Tag: murals

Historic mural inside La Jolla Post Office!

A stunning mural decorates the lobby of the United States Post Office in La Jolla. The historic mural is titled Scenic View of the Village. Completed in 1936 by renowned artist Belle Baranceanu, the 15′ x 12′ oil on canvas painting depicts part of La Jolla, looking down curvy Hillside Drive toward the Pacific Ocean.

Belle Baranceanu lived much of her life in San Diego. She painted several public murals locally for the Works Progress Administration. A past exhibit at the San Diego History Center celebrated her contributions. See my old post concerning that here. I’ve also photographed her mural The Progress of Man in Balboa Park. You can view it on my now inactive blog “Beautiful Balboa Park” by clicking here.

Baranceanu’s work has been exhibited in many of the nation’s finest museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Carnegie Institute, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Denver Art Museum.

She produced the La Jolla Post Office mural for the Section of Painting and Sculpture, a New Deal project that added artwork to numerous public buildings.

Would you like to see this beautiful mural with your own eyes? The address and lobby hours of La Jolla’s post office can be found here.

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Solana Beach street art along Lomas Santa Fe.

Enjoy street art that I discovered during a recent walk in Solana Beach down Lomas Santa Fe Drive.

These photos begin near Rios Avenue and proceed east to Solana Hills Drive, a block before Interstate 5.

The Solana Beach mural you see above is on the north side of Minute Shop Liquor. I believe it’s fairly new.

The other street art decorates electrical boxes. To bring out more color, I increased the contrast when I prepared the following images…

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Murals at Solana Beach Gateway Business Center.

You’ve possibly seen these large murals while driving along Interstate 5 at Lomas Santa Fe Drive. The beautiful artwork decorates several walls of the Solana Beach Gateway Business Center.

I took a very long walk through Solana Beach several days ago and made it a point to check these out!

The murals were painted by Encinitas resident Kevin Anderson. They are obviously inspired by local coastal scenes. Looking at the artist signatures, I see they were completed individually over the course of years.

Here’s the artist’s website. You’ve enjoyed photographs of Kevin Anderson’s art previously on Cool San Diego Sights. Here and here and here.

As you approach the Solana Beach Gateway Business Center building via its main driveway, you see this:

The next mural was completed on 9-25-20:

It appears that the next one, with the mermaid, was completed in 2021:

The next one showing a family walking down to the beach was painted in 2022. Is that Fletcher Cove?

I found no date for the last one. It’s my favorite. I see a Coaster train passing under the bridge at Torrey Pines State Beach!

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Native and Indigenous Healing Garden and mural at SDSU.

In 2022, the Native and Indigenous Healing Garden debuted at San Diego State University, to one side of the Communication Building. The circular garden, which also serves as an outdoor classroom, is filled with healing herbs that can be freely harvested. Life grows in sunshine around a central stone fountain.

The plants in the garden represent various indigenous cultures: the Kumeyaay, the Aztecs, the Mixtecs and Zapotecs, and other indigenous people in California and Mesoamerica.

Painted beside the garden on one side of the Communication Building, visitors will also find a large, very beautiful mural.

This website provides details about the 30’ x 60’ mural: Designed by students as part of an Arts Alive SDSU project by History Professor Paula DeVos and Art Professor Eva Struble, the artwork includes various plants, animals, and designs with deep ties to Native Indigenous culture throughout California and Mesoamerica.

If I lived near SDSU, I know I’d walk by frequently, simply to sit on the shady bench you see in my photographs. One feels drawn to this healing garden, the smell of sage and other life springing from the earth, and the quiet beauty of the place.

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Four more colorful Murals of La Jolla!

The Murals of La Jolla are constantly changing. Older murals are taken down; colorful new ones appear.

Every time I walk through the Village of La Jolla, it seems, I spot murals that I hadn’t seen previously. And indeed that happened last weekend!

Two of the four murals I photographed are fairly new. The others I must’ve missed in the past.

Enjoy these photographs!

My first three photos are of a large mural from 2024, by artist Todd Gray. It’s titled Ghosts in the Machine.

The next mural in La Jolla is also from 2024. Artist Amy Adler titled it Location.

The next mural from 2023 is titled The Scripps Gill Loggia. The artist is Rex Southwick.

Finally, the next two photos are of a mural titled Time. It’s from 2021. The artist is Gabriella Sanchez.

UPDATE!

Oops! I’d forgotten that I photographed The Scripps Gill Loggia last year. To see those photos, click 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.

Thank you for sharing!

Mural painted near Chula Vista trolley station!

A big, very fun mural is now being painted on a long wall in Chula Vista! The artwork, which appears to be almost competed, can be seen by San Diego trolley Blue Line passengers along the tracks north of the E Street station.

The mural is part of the ongoing MTS Color the Corridor project. The design is by prolific Southern California artist Michelle Ruby (aka Mr B Baby). With a colorful Mexican flavor, the mural contains doll-like characters that one often finds in her artwork. You’ve likely seen her murals all over San Diego.

The painted wall is in the trolley right-of-way and cannot be approached on foot. I took these photos through the slightly dirty window of a moving trolley this morning. They show small but notable parts of the long mural. I had to enhance the images to make them less blurry…

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Fun skate mural in Escondido’s Washington Park

While walking through Escondido’s Washington Park this weekend, I noticed a new mural. It depicts kids having fun at the Washington Park Skate Spot.

This mural replaces another that I spotted in the summer of 2023. See that old mural here–it’s the one with a hand reaching for splashes of color.

If you want to see several colorful murals painted on Washington Park’s community center buildings, and learn something about them, click 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.

Thank you for sharing!

Colorful new mural at Oceanside Transit Center!

This very colorful new mural was painted a couple months ago on the north side of the Oceanside Transit Center parking structure. It celebrates Oceanside–its Spanish mission and fishing history, and the nearby Pacific Ocean!

Jonny Pucci created the striking mural. See his Instagram page here.

According to this article, the work is part of MainStreet Oceanside’s Art that Excites program, which aims to install up to 10 murals in public spaces throughout downtown Oceanside.

I love how so many Southern California cities and communities continue to enliven neighborhoods and destinations with public art. No matter where I walk, I always seem to encounter something new. That was certainly the case yesterday!

Next time I walk in Oceanside, I have no doubt I’ll stumble upon more cool sights like this. Meanwhile, stay tuned for more outdoor art that I also discovered yesterday–in Escondido!

Enjoy a few more photos of the Oceanside Transit Center parking garage mural…

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Beautiful mural at Palomar College Escondido Education Center.

Renowned artist and illustrator Rafael Lopez painted this very colorful mural in Escondido during the summer. You might recognize his abstract style. The inspirational mural greets students arriving at the Palomar College Escondido Education Center.

(I took a long walk through Escondido early this morning . . . then Oceanside around noontime! I discovered all sorts of great street art and public art during my adventures. Stay tuned!)

The story behind this beautiful Rafael Lopez mural can be found in this article. I didn’t know the school has a comet as its mascot!

I like how images of life, growth and reaching skyward are important elements of the design.

If you love this artwork, you might want to check out other Rafael Lopez murals around San Diego. You can find many of them documented in past blog posts by clicking 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.

Thank you for sharing!

San Diego Padres: LFGSD in North Park!

LFGSD!

The San Diego Padres almost won it all last Major League Baseball season. They nearly took down the Dodgers. The Padres should remain awesome for many seasons to come. A new mural in North Park roots on the team. Let’s F-ing Go San Diego!

The spray painted artwork, which appears like neon at the corner of University Avenue and 30th Street, takes its inspiration from an exclamation made by Padres player Jorge Alfaro back in 2022. The impassioned expression has taken on a life of its own. LFGSD!

This cool art was created a couple months ago by muralists Carly Ealey (@carlyealey) and Christopher Konecki (@konecki_art).

Check it 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.

Thank you for sharing!