa Channel.
Birds one can see at Famosa Slough include the great egret, American wigeon, black-necked stilt, snowy egret, little blue heron, California brown pelican, and blue-winged teal.Famosa Slough is a 37-acre coastal wetland owned by the City of San Diego and cared for by the Friends of Famosa Slough. It is home to many rare and endangered local and migratory bird species.Looking north up the channel through the remains of an old bridge.A kiosk. I couldn’t read the weathered words, but enjoyed the image of two gulls.Heading up the dirt path.I could see many birds in the distance.A snowy egret.A nice bench for resting and birdwatching.An osprey soars high overhead!
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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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