Tag: la jolla

The surprising Coral Reef Garden at Scripps!

There’s a surprising garden on the campus of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It’s called The McReynolds Family Coral Reef Garden.

Desert cacti and succulents planted among rocks strongly resemble an ocean’s underwater coral reef!

This isn’t coincidental. I read several information signs around the Coral Reef Garden and learned how two very different environments are alike in many respects.

You can view this fantastic garden for yourself by walking along the Scripps Coastal Meander Trail, where it heads down Biological Grade. Look for it by the Eckart Building.

Fascinated? Read more about this very unique coral reef-inspired garden here!

As I explored the garden, I saw this plaque by a bench. It reads:

Ricky Grigg

Big Wave Surfer

PhD Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Pioneer Coral Reef Ecologist

Devoted his life to the sea and all it’s [sic] splendor

Two different ecosystems compared: a coral reef and a desert environment. Harsh habitat and abundant life. A seeming contradiction called Darwin’s Paradox.
The fore reef, with its many ridges and channels, contains the greatest diversity of corals, fishes, invertebrates and algae.
At the reef drop off, deeper, less turbulent water allows corals to grow taller and make more intricate shapes. Much like plants not subject to strong winds!

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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!

A giant Red Shoe hidden in the trees!

An enormous, very fancy Red Shoe seems lost among the trees in a corner of UC San Diego!

Red Shoe is an unusual outdoor sculpture by Elizabeth Murray, created in 1996. It’s part of the University of San Diego Stuart Collection.

I say unusual, because it stands among eucalyptus trees and seems oddly–to me–out of place. Like a shoe from a fairy tale, dropped in a forest. But I think that was the intention!

Faceted, colored objects are scattered on the ground nearby, like fallen jewels.

The paths in this corner of the UCSD campus, by North Torrey Pines Road and Revelle College Drive, are seldom trod. By ordinary folk, that is.

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This blog now features thousands of photos around San Diego! Are you curious? There’s lots of cool stuff to check out!

Here’s the Cool San Diego Sights main page, where you can read the most current blog posts.  If you’re using a phone or small mobile device, click those three parallel lines up at the top–that opens up my website’s sidebar, where you’ll see the most popular posts, a search box, and more!

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Building a mountain at Grand Canyons of La Jolla!

A second Mount Soledad is coming to La Jolla!

The small mountain will rise from The Map of the Grand Canyons of La Jolla, in a plaza filled with educational artwork at Kellogg Park.

I learned about this wonderful project on Saturday during my walk along the La Jolla Shores beach boardwalk.

The sculpture will depict canyons running from Mount Soledad down deep into the Pacific Ocean. Those visiting The Map of the Grand Canyons of La Jolla Educational Plaza will be able to visualize in three dimensions what is shown in two dimensions in the large, colorful mosaic at their feet.

The Grand Canyons of La Jolla project is the work of the Walter Munk Foundation For the Oceans, which is responsible for the The Map mosaic in the plaza, plus signs and another nearby sculpture.

The Map mosaic is the plaza’s extraordinary centerpiece. It beautifully represents the local shoreline and underwater canyons in the San Diego-La Jolla Underwater Park Ecological Reserve.

Lines drawn in The Map concern ocean wave dynamics, calculated by Walter Munk, a world-renowned scientist who worked and taught for many years at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Over a hundred sea creatures also appear in the mosaic.

Signs at one edge of The Map detail the birds, fish and other marine life one might see above or below the water off La Jolla. A second completed sculpture, near the place where the small Mount Soledad will appear, concerns the Kumeyaay in the coastal region. It also shows intertidal sea life, cast in bronze.

Should you walk down the boardwalk (honorary Walter Munk Way) at La Jolla Shores beach, make sure to visit The Map. And watch for the coming of a second small Mount Soledad!

Walter Munk developed ocean wave prediction theory.

To learn more about Walter Munk’s scientific contribution during World War II, his groundbreaking work at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, his worldwide recognition, and why surfers love him, click here.

To watch a Walter Munk Foundation video concerning The Map click here.

Read an article about the mosaic’s debut in 2020 (replacing an earlier “map” at this location) by clicking 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!

Memory Traces: art inspired by La Jolla history.

There’s a fascinating exhibition now showing at the La Jolla Historical Society’s Wisteria Cottage Gallery. San Diego artists, after viewing artifacts in the La Jolla Historical Society’s archives, have created pieces that are inspired and informed by the past. The exhibition is titled Memory Traces: Artists Transform the Archive.

I visited the gallery inside the historic Wisteria Cottage yesterday. It’s free to the public and worth the time if you’re curious about local history or the creative process–or philosophy.

According to the La Jolla Historical Society’s description here: The exhibition draws its title from a 1925 essay by Sigmund Freud, in which he explored the way remembrance functions . . . The exhibition proposes that the archives’ contemporary value may, in fact, lie in its malleability . . . for critique, for expanding understandings of experience and of history, for transformation, and the creation of new narratives…

As I walked about looking at the pieces, I could see how this world we live in is a continuum, where past, present and future are entangled and inseparable, not unlike all the moments in our own lives.

I took photos of two examples of the artwork…

Historical photo of Spanish artist Eduardo Chillida’s sculpture Our Father’s House, installed in La Jolla Village in 1989 as part of an outdoor art exhibition. A study for a larger work later installed in Guernica, Spain, honoring lives lost during the Spanish Civil War.
their father’s house, by artist Joe Yorty, 2022. A wood replica with photos and newspaper clippings concerning the building, movement and destruction of local buildings. An homage to past lives, including the artist’s own father.
Cloth banner with words Matinee Today that was once used at La Jolla’s historic Granada Theatre.
Matinee Today, by artist Allison Wiese, 2021. Photos of material from the past being used in present life in many different ways. The past persists. Nothing ever truly goes away.

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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!

Shorelines mosaics at La Jolla Shores Lifeguard Station.

Perceptive people strolling down the boardwalk at La Jolla Shores beach might encounter something both unexpected and wonderful.

Decorating the north and south sides of the La Jolla Shores Lifeguard Station are colorful tile mosaic panels that depict the sun and sea. The public art is titled Shorelines.

Shorelines was installed in 2012, and was created by award-winning San Diego artist Mary Lynn Dominguez.

I really like this beachy artwork! It’s swirly and bubbly and captures the mood of the nearby beach. Looking at the panels is like glimpsing a bright, abstract world through horizonal windows.

You can learn more about Shorelines, which is part of San Diego’s Civic Art Collection, here!

At the front of the lifeguard station, facing the boardwalk, I also noticed a plaque. It remembers Ron Trenton.

The plaque is a bit corroded, as you can see in my photograph. It reads:

RON TRENTON

1945-1997

Gentleman, Scholar, Humorist, Friend, Lifeguard Extraordinare [sic]

“LOST AT SEA”

Now Comes the Lifeguard, Back to the Sea, Where He Found Action, Where He Found Peace, Where He Saved Others With Selfless Devotion and Where He Risked All With a Smile of Emotion

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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!

Beautiful renovation at MCASD La Jolla!

The major renovation and expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla is approaching completion! And it’s looking amazing!

During my long walk yesterday, I photographed the front of the museum and its new outdoor Art Park, which will be open to the public once the construction fence comes down.

To read more about MCASD La Jolla’s major reconstruction project and what visitors can expect when the museum finally reopens this spring, click here.

Meanwhile, enjoy these photos!

The clean, elegant exterior, to me, has been very tastefully handled. Ellen Browning Scripps, newspaper chain founder and philanthropist, commissioned renowned modernist architect Irving Gill to design her La Jolla home. Today it is home of the museum. With some significant changes!

Almost four years ago, I took the following photograph of a rendering that visualized the finished museum. You can revisit that old blog post, which includes images of pieces in the museum’s collection, here!

The upcoming photographs were taken while walking along Prospect Street from the south end of the greatly expanded museum to its new outdoor Art Park.

The limestone egg-like sculpture near the museum’s sleek new entrance is part of Three Cairns. This “West Coast” Cairn is by artist Andy Goldsworthy. The other cairns are in Iowa and New York.

In the Art Park, the motorized black sculpture with wrapping still on its feet is titled Hammering Man at 3,110,527, by artist Jonathan Borofsky.

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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!

Beautiful photos from the foot of Scripps Pier.

Today I went for a very long walk through La Jolla. I started at the San Diego VA Medical Center and proceeded through the UC San Diego campus, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla Shores, and finally into the Village of La Jolla. I have loads of photos to share in the days ahead!

I’ll start off with photos that were taken during the middle part of my walk. As you can see, I had reached the foot of the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier, which juts into the Pacific Ocean at the world-famous Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

This pier is an important tool that is used for carrying out ocean research. It has a variety of environmental monitoring stations and supports small boats and scientific diving operations. It also pipes seawater to laboratories on the campus. You can read more about the history of Scripps Pier here.

It was a perfect day. Surfers were out on the waves. Families played on the sunny beach below, or in the shade under the pier. Sunbathers lay on the sand.

A welcoming platform near the foot of the pier is a place where people can relax in chairs and enjoy the view.

A gift to honor Jim Ax, Mathematician-Mariner who loved the “Savage Sea” – Kevin and Brian Keating
Urban runoff biofilter. The rocks, gravel, soil and plants filter runoff so it does not pollute the beach and ocean.

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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!

Historical marker at UC San Diego.

On the campus of UC San Diego in La Jolla, an historical marker stands on a patch of grass among some trees.

A bronze plaque embedded in a boulder explains how, for half a century, this area was the site of Camp Calvin B. Matthews, of the United States Marine Corps.

The bronze plaque is located south of the Price Center and Triton Fountain, in UCSD Town Square.

THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

OCCUPIED THIS SITE KNOWN AS

CAMP CALVIN B. MATTHEWS

FROM 1917 TO 1964, OVER A MILLION MARINES AND OTHER SHOOTERS RECEIVED THEIR RIFLE MARKSMANSHIP TRAINING HERE. THIS SITE WAS DEEDED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT SAN DIEGO ON 6 OCTOBER, 1964 FOR THE PURSUIT OF HIGHER EDUCATION.

Prior to World War II, the military base was simply called Marine Corps Rifle Range, La Jolla.

To learn more about the history of Camp Calvin B. Matthews, you can check out a Wikipedia entry concerning it here.

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This blog now features thousands of photos around San Diego! Are you curious? There’s lots of cool stuff to check out!

Here’s the Cool San Diego Sights main page, where you can read the most current blog posts.  If you’re using a phone or small mobile device, click those three parallel lines up at the top–that opens up my website’s sidebar, where you’ll see the most popular posts, a search box, and more!

To enjoy future posts, you can also “like” Cool San Diego Sights on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

The Triton Legend at UC San Diego.

The Triton Legend is made visible at UC San Diego in the form of a fountain sculpture. Triton with his trident and conch is located at the bottom of stairs on the south side of Price Center.

I passed the Triton Fountain during a recent walk and took these photographs.

The fine bronze sculpture of UCSD’s mascot was installed in 2008. It was created by artist Manuelita Brown, an alumna of the university.

I’ve photographed two other great sculptures by Manuelita Brown. One, titled Encinitas Child, you can see here. The second small sculpture titled I’ll Fly Away is here.

Triton in Greek mythology is a merman and demigod, the son of Poseidon.

A plaque near the fountain, which was off when I walked past, reads:

The Triton Legend

In Greek mythology, Triton is known as the trumpeter of the deep and son of Poseidon, god of the sea. He is represented as a merman having the upper body of a human and tail of a fish. Like Poseidon, he carries a three prong spear called a trident. However, Triton’s special attribute is the conch shell, which he blows like a trumpet to calm or raise the seas. When blown loudly, its sound is so fearsome, Triton’s rivals imagine it to be the roar of a mighty beast and take flight.

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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!

Discovering art on random San Diego walks!

One of the best things about taking long, random walks around San Diego is the unexpected discoveries of art.

No matter which neighborhood you move through, more surprising art awaits–if you have lifted eyes.

Many Cool San Diego Sights posts contain these discoveries of art. Before aiming my camera, I like to pause and enter the small worlds that have been created, and wonder at the unique genius of each artist’s vision.

Move through the city with curious eyes and you might be rewarded by observing a particular creative effort in progress.

During a walk early this year I noticed a partially completed mural outside Yohed Coffee on University Avenue in City Heights…

During a walk several weeks later, I noticed the white halo-like space had additions of gold…

Sometimes I’ll find art that has suddenly popped into the world. Sort of like how you and I pop into this world, rather mysteriously.

Here’s a mural I saw recently on Mission Boulevard in Pacific Beach. The artwork appears to be by @saltandpaint. The restaurant it’s painted on has closed, but “Te amo Pacific Beach” lives on and is shared in many hearts…

Here’s an old photo on my computer. I believe this was taken in Pacific Beach, too, but I’m not certain…

More art in PB–tattoo art!

I stumbled upon this strangely spiritual and very beautiful mural in Lemon Grove near the corner of Broadway and Lemon Grove Avenue. It’s by Danny Darkoski.

Walking along in La Jolla I happened to notice an artist at work…

Artist Todd McNeley was placing his own amazing, unique vision on canvas…

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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!