Tag: museums

Shotgun Tom and train fun in Balboa Park!

Can you believe it? Today I met legendary radio personality “Shotgun Tom” Kelly at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum in Balboa Park!

Shotgun Tom was running trains as he often does on Wednesday afternoons. His pleasant greeting brought me back to my younger days, when his distinctive radio voice was a part of my life.

Shotgun Tom is a model train enthusiast. He has his own elaborate layout at home. A display at the museum concerns his love for the hobby and how it developed. I blogged about this not too long ago–you can see what I posted by clicking here.

I asked whether he was still on the radio, and the answer was YES! You can catch his 60s Gold program on SiriusXM Channel 73 on week nights 4 -9 pm Pacific Time. He has also written a book titled All I Wanna Do is Play the Hits, which you can check out on Amazon here. The book’s cover shows him with his Hollywood Walk of Fame star.

I went to the San Diego Model Railroad Museum today because they are participating in the San Diego Museum Council’s “Big Exchange,” which allows members of one museum to visit others for free from May 1 to May 18. See which museums are participating by scrolling down this page.

If you’ve never been to the San Diego Model Railroad Museum, you’re missing out on a ton of fun! I took a few random photos, some behind glass.

One of the museum’s five amazing layouts (six if you include the outdoor Garden Railroad) is undergoing construction as it expands, as you might notice…

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The eye-opening Art of Autism in Oceanside.

The Art of Autism: A Different Lens is an exhibition now showing at the Oceanside Museum of Art. More than a dozen neurodiverse artists have pieces in the museum, and their work is truly eye-opening. The brilliant creativity of special artists who possibly see the world differently than you or me is off the charts.

The exhibition is a collaboration between the Oceanside Museum of Art and The Art of Autism, a non-profit whose mission is to empower and connect individuals within the autism community through participation in the Arts.

By viewing these works of art, visitors to the museum will appreciate how people on the autism spectrum and others who are neurodivergent have the ability to depict the world in uniquely insightful ways. Of course, interpreting our world in very different ways is what art is all about.

I enjoyed my experience of the exhibition last weekend. Here are a few photos to give you an idea of the fine work you’ll discover.

If you’d like to expand your own understanding of this world we all share, visit The Art of Autism: A Different Lens by August 3, 2025.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

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Everything in Its Place in Escondido.

Self-Portraits with Underwear Pulled Too High, Matthew Freedman, 1995. Acrylic on plaster.

Today a new exhibition opened at the museum of the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. Everything in Its Place: Selections from the Permanent Collection features a surprising variety of pieces.

The museum’s webpage explains how these works explore the shifting relationships between abstraction, the human form, and the environments we inhabit. In other words, the art explores just about everything and anything.

I found myself pausing before certain complex pieces, enthralled. And so many different materials! One unusual sculpture is made almost entirely of glass. There are creations on cardboard and on linen. One piece, created during the museum’s inaugural artist-in-residence program, is a ten-foot wall of open wooden boxes containing found objects–like thoughts or memories in the compartments of one’s mind.

I took photos of a few examples.

There’s humor, too. Look closely at my first photograph!

Untitled, Mark Jackson, 1983. Oil on cardboard.
In the Sun’s Blood, Doris Bittar, 1997. Oil on linen.

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Virgin of Guadalupe miracles fills the Mingei!

In 1531 the Blessed Virgin Mary was said to have appeared miraculously in Mexico. You can read that history here.

Today, images of the Virgin of Guadalupe (a Catholic title of the Virgin Mary) can be seen throughout Mexico, and San Diego, too.

A standard image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, filled with symbolism, hangs in homes and churches. It is painted on murals, on cars and appears in tattoos. The Virgin of Guadalupe seems everywhere.

Not surprisingly, the iconic image also appears on textiles. An important part of the Virgin of Guadalupe story includes her likeness appearing miraculously on the inside of a cloak.

The Mingei International Museum in Balboa Park recently opened a sensational exhibition titled Fashioning an Icon: Virgin of Guadalupe Imagery in Textile Design.

The exhibition features outfits worn by women and men, traditional huipiles (handwoven tunics largely worn by indigenous peoples in Mexico), jackets, shoes and more. Many of the crafted pieces are very colorful, as you can see from my photographs.

Signs throughout the exhibit explain why the Virgin of Guadalupe became a religious and cultural phenomenon–how, in Mexico, invading Catholicism eventually melded with indigenous sensibilities, producing the divine but grounded symbolism one sees in the now beloved image.

The Mingei International Museum has presented many outstanding exhibitions, and this one is right up there. I was surprised to see so many different objects, and such variety. I was excited to see so much life.

Each work seems a miracle of human faith and creativity.

Fashioning an Icon: Virgin of Guadalupe Imagery in Textile Design is on view through September 7, 2025.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

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Two eras: Contrasted paintings at Timken Museum.

The Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park has opened a fascinating exhibition titled Reconsidering Bierstadt: Kent Monkman. Visitors to the fine art museum are encouraged to compare two similar but very different works: Albert Bierstadt‘s 1864 painting Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall, and First Nation Cree artist Kent Monkman‘s 2012 work The Fourth World.

The photograph above shows Kent Monkman’s painting (on loan from the Denver Art Museum) which reimagines the Bierstadt piece in the light of a different perspective.

Bierstadt’s oil painting conveys a sense of rustic tranquility and natural beauty; the somewhat shocking bottom portion of Monkman’s bolder, brighter acrylic piece shows bison being frightened and funneled in Yosemite through sheer steel walls by white men with guns.

Monkman’s contemporary painting clearly expresses that an environment can be forcibly altered by the actions of humans. Like any good art, the image ignites complex thought.

I’m no expert when it comes to the history of Yosemite. Doing some online research, I was surprised to learn that, according to a National Park Service Facebook post: Here in Yosemite, though, bison have never roamed.

Here’s the bottom portion of The Fourth World:

The next photograph is of Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall. It’s darker, vaguer, somehow more sublime. (The docent thought perhaps the painting needs to be cleaned.)

This Smithsonian website has a better photograph and explains: Bierstadt was inspired to paint Yosemite after seeing Carleton Watkins’s photographs in a New York gallery in 1862…In 1864, the year Bierstadt painted this view, President Abraham Lincoln set aside Yosemite as a protected reserve…

Head down to the Timken Museum of Art when they’re open and observe both canvases up close. When I visited, a friendly docent was standing by to answer questions and provide more insight.

The Timken, which contains many painted masterpieces, is always free! The exhibition will continue through June 8th, 2025.

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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.

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San Diego radio legend Shotgun Tom’s model train!

San Diego’s legendary radio and television personality “Shotgun Tom” Kelly has created many fond memories. I remember listening to him on B100 back in the 1980s. Other San Diegans I’ve spoken to remember him introducing cartoons on The KUSI Kids Club. Over the years, he worked at KDEO, KPRI, KGB, KCBQ, KOGO, KBZS and KFMB-FM and Los Angeles oldies station KRTH-FM (K-Earth 101).

During my recent visit to the San Diego Model Railroad Museum in Balboa Park, I was surprised to see an exhibit concerning Shotgun Tom. Did you know he’s a big fan of model trains? He even has his own cool model train layout! I was told he often visits the museum, operating trains of the San Diego and Arizona Eastern HO layout on Wednesdays!

According to the exhibit, the layout at his home is 10 by 7 feet and includes a radio and television station and a mountain for the TV station’s tower!

(I recall seeing a tiny “Shot Gun” Tom billboard in the Old Town Model Railroad Depot’s big model city, which sadly no longer exists. You can see photos of that incredible layout here.)

“Shot Gun” Tom’s real name is Thomas Joseph Irwin. The museum exhibit includes an old photo of his father J. G. Irwin Sr., a Santa Fe railroad engineer, on the 2357 switch engine in 1955.

Curious about the unusual nickname Shot Gun? It resulted from Tom liking to sit in the front of the family car beside his dad.

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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.

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Two-inch railroad cars to travel in San Diego!

What is the smallest operating railroad car you’ve ever seen? Have you ever seen a moving train so small that bits of dust on the track can stop it?

Incredibly diminutive trains are coming to the San Diego Model Railroad Museum in Balboa Park! Each car is about two inches long–the size of your finger!

A new Z scale permanent exhibit is being built in the museum and should be completed later his year. As a sign in the museum explains, this cool project is being supported by a grant from The Norris Foundation.

Z scale model trains are so tiny a complete oval layout can fit inside a briefcase. They have a scale ratio of 1:220. They’re even smaller than the N scale trains one can see in the museum’s incredible Pacific Desert Lines layout, which is operated by the San Diego Society of N Scale.

A sample Z scale layout is already on display (above photo). Plans for the not-yet-built layout can also be viewed…

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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.

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Take a free Balboa Park Women’s History Tour!

There’s a special once-a-month free tour in Balboa Park that I learned about today. The Balboa Park Women’s History Tour commemorates the women who’ve contributed to Balboa Park and San Diego history.

The inspiring tour begins every 3rd Saturday by the Bea Evenson Fountain (between the San Diego Natural History Museum and Fleet Science Center) at 10 am. The walking tour lasts for one hour.

I’ll have to take this tour at some point in the future!

What I’ve found out is the Balboa Park Women’s History Tour is presented by Forever Balboa Park. The historical substance is provided by the Women’s Museum of California, which makes its home inside the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park’s Casa de Balboa.

Learn more about the tour by clicking here!

You might remember how years ago the Women’s Museum of California made its home at Liberty Station in Point Loma. Well, soon they will have their own permanent gallery inside the San Diego History Center! Their first exhibit will concern Women in STEM. Watch for it!

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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.

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Stories that connect us in Oceanside.

Currently running at the Oceanside Museum of Art is an exhibition titled The Stories that Connect Us: Selections from the OMA Collection.

Each work by 35 Southern California artists is like a unique story that invites you to think, interpret, dream–and thereby become part of the same story. Your inclusion in each artwork’s story might be untold, but it is real.

The museum’s collection contains diverse pieces in different styles, some by highly renowned artists such as John Baldessari and James Hubbell.

I was surprised to learn the Baldessari piece in the exhibit was painted circa 1959, before the artist burned “all” of his work. His Wikipedia page explains: In 1970, Baldessari and five friends[8] burnt all of the paintings he had created between 1953 and 1966 as part of a new piece, titled The Cremation Project. The ashes from these paintings were baked into cookies… This painting survived.

Here are a few photos. If you’d like to become an integral part of these stories, visit the Oceanside Museum of Art by August 31, 2025.

(Forest), John Baldessari, circa 1959. Oil and mixed media on canvas.
Star Stalker, Walter Wojtyla, 1996. Acrylic on canvas.
Influx, Toni Williams, 2023. Oil on canvas.
Untitled (Two Figures with Purple/Pink/Orange Skies), Janet Cooling, 1980s. Oil on canvas.

The following James Hubbell watercolor includes a poem that he wrote in 2004. To read it, visit the museum!

The exhibition also includes two small, typically beautiful Hubbell sculptures.

In the Beginning, James Hubbell, circa 2007. Watercolor.

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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.

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Dreams, sleep apnea, and the art of Mary Jhun.

The current exhibitions at the Oceanside Museum of Art include Mary Jhun: In Losing Sleep, I Painted. The surreal work of Mary Jhun, who works out of Escondido, is presented in one of the museum’s upstairs galleries.

I wanted to see this exhibition because I’ve photographed several of her beautiful murals around San Diego in the past. If you’re curious, here’s one in San Ysidro, here’s another in City Heights, and here’s one more in North Park. (Sadly, I believe the one in San Ysidro was later removed.)

I didn’t know until now that Mary Jhun suffers from sleep apnea and must use an uncomfortable CPAP machine to help her breathe at night while sleeping. The Oceanside Museum of Art exhibition explores how it affects her life, creativity, and very importantly, her dreaming.

You can see her dreams in her artwork. Her pieces typically depict female faces and figures, which she calls The Girls. The Girls are elaborately drawn complex creations, filled with organic life, often entwined with machinery and strange architectural forms.

As the exhibition webpage explains: Jhun’s goal is to allow the viewer to feel understood, to question what they see, and to understand reality through a deeper lens, outside of the norm and into a place beyond realism. Her imagery of “The Girls” represents an inner self, one that is culminated in many alternate versions of what is or can be.

I love artwork that makes you stand a long while, gazing, thinking, feeling and wondering. Mary Jhun’s fine art certainly does that.

The exhibition continues through June 15, 2025.

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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.

Feel free to share!