Tag: public art

Billowing Bait comes alive on Shelter Island!

Billowing Bait is a kinetic sculpture on Shelter Island, mounted near the entrance of Nielson Beaumont Marine. I spotted it during a recent walk in Point Loma.

The sculptor is Jon Koehler. His shimmering work of art features over 300 small stainless steel elements that move together but independently with the wind. Created in 2013 according to its webpage (2012 according to the nearby plaque), the sculpture is part of the Port of San Diego Public Art Collection.

The shining sculpture is meant to resemble a school of small bait fish . . . or a billowing spinnaker sail. You can learn more about it here.

If you ever walk past 2420 Shelter Island Drive on a breezy day, pause to watch Billowing Bait come alive!

…

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!

A star lands in Escondido!

What’s that star-like sculpture sitting on the grass near the box office of California Center for the Arts, Escondido?

It’s *!

The cool creation, named * (pronounced star), is a 30 foot diameter great stellated dodecahedron created by Escondido’s own Glass House Arts. According to posts on their Instagram page, * appeared at Burning Man last year! If I understand correctly, the sculpture was called MOOT (Matter Out of Time) back then, and said to be a time machine!

By night, 30 programmable LED floodlights illuminate the fabric sails, transforming the piece into a glowing beacon. I saw * in the daytime during my visit to the California Center for the Arts, Escondido, and thought it was pretty cool as it was!

The sculpture will be on view through May 17, 2025. It celebrates Escondido Arts, Culture & Creativity Month!

…

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!

Amazing art fills The Water Conservation Garden!

The Water Conservation Garden in Rancho San Diego is a special place. Not only is it a very fine botanical garden, but its nearly 6 acres is filled with amazing works of art!

Among the different educational garden displays, bits of art can be spied. Most notable are the garden’s beautiful mosaics. A few days back I posted a blog about work being performed on the mosaic Tool Wall. See those photographs here.

Now enjoy more of the art that I happened to discover during my recent visit!

…

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!

Sculpture honors Lakeside Rodeo’s Ben Bruton.

Perhaps you’ve seen this sculpture in front Lakeside’s Olde Community Church, home of the Lakeside Historical Society. It depicts a cowboy on a bucking bronco.

The sculpture is in memory of “Mr. Lakeside Rodeo” Ben Bruton. A nearby sign explains: In 1965 Ben Bruton and his associates brought back the rodeo to Lakeside CA to raise money and build a stadium for the kids of El Capitan High School… This bucking bronco statue was a gift to Lakeside by Mr. & Mrs. Mike Bruton to honor his father’s dream to have a rodeo in Lakeside CA for the benefit of our children…

According to this informative Facebook post from 2014: Mike Bruton, Son of Ben Bruton, acquired this statue of a bronc busting cowboy from Bobby Unser Jr. The post goes on to describe the Lakeside Rodeo, and how it went on to become an annual event.

This great article elaborates further on the history of past rodeos in Lakeside.

So far I haven’t ascertained who created the sculpture. If you know the artist, please leave a comment below!

…

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!

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!

…

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!

Working on mosaics at Water Conservation Garden!

Very beautiful mosaics decorate the Tool Wall at the Water Conservation Garden in Rancho San Diego!

As I walked through the garden today, I noticed someone working on this incredible wall. Rosalie, a friendly garden volunteer and artist, took a moment to show me what she was up to. She explained that her Tool Wall is nearing completion!

Some grouting, painting and a bit of other work, and the artistic wall will be finally completed. She been working on it for months.

The wall stands by a path in an area of the educational Water Conservation Garden that is devoted to the use of garden tools. Appropriately, decorated garden tools project from the top of the wall!

Rosalie explained the words on the wall: A garden is a grand teacher. It’s a quote by a very famous British horticulturist and garden designer, Gertrude Jekyll. Yes, tending a garden teaches patience, nurturing, a love for nature and the outdoors…

I’ll soon be blogging more about the amazing Water Conservation Garden, a hidden gem in San Diego’s East County, so stay tuned!

…

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!

Rigors of Flight at new Sweetwater Park!

The new 39-acre Sweetwater Park opened earlier this month in Chula Vista. It’s located on the edge of San Diego Bay, adjacent to Sweetwater Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. It you’ve had a chance to visit the public park and walk its nature trails, you’ve no doubt seen a towering 25-foot tall sculpture that looks exactly like a wishbone!

The steel sculpture, created by artist Roberto Salas, is titled Rigors of Flight.

Why the wishbone shape? The wishbone is a forked bone found in most birds. It strengthens the bird’s skeleton, helping it to withstand the rigors of flight. Birds are plentiful in the park!

I walked through Sweetwater Park yesterday and approached the sculpture. I took these photographs.

…

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!

New murals at SA Recycling in San Diego!

The huge mural you see in my first five photographs is relatively new, I believe. Today was the first time I saw it, while riding the Orange Line of the San Diego Trolley.

The cool artwork has been spray painted on the corner of SA Recycling, at the corner of Commercial Street and 30th Street. It includes images of masked lucha libre wrestlers.

I’ve tried to find out more about the mural, but no success yet, apart from seeing graffiti artist signatures @killadoom422 and @misterhir.

If you know more, please leave a comment!

UPDATE!

I later learned, during an event at the Comic-Con Museum, that the large lucha libre mural depicts Rey Mysterio, his uncle Rey Misterio, son Dominik, and wrestlers Psicosis and Konnan. It was painted by artist Dentlok!

Awesome stuff!

Another mural is being painted on the side of the same building, but facing Commercial Street. No artist was there when I happened by.

Outlined are musicians and more wrestlers.

If I see this cool art completed in the future, I’ll post photos in an update!

Speaking of SA Recycling, the long fence around the opposite (east) end of their facility features lots of superhero spray paint art. I took photographs back in late 2018 when that art was being created. Check it out here!

…

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!

It Takes a Village mural painted by community!

This beautiful mural was painted in 2023 at the Copley-Price Family YMCA. The title is It Takes a Village. I saw it today for the first time!

The colorful artwork was designed by muralist Hanna Gundrum (@littlehouseink) and painted by over 175 members of the community. The theme is “It takes a village to raise a child.”

You can find the mural on 43rd Street, just north of El Cajon Boulevard, on a fence outside the preschool.

According to a posted sign, the mural serves to tell a story about the importance of community care and advocacy, through sheer resilience, nurturing, and hope when it comes to navigating the challenges and triumphs of child care.

You can read an article about the mural’s creation by checking out this webpage. The mural project was led by ArtReach in partnership with Children First Collective San Diego and the Copley-Price Family YMCA.

Look how bright and vibrant the mural is!

I took the following sequence of photographs moving left to right…

Written inside the heart: Well-being is the pursuit of mental, physical, social, financial, spiritual and environmental health.

…

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!

OB LOVE at the closed Ocean Beach Pier.

It’s sad that the Ocean Beach Pier has become so storm damaged that it is now permanently closed and must be rebuilt. If there’s a tiny silver lining to this very dark cloud, it’s that the locked gate at the pier’s foot has become the home of OB LOVE.

Ladies at the Ocean Beach Main Street Association informed me this mosaic art was created by members of the OB community a year ago. A San Diego lifeguard who was watching the pier agreed that it’s really cool!

Each small tile in the mosaic contains a photograph of Ocean Beach. I had to take a closer look…

…

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!