Tag: mysterious

Remnants of 1915 Panama-California Exposition in California Quadrangle.

I discovered these amazing remnants of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park yesterday during a visit to the Cannibals exhibition at the Museum of Us.

A friendly museum employee explained that the south side of the California Quadrangle served as an art gallery during the Panama-California Exposition. He believes that these ornamental touches inside the long, narrow gallery all date from 1915.

If you can provide more information about these discoveries, please leave a comment.

You can find a beautiful sculpted work at the west end of the gallery. It’s mounted above a door that leads into the California Quadrangle’s chapel, which remains separate from the museum gallery. The imagery appears to include explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo’s galleon San Salvador.

A balcony inside the gallery, which is closed to the public, features four cherubic figures which seem to represent artistic creation…

At the east end of the gallery you’ll find this amazing (now waterless) fountain. It’s near steps that ascend to the closed balcony. Beautiful tiles frame it.

APIΣTON MEN ‘ΥΔΩP in Greek translates “Water is best.”

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Supernatural yōkai exhibit in Balboa Park!

Red Namahage, by artist Alex Wu.

Yōkai are supernatural beings and spirits from Japanese folklore, and they’ve gathered in San Diego’s Balboa Park!

Yōkai: Stories and Imagination is a community art exhibit now showing at the Japanese Friendship Garden and Museum.

Artists were invited to submit their interpretation of Japanese yokai for this exhibition. These original works can be viewed in both the Upper Garden Gallery and the Lower Garden’s Inamori Pavilion.

Yōkai include shapeshifters, ghosts, demons, and tricksters. They can be mischievous, helpful, or malevolent, often appearing as animal-like figures, possessed objects, or humanoids. They embody the mysterious and uncanny aspects of nature and human emotions.

Check out a few examples that I photographed.

I’ve always enjoyed this type of artwork. It can be wild, weird, fierce and unsettling. Mysterious forces in our world are often portrayed in human or animal form–familiar figures that we emotionally understand.

It would be interesting to compare yokai to deities and characters from the mythologies of other cultures.

The Spider’s Thread, by artist Joshua Benz.
Oiwa, by artist Tomi Tate.
Hōnengame, by artist Hunter/Moon Hunter Tattoo.
You Can’t Escape Gashadokuro, by artist Chris Rogers.

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Animals tracks lead away from San Diego Zoo!

A pathway that connects the San Diego Zoo to the rest of Balboa Park is imprinted with all sorts of different animal tracks.

Can you identify the wildlife that is represented?

This morning I walked south from the zoo toward the heart of Balboa Park.

My second-to-last photograph provides one hint!

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Mysterious plaque marks old Del Mar bike lane.

So far I can find nothing about this mysterious, corroded plaque marking an old bike lane in Del Mar.

The marker is easy to miss. I happened to see it earlier this summer while walking from the Solana Beach train station to the San Diego County Fair. The almost half-century-old plaque, mounted on a boulder, stands in some shrubbery near the intersection of Via de la Valle and Camino del Mar, north of the Brigantine restaurant parking lot. Considering its position, my impression is the bike lane in question ran east down Via de la Valle.

The plaque reads:

THE RITA DAVÉ MEMORIAL BIKE LANE

MAY 6, 1955 – MAY 9, 1979

Who was Rita Davé?

The plaque was placed here well before the advent of the internet and isn’t readily observed. I can’t find anything about it.

Does anyone out there know the history of The Rita Davé Memorial Bike Lane?

If you do, please leave a comment!

In the next photo, I’m beginning east down the Via de la Valle sidewalk. The marked bike lane on the street is clearly more recent.

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Leftover photos: weird, unusual, sometimes amusing!

This morning I’m going through unused photographs that I’ve stored on my computer. Some of the images are years old, others are more recent.

I thought you might enjoy seeing these. They’re from all around San Diego.

The photos I’ve selected are unusual or eye-catching for a variety of reasons. A few are rather amusing!

Can you identify where some of these photographs were taken?

Here they are…

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Mystery antique paper cutter at San Diego library!

There’s a mystery at the San Diego Central Library, up on the 9th floor in the Marilyn & Gene Marx Special Collections Center!

Look at this huge old paper cutter sitting near one corner of the room! Talk about heavy duty! I happened to stumble upon this unique antique device during a visit to the San Diego Library.

A note atop the antique states:

With the help of Anita Engles, Executive Director of the American Bookbinders Museum, we have deduced that this unmarked, vintage paper cutter is either an Advance Pony Lever Cutter or a Challenge Lever Cutter with a Finger Gauge. As for the year it was manufactured, that remains a mystery.

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Nazgûl bring cold despair to Comic-Con!

While walking through the Gaslamp Quarter this afternoon, I suddenly felt cold despair. Something terrible was creeping up behind me.

I turned.

Black cloaked figures were slowly, inexorably approaching.

The Nazgûl. Ringwraiths. Fallen kings who chilled their victims with Black Breath.

Comic-Con goers looked on in dismay. Took photos.

Oh–I get it. These guys were merely promoting The Rings of Power.

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If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

Two artists explore memory at the Athenaeum.

Within the Context of Time: May-ling Martinez and Coralys Carter is an exhibition of art now showing in La Jolla at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library.

As its webpage explains, the exhibition explores memory, time, and family history through two distinct yet deeply resonant artistic practices . . . While Martinez uses symmetry and balance to shape her assemblages and drawings, Carter plays purposefully with off-kilter constructions and hand-spun details . . .

The variety of pieces seem like memories that vaguely return in dreams and daydreams. Hair, baskets, racquets, tools, shells, fabric, a projector screen and other common everyday objects are often combined, just as memories can suddenly surface and strangely intertwine.

Evocative, mysterious, beautiful, and often melancholy, these two artists create frameworks from which one can begin to ponder the edges of the human experience: the vastness of time and memory alongside the mundanity of daily life.

I can’t describe the exhibition with words better than that.

This is visual art, meant to be absorbed not through words but with searching eyes. When you enter the Athenaeum, turn left at the front desk and walk into the Joseph Clayes III Gallery, then add the experience to your own memories.

Within the Context of Time: May-ling Martinez and Coralys Carter continues through July 25, 2026.

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“Stumped” by new tree art downtown!

I need your help. As yet I haven’t figured out something. This appears to be new public art in downtown San Diego.

Tree sections that double as seats have been placed near circles on a sidewalk. The circles, of various sizes, each seem to indicate the past location of tree. The approximate age of each tree is written inside each ring.

The sidewalk in question is west of the new The Torrey high-rise, the same building where huge new murals were very recently painted. Walk along Union Street between B and A Streets and you’ll no doubt spot the art.

Were trees removed from these spots? My memory is foggy. Should you happen to know anything, please leave a comment. If I get more information, I’ll post an update!

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A mystery behind the San Diego Convention Center!

These metal benches line the boardwalk behind the San Diego Convention Center. They face San Diego Bay. They were commissioned in 2008 and created by noted artist Nance O’Banion.

As her website explains: Nance produced 13 original designs, each of which was fabricated, once in its original form and once as a ‘mirror image’, in plasma-cut powder-coated steel. The installation of 26 art benches was titled Reverie.

I took these photos yesterday…

Today, a plaque can be seen embedded in the boardwalk near the benches, very close to the entrance to the Fifth Avenue Landing Superyacht Marina. It resembles the Reverie plaque shown in the gallery on Nance O’Banion’s website. The plaque includes her name and the same 2008 year.

But the title of the current plaque is different!

Why is the title Caesure, and not the original Reverie?

At some point, was the name of the installation changed to Caesure? The Latin word caesūra means “a cutting” or “a separation,” which might apply to the mirrored bench designs, or possibly how these benches were made.

Or . . . does Caesure concern another work of public art somewhere nearby? If so, what and where?

It’s a mystery with no solution that I can find!

If you know more about the history of this art bench installation, and why there have been different plaques with two different titles, please leave a comment!

UPDATE!

During a later walk along the boardwalk, I spotted a plaque titled Reverie. So that leaves the question: What was/is the public art titled Caesure?

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