Tag: painting

Local artists at new downtown Courthouse Gallery!

Wolf in the Storm by Laura Green.

A new art gallery recently opened in downtown San Diego. Juried works by diverse artists can be freely viewed from the sidewalk in front the Edward J. Schwartz United States Courthouse!

From behind several large windows, works by local artists greet the curious eyes of those walking down Broadway. This new Courthouse Gallery of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California is now displaying The Art of Freedom.

The courthouse website describing the project and a call for submissions explains: The inspirations for this on-going, rotating art display are: making art more accessible to the public, enhancing civic engagement through the arts, and creating an opportunity for local artists to increase exposure to their work. The gallery will be featuring emerging and established artists 18 and older residing in San Diego and Imperial Counties.

It’s difficult to photograph through these windows with the reflections. Enjoy several pieces…

Woman Charging I by Cathy Deibler.
Forest Dance, by Leah Schaperow.
Remember When We Were Free by Cynthia Sue Kelly.

Years ago, these same windows displayed artwork created by students for San Diego County Bar Association’s Law Week Poster and Video Contest. See three years of those displays here and here and here.

Over the years, my photos of those Law Week posters have been viewed thousands of times through Google search–quite possibly by teachers and students around the nation and world. Amazing.

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Beautiful mural at La Mesa’s Collier Park!

This beautiful mural decorates the trash enclosure at Collier Park in La Mesa. I was told by a friendly gentleman at the La Mesa Community Center that the art was painted not too long ago.

I found an article about the mural’s creation. It was a project of ArtReach, completed last year in partnership with the City of La Mesa. More than forty community members helped to paint it!

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Free art contest for San Diego seniors!

A free art contest and exhibit for seniors in San Diego will be accepting submissions in a few days!

The City of San Diego’s AgeWell Services Art Contest & Exhibit will welcome artwork in these six categories: Acrylic, Mixed Media, Oil, Pastel, Watercolor and Drawing. Participants in the free contest must be age 60 or better.

You still have plenty of time! One entry per person will be accepted between April 11 and April 28, 2025.

Drop your creation off at the Cathy Hopper Friendship Center, PDLC Community Center, Balboa Park Senior Lounge, Bay Terraces Senior Center, or the San Ysidro Teen Center. For the days and times each location is open, see the above photograph of the contest flyer.

For even more information, you can phone AgeWell Services at 619-525-8247.

Feeling inspired?

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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 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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Beautiful San Diego Landscapes in Balboa Park!

San Diego and its surrounding region is so beautiful. There’s the coast and the hills and canyons and mountains, all fantastic subjects for painters of landscapes. A group of artists from North County has captured some of this beauty.

The Rancho Santa Fe Art Guild is now presenting their exhibition Beautiful San Diego Landscapes in Balboa Park. The exhibit can be freely experienced by anyone who ventures into Gallery 21 of Spanish Village Art Center. The gallery hours are 11 am to 4 pm. The exhibition continues through April 7, 2025.

Most of the pieces I saw depict picturesque spots in San Diego, including beaches, Point Loma, La Jolla, San Diego Bay and the rugged landscapes of East County. I noticed flowers fill quite a few canvases, too.

I enjoyed a short talk with smiling artist Linda and learned all of the pieces in the exhibit are for sale. She confided that buyers can negotiate the price. If you’re searching for some very fine artwork you should come on by!

A few examples…

Flower Fields in Carlsbad, by Linda Bourne-Marcos.
Torrey Pines at La Jolla Shores, by Laura Wheeler.
San Diego Spring, by Anne Benkendorf.

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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.

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Written in the Stars at the Chula Vista library!

Now on display in Chula Vista’s Civic Center Branch Library are six paintings created last summer during the Chula Vista ArtFest. The theme for the artists was “Written in the Stars.”

I stopped by the library today during a long walk in South Bay.

Readers of Cool San Diego Sights might recognize two of the artist names: Signe Ditona (of Ground Floor Murals) and Shirish Villaseñor. Many of their colorful murals have appeared on my blog in the past!

Artist Shirish Villaseñor
Artist Kyle Garrity
Artist Leslye Villaseñor
Artist Signe Ditona
Artist Iris Wise
Artist Iz Inocencio

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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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Mural in San Diego Waterfront Park stairwell.

On the south side of San Diego’s popular Waterfront Park, a stairwell descends to an underground parking lot. This colorful mural greets people as they begin to descend the stairs.

The public art, dated 2014, is a photo reproduction on aluminum of San Diego-based contemporary artist Allison Renshaw‘s original painting Last Call, which is on display inside the nearby County Administration Building.

As the artist’s website explains: Allison’s work offers multiple perspectives, discordant vocabularies, and malleable boundaries. Her art is informed by particles of our urban and natural landscape along with culture found in the everyday…

I can’t believe it took me 11 years to finally share a good photograph of this eye-catching art. Back in 2014, I posted a blog documenting opening day at Waterfront Park, and you can get a glimpse of the mural in one of those photographs!

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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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Four historic 1915 murals in Balboa Park.

Renowned artist Carlos Vierra painted six murals of Mayan cities for the 1915 Panama–California Exposition in San Diego’s Balboa Park.

Today, inside Balboa Park’s Museum of Us (formerly called the Museum of Man), visitors can view reproductions of four murals.

The Museum of Us is housed in the historic California Building. In 1915 the building was home to the San Diego Museum. “The Story of Man Through the Ages” was the San Diego Museum’s exhibit during the Panama-California Exposition, and featured the six original Vierra murals.

Should you step into the Museum of Us, you can find two of the reproduced murals on the ground floor, in the large central atrium, hung on the wall on either side of the main entrance. Two additional murals can be viewed in a gallery on the second floor directly above.

The two ground floor murals depict the ruins of prehistoric Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, Mexico.

My first pair of photographs (above) show one mural on the ground floor. As a sign explains: Central to this painting is the round building, known as the Caracol, which functioned as an observatory. Behind it lies the ballcourt, the largest such ritual playing field in Mesoamerica. To the right is the sacred cenote, the well of sacrifice.

The second pair of photographs (below) show the mural to the right of it. These murals depict the Maya architectural style known as Puuc, that prevailed from about 600 AD to 900 AD.

Decorating a gallery wall on the second floor, the two additional Vierra murals illustrate the ancient cities of Palenque and Tikal…

UPDATE!

I’ve since learned two more Vierra murals can be viewed in the museum. I’ll go in search of them next time I visit the Museum of Us, and post those photos in an update!

ANOTHER UPDATE!

Here they are…

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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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