Look what I discovered on Sunday while walking down University Avenue in North Park. Community artwork created by local kids!
This colorful mural can be found on the north side of University, behind the 30th Street bus stop. A banner strung above it proclaims: Community art brought to you by the children of North Park. North Park Music Fest. North Park Main Street.
I suspect the artwork was painted by kids during the music festival this year, which I missed. The date in one corner seems to confirm this.
If anyone out there knows more about this fun mural, please leave a comment!
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Two large rooms are filled with colorfully painted pillars that resemble the towering supports of the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge just outside the museum.
While the outdoor pillars are home to the many famous murals of Chicano Park, these miniature indoor pillars pay homage to diverse groups that have worked to preserve the legacy and integrity of the local community, and the park itself. The exhibit also features related works of art, and historical photos of community members and artists (particularly Visionary Elder Artist, Salvador Roberto Torres) and their grassroots fight against the powers-that-be to create Chicano Park.
The Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center contains other great exhibits, too, and its corridors are brimming with work by many different artists. I was interested to observe a community event room, a workspace containing printing equipment for the production of fine art, and a large gift shop that’s also filled wall-to-wall with artwork that you can purchase!
If you never been, make sure to check the museum out! Go soon, however, because PILLARS: Stories of Resilience and Self-Determination will be on display through September 9, 2023.
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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 Twitter!
About a week ago I was privileged to be shown many outdoor murals that are currently being restored in world-famous Chicano Park. What I observed were artists and volunteers working on the Chicano Park Mural Restoration Project 2023.
New color and vibrancy were being applied by many brushes. Preserving these historic murals, which speak vividly of struggle, resilience, and accomplishment by members of the Chicano, Latino, Mexican migrant and Indigenous communities, is an important undertaking. Chicano Park has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
Over 15 murals are to be fully restored in collaboration with the original artists. In the next photo you can see Mario Torero, who painted many of the Chicano Park murals.
I encourage anyone in San Diego who has never experienced Chicano Park to swing on by and wander among the monumental artwork. History, culture and decades of activism in the pursuit of civil rights will make an unforgettable impression.
I was amazed when I learned a group of three artists that painted a mural in 1977 as young women are now restoring their beautiful mural, almost half a century later! They call themselves Mujeres Muralistas. Watch an interview of the artists here. You can see their inspired work in my final two photographs!
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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 Twitter!
Earlier this year, stunning public art debuted in Escondido. You can find this tile mosaic mural near Maple Street Plaza, on an outdoor wall west of the John Paul the Great Catholic University building.
The amazing “America Connects West Region Mural Mosaic” unites small works of tile art painted by over 1500 participants, ages 7 to 97, representing America’s Western States.
According to the official website, Mural Mosaic’s Global Roots is a unique initiative that aims to bring people from around the world together through the power of art. Each collaborative Mural Mosaic production invites people from communities everywhere to connect and celebrate their unity through their diverse expressions of art. With each tile placed in a mural, Global Roots is reconnecting the world through the joy of art – one tile, one mural mosaic, one country at a time.
Not only is this a very cool concept, but the finished Global Roots murals, which often depict beautiful trees and landscapes, are spectacular!
This particular West Region project was finished in collaboration with Esco Alley Art in Escondido. You can see other Esco Alley Art murals here and here.
I took these photographs yesterday…
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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 Twitter!
Gallery 21 in Balboa Park’s Spanish Village Art Center is now hosting a show full of very beautiful silk art, created by members of the San Diego Silk Guild.
During my visit to the gallery this afternoon, I was interested to learn about the different types of art that can be created using silk. I was shown clothing, scarves, paintings on silk, wax batiks, Japanese shibori, botanical printing, unique sculptures . . . far more than my astonished brain could easily comprehend!
As you can see, this silk artwork can be very colorful. Some of the techniques produce a degree of subtlety and complexity one might not expect.
Looking for something beautiful to take home? Most of the pieces are for sale.
I’m afraid I forgot to take a photo of the sign in front of the gallery, but I believe the show continues until mid-August. You might want to drop by next weekend!
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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 Twitter!
If you’ve never visited the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla, now would be a great time to go. They’re currently presenting the 31st Annual Juried Exhibition in their beautiful, light-filled Joseph Clayes III Gallery.
During my La Jolla walk yesterday, I stepped into the Athenaeum merely to savor the handsome architecture and furnishings of this special, unique library. As I turned from the entrance into the main gallery, I was pleased to discover this juried exhibition. The very different pieces–including sculptures, paintings, drawings and photographs–were created by twenty-five artists. (How prestigious is this annual exhibition? Three hundred artists submitted their work for consideration.)
Visit the Athenaeum to enjoy the great pieces in this gallery and elsewhere in the library. You’ll appreciate the passion of artists who love to create.
Check the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library website here to learn more!
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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 Twitter!
Several weeks ago a colorful new mural was painted in Waterfront Park in San Diego. You can find it on the east side of the restrooms, which are located a few steps south of the County Administration Building.
Diversity is a fact. Inclusion is an act! A positive message of human kindness is conveyed by the happy artwork.
The creators of this mural are REVISION (@revision_sandiego) and Hanna Gundrum (@littlehouseink).
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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 Twitter!
Should you ever walk down Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach, keep a sharp lookout for the Ocean Beach Arcade. It’s the brick building you see in the next photograph. Inside you’ll discover a number of small businesses, including a coffee shop, vintage store and art supply store. And you’ll find yourself surrounded by all sorts of fun artwork!
The mural of a boy peering into a window with his dog immediately brought out my camera. As I looked around, I snapped more photos!
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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 Twitter!
Two sides of the building in Bankers Hill that is home to San Diego CoLab was painted several months ago with a beautiful mural. I took these photographs a couple days ago.
You can see this colorful street art at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fir Street. The artist is Melanie Sojourner-Truth Atesalp.
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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 Twitter!
Georgia O’Keeffe. Henry Moore. What do these two famous modernist artists, who lived on two separate continents, have in common? Love of nature. And a singular exhibition now open at the San Diego Museum of Art!
I enjoyed a very special tour of O’Keeffe and Moore a few days ago and I’m still deeply moved while thinking about it.
I, like many people, have always loved the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe. However I knew precious little about Henry Moore, apart from a curvaceous sculpture he created, Reclining Figure: Arch Leg, that stands in the sculpture garden at the San Diego Museum of Art.
When compared side by side, the abstract work of both artists is strikingly similar. Organic, sensuous, familiar, elemental, inspired by forms found in nature. It’s no surprise that their art seems to be distilled from flowers, landscapes, bones and clouds. Because both artists loved nature and closely studied these things.
Both Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore collected bones, driftwood and smooth river stones. Their studios resembled work areas at a natural history museum. In one gallery at the San Diego Museum of Art, recreations of the two artist studios are displayed for visitors to enjoy.
I was surprised to learn that O’Keeffe created sculptures, and that Henry Moore, the sculptor, also painted. The exhibition contains over a hundred pieces between the two artists.
Here is some of O’Keefe’s beautiful work:
The White Flower (White Trumpet Flower), Georgia O’Keeffe, 1932. Oil on canvas. “I have painted what each flower is to me and I have painted it big enough so that others would see what I see.”Red Hill and White Shell, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1938. Oil on canvas. A moon snail shell from the Atlantic shore in the New Mexico desert.Ram’s Head, Blue Morning Glory, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1938. Oil on canvas. Juxtaposition of skull with a flower.
Museum visitors admire Georgia O’Keeffe’s recreated studio which was located at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico:
Abstraction, Georgia O’Keefe, 1946. White lacquered bronze. Inspired by spiral of ram horns.
And here’s Moore at work, and a recreation of a studio in rural Hertfordshire:
Moore Working on the Elmwood Reclining Figure 1959-64. Photographer unknown.Recreation of Henry Moore’s Bourne Maquette Studio, which was named for a stream near the old farmhouse where he lived and worked.
A few of Moore’s sculptures, some of which are models for even larger pieces:
Working Model for Seated Woman, Henry Moore, 1980. Plaster with surface color. Enlarged from a small maquette created in 1956.Mother and Child, Henry Moore, 1978. Stalactite. Inspired by two seashells. (You don’t often see a sculpted piece of stalactite!)Working Model for Oval with Points, Henry Moore, 1968-69. Bronze. Inspired by the interior of an elephant skull.
This truly extraordinary exhibit is made possible by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Henry Moore Foundation. It will be on view at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park until August 27, 2023.
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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 Twitter!
Cool San Diego Sights! 