What’s more fun than borrowing a book from a little lending library? Borrowing a stick from a Dog Stick Library!
Canines have the opportunity to borrow a stick to carry in their mouths while walking with their human companions in North Park. An innovative Dog Stick Library is open on the sidewalk near the intersection of Upas Street and 29th Street!
Is this clever, or what?
The absurdity–and sheer originality–had me stop in my tracks the other day. I love it!
How many dogs take advantage of this little lending library box? It was stocked up with a fine selection of sticks. Whether your four-legged best friend is a large Great Dane or a little Pomeranian, there appeared to be a stick perfectly sized for any mouth.
Now, the question must be asked: Do responsible dogs return the sticks? In good condition?
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The Port of San Diego is seeking public feedback concerning César Chávez Park in Barrio Logan. Port representatives were at the Day at the Park event today held in the bayside public park.
Have you ever visited César Chávez Park? What ideas for improvement might you have? Click here to take a community input survey being conducted by the Port of San Diego.
Would it be great to have a beach? Pier improvements? More community events? More shade trees? A water feature? An expanded playground? Exercise equipment? More signage? More interactive art? More security features? Something else?
Why does a person enter a library? To read, write, think and dream.
That’s certainly what students do after walking through the doors of the Geisel Library at UC San Diego in La Jolla!
Indeed, the front entrance of the Geisel Library celebrates human thought and creativity with its four word proclamation: READ WRITE THINK DREAM.
I was surprised to learn that these words, together with the colorful glass doors and images of students at the library’s entrance, were the creation of an internationally important artist: John Baldessari!
Born locally in National City, John Baldessari would go on to become one of the world’s most recognized conceptual artists. His work would be featured in over 200 solo shows and 1,000 group shows in his six-decade career. His awards and the museums that have collected his pieces are numerous.
READ/WRITE/THINK/DREAM debuted in 2001 and is included in UCSD’s Stuart Collection of public art. Visit the webpage that provides a detailed description by clicking here.
Baldessari liked to provoke thought with his art. His works are described as open-ended puzzles.
With outside sunlight shining through, the primary colors of the transparent doors create new colors when they slide open and overlap. Combining basic elements into something that is different and new–that’s the essence of dreaming, creativity and discovery–isn’t it?
Perhaps you’ve seen another work of John Baldessari in La Jolla. I photographed his Brain/Cloud outdoor mural a few years ago and posted the images here!
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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.
Why are there 12 hexagonal planters containing citrus trees in front of the La Jolla Historical Society‘s Wisteria Cottage? That’s what I wondered when I paid a visit to the society’s museum yesterday, to view their new exhibition about the history of surfing in La Jolla. (I’ll be blogging about that shortly.)
It turns out the dozen redwood planters with citrus trees is a 2024 project titled Exterior Orchard, A Conversation with Survival Piece V. The uniquely designed orchard examines the necessity of ecologically focused and sustainable food systems in a future where farming practices may become obsolete.
The installation was inspired by the La Jolla Historical Society’s recent exhibition Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work. The Harrisons, founding members of the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego, were visionary thinkers and designers who developed fascinating Ecological Art. They created plans for a Portable Orchard such as this in 1972.
The hexagonal redwood planters were built by students from High Tech High Mesa. The trees and planters, I was told, can be adopted. Funds raised will help support the La Jolla Historical Society’s work.
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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.
In the past few days, I’ve spotted autonomous Waymo cars navigating streets in San Diego. Bankers Hill is where I saw two of the cars, to be exact. Both had drivers behind the steering wheel. I had my camera at the ready this afternoon to capture the above photo. Yes, there is a driver in there.
Waymo is the company that has those driverless autonomous taxis operating up in San Francisco. You hail them with your phone and input the destination.
Here in San Diego, and other test cities, Waymo cars are being driven through certain neighborhoods in order to gather data, refine maps, and learn about the peculiarities of different places. Here’s an article that thoroughly describes the Waymo tests in San Diego. They began very recently.
I can see how many people are wary of driverless cars. The concept is revolutionary and still pretty new. One hears of glitches.
I suppose, however, that at some point in the future, driverless cars will be ubiquitous in every city around the world and taken for granted, just as other groundbreaking technologies eventually become the norm. I grew up with a rotary dial telephone . . . and an astounding invention: the electronic push button calculator!
We live in exciting, uncertain times when technology is taking gigantic leaps forward. Artificial intelligence, chips in heads, advancing robotics, virtual reality worlds… Where will all of this take us? How will this change us?
I wonder. Will the automation of practically everything make life more fulfilling?
I guess humanity will take the journey and find out…
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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 exhibition is described as a retrospective about the work of husband-and-wife team of Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison, who were among the earliest and most notable ecological artists. Founding members of the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego, Helen and Newton were local San Diego artists for nearly four decades, where they developed their pioneering concepts of Ecological Art.
Would I see paintings? What exactly was this ecological art?
What I discovered was unexpected and thoroughly thought-provoking!
The walls of the La Jolla Historical Society’s museum–the Wisteria Cottage–were covered primarily with technical drawings, maps and designs that conveyed innovative environmental ideas the couple developed over many years of working together.
If you love invention and human creativity, you’ll want to view this exhibition. You’ll see how human genius can create previously unthought-of technology that can benefit both people and the planet. You’ll observe how our understanding of nature and the ecosystems we all live in might conceivably be improved.
There were dozens of surprising ideas. I saw a proposal to create flood-reducing canals around downtown San Diego, practical Survival Pieces intended to create self-sustaining ecosystems (including a portable fish farm), and even a huge, Earth-orbiting sky mirror!
The Harrisons’ work is so expansive and full of variety that it’s hard to describe it all. So you’d better check it out yourself!
Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work is actually a multi-museum exhibition in San Diego County. The La Jolla Historical Society’s part of this exhibition is sub-titled Urban Ecologies, and traces the Harrisons’ collaborative practice during the late 1960s-1990s.
Additional parts of this exhibition can be viewed at the California Center for the Arts Escondido, and at the San Diego Public Library Gallery. Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work continues at all three locations through January 19, 2025.
If that’s not enough, this exhibition is part of a much larger Southern California event now underway: the Getty’s 70+ institution PST: Art and Science Collide!
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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.
An important presentation was made this evening in San Diego’s Balboa Park. A thoughtful audience, assembled inside the World Design Capital’s Exchange Pavilion, learned how the organization Tijuana Access is working to make Tijuana and Mexico more accessible for the disabled.
Eduardo Lopez Ruiz explained how Tijuana Access is raising awareness and lobbying for greater accessibility south of the border. He explained that our neighbors to the south are a bit behind the United States when it comes to making buildings, streets and city facilities more friendly for those who have difficulty functioning in a world full of potential obstacles.
Working to make our world more accessible, Eduardo affirmed, is a matter of compassion. Not only are a significant number of people born with or develop a disability, but most of us become elderly–right?
There are all sorts of ways to make a city more accessible. Automatic doors, ramps, lifts, slip resistant materials and tactile paving can be adapted to enhance mobility. Handrails, rest furniture, properly placed buttons and switches, Braille printing and other changes can make life much easier and safer for many.
The presentation was mostly in Spanish with an interpreter helping us English speakers. I asked how I could link to Tijuana Access with my blog, because readers might like to help in some way. The Tijuana Access Instagram page is here. Their Facebook page is here.
To my readers in Mexico, perhaps this is a cause you’d like to support. Or simply spread the word to help to raise awareness!
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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.
Various works belonging to the San Diego Civic Art Collection can be experienced by visitors to the Rancho Bernardo Library. I took photos of three prominent examples a couple weekends ago.
The first work is titled Ampersand. Matt Rich, Assistant Professor of Art at the University of San Diego, created the eye-catching acrylic on canvas in 2018. It hangs on a wall above the library’s main stacks.
This particular painting is part of a series of works that riffs on the symbol of the ampersand. The ampersand holds, both symbolically and formally, the ability to represent the idea of connection.
Connection perfectly describes any library. Shelves connect readers with unexplored worlds.
The next artwork I observed in the library hangs high on a wall roughly opposite the front desk. It’s titled Salta pa’ lante (Jump Forward), by artist Alida Cervantes. The dynamic art was created in 2020. A pair of aluminum panels come alive with acrylic spray paint and oil.
Alida Cervantes is a Mexican artist who lives and works in the Tijuana and San Diego border region. Traveling daily between the US and Mexico, Cervantes’ work is characterized by an interest in power relations between race, class, gender and even species.
This diptych…is part of the artist’s exploration into the Mexican casta (caste) paintings of the 17th and 18th centuries…Cervantes presents two figures that are the offspring of individuals not only from two different races but also from two different times in history: the present and the colonial…
Finally, here’s a piece titled Primary Waveform (half circle), by artist Kelsey Brookes. The optically mysterious acrylic on wood was created in 2018. You can find it up on the second floor of the Rancho Bernardo Library, at the top of the stairs.
Kelsey Brookes is a research scientist turned artist. His paintings experiment with pop, abstract, and traditional styles while exploring scientific subject matter, including molecules, atoms, and modern biochemistry...
This sculpture is one of a series of works inspired by the Fibonacci sequence and waveforms...
From a distance the painted wood almost appears like basketwork, but give it a closer look. What are those tiny figures? Is that a reflection you see, or a complete circle that curves beyond your reach?
Stand near Primary Waveform (half circle), then gaze across the library for a commanding view of those first two works of art!
Additional works in the San Diego Civic Art Collection can be found at the library’s glass wall and gate entrance, exterior courtyard, and in the library’s study rooms.
Why not visit the Rancho Bernardo Library and see it all for yourself?
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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.
San Diego artist James E. Watts will be hosting an art show inside his downtown studio this coming Sunday, September 22, 2024. Visitors will have the opportunity to be transported by his wonderful Portal to Heaven!
I swung by his studio this morning and was able to sneak a look at his completed Portal to Heaven project myself.
An astonishing wall appears like a puzzle piece sky full of clouds. Each of the 105 hand sewn clouds, he explains, gather and radiate orgone life energy like a battery! Stand at the heavenly portal and feel its energy!
I blogged about this ambitious project last December. You can read more about it here.
After James showed me the amazing Portal to Heaven, I turned about and saw how he’s creating bunches of apples. They’re in groups of five. He calls them all together the Gates of Hell!
The apples are of different sizes, just as sins are. Would you take a bite of these apples? Perhaps a little one?
James Watts’ studio never ceases to amaze me. Creativity fills it wall to wall, and every time I visit it seems there’s a new, fantastic project.
James loves ideas, theories, philosophy, literature . . . different ways of seeing this world. With his art he inspires, teaches. He explained during our talk today that he’s a teacher without a classroom.
You’ll note he also has a big smile.
Next he showed me what he called a sense board. This particular work of art, which is titled Six Senses, actively interacts with a person using sound, smell, touch, taste, sight and intuition! Should you attend his art show next Sunday, perhaps you can try it out!
Interested, yet?
James E. Watts will host the 100 Clouds 100 Apples art show this coming Sunday, from 12 to 8 pm. His studio is located in the heart of downtown at 1046 Seventh Avenue.
Lovers of art just might find heaven!
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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.
