Common Not-So-Common Objects at OMA West at the Seabird Resort

by Patricia Frischer

Alejandra Garcia

Common Not-So-Common Objects is not a pop-up exhibition but a pop art exhibition part of the Oceanside Cultural District at the Oceanside Museum of Art West Gallery at the Seabird Resort.  It is artists’ interpretations of everyday objects enhanced with their imagination and carefully curated by Natalie Gonzalez and on view until Jan 4^th.

The piñata as a bag of Cheetos by Alejandra Garcia, the extra-long, extra strong and right turn fire extinguishers of Zachary Dobbins, the supersized Spam presented by Dave Lefner, the charming tiny plates of Ron Carlson, the glamorized trash barrels by Duke Windsor, and the presentations of the over-abundance of our mass consumption by Taylor Chapin and Cheryl Tall: these are easily relatable stories.

But there is so much more at the Seabird Resort. OMA has advised on art in every area of the building. Three are featured here, but seeing all the works would be a good excuse for a staycation in Oceanside.

It was my first visit and I was there to celebrate the North County Economic Development Council’s Devvies Awards at a luncheon full of city mayors, councilmembers, sponsors, staff and volunteers. I was invited by Carol Rogers (one of my fellow North County Arts Network board members) from the  City of Escondido  Public Art Commission as the Escondido Public Art Strategic Plan was one of two Arts Award recipients. I am delighted to say that the Encinitas Pacific View Arts Center was the other. 

Zachary Dobbins

Dave Lefner

Ron Carlson

Ron Carlson

Ron Carlson

Duke Windsor

Cheryl Tall

Taylor Chapman

 

View of the whole gallery including windows from the street
but the entrance is through the lobby of the hotel

Michelle Montjoy's installation overhead viewed during the North County Economic Development Council's award lunch. Encinitas Pacific View and Escondido Public Art Strategic Plan were the two Arts Award recipients.  

Michelle Montjoy

Courtney Mattison

Jeff Irwin

 

Common Not-so-common Objects until Jan 4
OMA West at the Seabird Resort
101 Mission Avenue, Oceanside, CA 92054.
The gallery is on the ground floor towards the back of the building, accessed through the front of the hotel.

Awaken the Kid Within at Lightscape at the San Diego Botanic Garden

by Patricia Frischer

Winter Cathedral with Blue Bonnets in the foreground both by Mandylights

Lightscape at the San Diego Botanic Garden  will light up the kid within you with more than one million lights in a one-mile trail with 21 different installations by a variety of artists. This showing is produced by Culture Creative, a design firm from England and Scotland that produces these events in the UK, Australia and the United States. Besides the million-dollar installations there are a huge number of plants with lighting designed by John Stewart who is local to San Diego. These were so impressive and highlighted the SDBG collection. We were there at 5 pm and saw the sunset to the west and the higher hills to the east lit by the sun. We found this twilight almost more magical than the full dark as all of the planting participated in our enjoyment.

The music is a huge part of the experience and you can listen to it on site. This means that your party (and yes, it is fun to go with a group) can hear with no headphones to separate you. I think more than anything it is the music that sets the tone for each work. Without the music, it is lovely lights, but the music gives it context and story. Singing Trees by  ITHACA Studio is a good example of this, but I heard love songs, fairy music, Irish step dancing, jazz, Somewhere over the Rainbow and, of course, holiday tunes and that creates the winter mood even in southern California. 

Catch this year's showing until Jan 5 2025. Every year there are new sights to see and because of the dips and rises of the trail you get different views at every turn you take. Make sure and look over your shoulder to where you have been on occasion. This is a first class experience from a world class venue. 

Floraison by Pitaya a display of hanging California poppies.

Floraison by Pitaya a California display of poppies.

Floraison by Pitaya a California display of poppies.

Neon Network by Christopher Wren

The Painted Landscape by John Stewart

Submergence by Squidsoup, a curtain of lights on suspended ropes

Submergence by Squidsoup, a curtain of lights on suspended ropes

Submergence by Squidsoup, a curtain of lights  on suspended ropes

Illuminated Fountain by John Stewart

Illuminated Fountain by John Stewart

The waterfall lit by by John Stewart

Pulse by Jon Stewart

 Halo by John Stewart - illuminated and programmed balls on the lawn

Halo by John Stewart - illuminated and programmed balls on the lawn

Cascade Tree by Culture Creatives with 400 cascading multi colored light tubes suspended in an old Moreton Bay fig tree.

Cascade Tree by Culture Creatives with 400 cascading multi colored light tubes suspended in an old Moreton Bay fig tree.

Winter Cathedral with Blue Bonnets in the background both by Mandylights

Winter Cathedral with Blue Bonnets in the background both by Mandylights

Flame Skimmers Dragonfly  by Michael Young

Star Avenue by ArtAV

Lightscape at the San Diego Botanic Garden 
Showing until Jan 5

300 Quail Gardens Dr, Encinitas, CA 92024
(760) 436-3036

Culture Creative for full info. Map
Reserve your tickets for dates through January 5.

Tickets are from $26 to $34 for adults, $13 - $17 for children ages 3-12, and are free for ages 2 and under.
Entrance times are every 15-minutes starting and 5pm with the last entry being 8:30pm
Flex Tickets are also available, allowing entrance anytime between 5pm-8:30pm for $60 per person including parking
Discounted tickets are also available for San Diego Botanic Garden Members and active and combat-disabled Military with I.D. (excluding flex tickets)

Advance parking is $10 or $15 per vehicle depending on the date of your visit.
Parking increases by $10 on the night of the event
Food and Drink is available for purchase.

 

“Restless Waters” Art+Music Event= A Splash Hit at ICA San Diego Central

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

 

Nathalie Miebach, with one of her wall sculptures.

Saturday, November 23^rd, was a busy day in Balboa Park, with museums like SDMA and the Mingei participating in PST ART Weekend, part of the Getty’s Art & Science Collide initiative which encourages the creation of imaginative exhibitions that explore major issues in our world today.

My husband and I were heading for ICA San Diego Central, and a special event: the premiere of a collaborative piece by artist Nathalie Miebach and composer Natalia Merlano Gómez, along with performers from Project [BLANK], a local experimental music nonprofit whose work we had seen and admired before.

Nathalie Miebach, born in Germany and based in Boston, uses weather data to transform heavy weather events like hurricanes, floods, and atmospheric rivers, into brilliantly unusual displays. 

Her Restless Waters sculptures have been on view here since September, and one of the notable pieces is a layered musical score she created when beginning to work on the exhibition. 

“I’m not a musician, but it helps me get down to the story I want to tell when I put something into a musical matrix,” she said.

 One of the artist’s musical scores. Though she generally works in color,
she did this one after meeting her composer/collaborator.
 “I loved Natalia’s music, but I knew it wouldn’t want a colorful score,”
she told us, with a smile.

It was a happy collaboration for both women…who even have versions of the same given name! 

Gómez’s composition was a reflection on our relationship to water as both a life-sustaining and destructive force. It had four movements:  the first, titled I am, included audience participation, with lines called out from a poem written by sixth-grade students whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Florence. There was live and electronic music, some of which sounded like a (muted) hurricane. 

The final movement, I hope, was based on data provided by Nathalie Miebach. And in addition to composing the music, Gómez was one of the vocalists.

Vocalists Jonathan Nussman and Natalia Merlano Gómez,
with master trumpeter David Aquilar.

Teresa Diaz de Cossio, fine flutist.

Maurice and I had already seen and enjoyed Miebach’s exhibition, and the music added a wondrous dimension. Climate change is a dark subject, but both Miebach and Gómez share an essential optimism, which is after all what we need to help find solutions.

Nathalie Miebach’s after-talk, with Project BLANK
Artistic Director Leslie Leytham at left,
beside Miebach’s newest sculpture, Restless Rivers.

Nathalie Miebach: Restless Waters
ICA Central, Balboa Park
Sat Sept21, 2024 - Sun, Jan 26, 2025
1439 El Prado, San Diego, CA 92101
Thursday–Sunday Noon to 5 pm
Monday–Wednesday Closed

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has been writing about arts and lifestyles in San Diego County for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net

Read also: Nathalie Miebach: Restless Waters at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Central Balboa Park Picked RAW Peeled by Patricia Frischer

Dreamscape: Beyond the Veil at San Diego Mesa College Art

by Patricia Frischer

Christopher Tucker
This intriguing structure of layered facial features.
"Mood Swings is an unusual work for me. I'm combining a newer technology (3D printing)
with an older technology (turning wood on a lathe) to make something
that feels to me a little like a toy. Having the rounded base, and the ability to
rotate the facial features around into different combinations,
allows a feeling of motion and play."

If you are anything like me, your dreams come in bits and pieces and skip around from reality and known subject to complete fantasy and the absurd. That pretty much sums up the huge variety that you will find in Dreamscape: Beyond the Veil. Like most juried exhibitions, the choices are made, not so much to define the theme, but just to choose the best quality work possible.

This exhibition was entirely designed by the students of the museum studies course taught so brilliantly by Alessandra Moctezuma with able assistance from Gallery Coordinator Jenny Armer. That means students choose the theme, designed and promoted the call for artists, notified and received the accepted work, hung the show, advertised it and arranged for the opening reception. Bravo!

Choosing just a few works to tempt you to see the rest of the exhibition is what I considered to be my job. Full disclosure, I have works myself in this exhibition and am grateful to be included. You will find not only dreams but quite a selection of nightmares. This theme lends itself to surrealism but they are also some abstract works, some expressionist art and plenty of sculptural pieces. Three dimensional interpretations can be so concrete and really do appear to go beyond the veil and enter reality.

The only thing that surprised me was in this age of interactive priorities, there was not a bed to lie on and create your own dreams on the spot!

What Drifts Through Your Dreamscape? 
Gal Crew (Jennifer Armer, Gaby Espina, Caiti Myth).
Stop before you enter and make sure and look throughthe front window.
"This is an interactive installation that asks people to share their
dreams or nightmares.... a site specific, two-sided installation
in the front window of the gallery. One side depicts a bright,
fluffy cloudscape with happy dreams that we have had.
The other side is a dark forest full of nightmarish creatures." 

 

Jeff Kahn
Lush colors, a softer version echoing the works
of Sonia Delauney and her Orphic Cubism style.
"Fresh Perspective is an abstract exploration of obscured layers,
where the interplay of shadow and radiating light evokes a sense
of discovery and revelation.... The light, breaking through the layers,
symbolizes new insight, offering a glimpse of understanding
within an otherwise ambiguous composition."

 

Cheryl Tall
A continuation of her double headed series,
this one with windows to the soul.
"My work engaged aspects of the imagination, fantasy
and the dream world. It deals with buried memories by searching
through mythology, ancient art and current events
to create hybrid creatures."

Caiti Myth
This is one of the steam roller printers, yes, no printing press!

"This piece represents the connection between dreams and emotions.
Through this work, I explore how our feelings, memories, and dreams
all intersect, guiding us in ways we may not fully understand."

Isa Guadalupe Medina/ Braulio Lam
An evocative video projected above the actual detailed beaded hat
"The idea was to have an unknown location and not easily identifiable, something with an ambiguous atmosphere, with a minimalistic look: blue, caramel and red.,,That connection of the color, textures, materials, and surrounding atmosphere reminds us that we are part of a human experience that is fragile and mortal. Team Credits: Photography/Video/Music: Braulio Lam, Silk Costume/Hand-beaded headpiece: Isa Guadalupe Medina, Talent: Coco Delgado 

Patricia Frischer

I am able to add the artist statements for these two lines of records:

Dreamscape: I used the substrate of vinyl records to spin a tale of a life with lots of moving parts that have grown out of my imagination. I am using a language of images developed over a lifetime of creative work. In these two works, the images morph from circle to circle much like the scenes that appear in your dreams. You don’t quite know how to interpret them, but know that the hidden messages are meaningful. The tiny man is an often visitors in my dreams, watching over me and protecting me. These two series of 4 works were completed in July and August of 2024 while I was waiting for an operation to remove part of my thyroid. Yes, the veil that separates life and death seems active and revealed itself more through my dreams and then my art which gave me great relief from the day-to-day stress.

Top Row: Surf and Turf Balloons was originally a dream of a friend many, many years ago, who wanted to take a balloon trip over the great wall of China. But over the years this idea has morphed  with my art as China has risen in power and as walls have become a bigger and bigger part of our lives. When we dream, our images, sometimes repeat over and over…you forget you have a test, or end up nude in public, but these are stress reactions, sometimes, to daily events. We have to revised the meanings of our dreams as we grow and change.

 Bottom Row: Intuition is the Direct Path to Truth. As the title infers, intuition is the mainstay of interpretation of dreams. In day dreams or those during sleep, a confusion of images abound. It is up to our own intuition to determine the specific meaning on a particular day. Yes, we have a profusion of lizards darting across our courtyard, yes, coffee and donuts are essential fuels, and yes, the amazing flights of crows right before sunset was a vision to behold. The paths in our lives continue to reveal themselves and we are lucky to have visual clues. 

christian olid-ramirez
From the press release "...The Gloaming depict a fictional “desert of the mind” – a mental sandbox exploring the darkest thoughts and impulses of the human soul." 

Arie Galles
A Polish Jew, landing in Texas and now residing in Laguna Beach.
(on left) "Spinoza, My approach to this drawing is philosopher Spinoza’s enduring relevance in contemporary thinking about politics and religion. The quill in Spinoza’s hand is releasing a galaxy. An original thinker, Spinoza's belief in a link between human thought/action and the Demiurge/Nature was never broken."
(on right)" Ecclesiastes 5:7, I find the book of Ecclesiastes a profoundly empirical exegesis on the concept of justice. Many hackneyed representations of a skewered scale of justice exist. I envision the scale as not merely unbalanced, but broken, adrift in the sky. My hope is to see this imbalance rectified. "

Other participating artists: Adan Abaquin-Brown, Luis Alderete, Gabrielle Berens, Beate Bermann-Enn, Abigail Brown, Elizabeth Brown, Sophia Ciuffa, Anni Claflin, Krista Cuellar, Gabriela Ponce Curlango, Eva D'Amico, Alexis Deming, Meghan DeRoma, Matthew Devoys, Sheena Rae Dowling, Dana Edwards, Christopher Ferreria,   Junko Glawe, John Carlos Keasler, Natalia Kozlova, Sami Leon, Evan Lopez, Rick Macaw, Evie Maher, Kamaal Martin, Isa Guadalupe Medina/ Braulio Lam ,Teresa Mill, Michelle Montjoy, Alejandro Morales, James Nelson, Dakota Noot, Susan J. Osborn, Philip Petrie, Lulu Yueming Qu, Chris Reilly, Josie Rodriguez, Kayah Rybar, Alyanah Santos, Sandra Segovia, Bryan Tipton, Ell Treese, Patricia Valero, Alyssa Marielle Villagracia, Kelsey Worth, Jessica Yambao. The student created website gives details, illustrations and descriptions of all the wok in this exhibition, 

Dreamscape: Beyond the Veil  at San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery
November 18 – December 12, 2024
Fine Arts Building, Art Gallery, FA103
7250 Mesa College Dr. SD 92111
Closest entrance is through Marlesta/Genesee 
amoctezu@sdccd.edu  619.388.2829.
Gallery Hours: M - TH 12 - 5 p.m. (Or by appointment.) Closed Fridays, Weekends & Holidays.
Closed Thanksgiving Week: November 25 - 29, 2024
Gallery Hours: M - TH 12 - 5 p.m. (Or by appointment.) Closed Fridays, Weekends & Holidays.
Closed Thanksgiving Week: November 25 - 29, 2024

Breathe With Me Creates Communal Art at UC San Diego

 By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

 

One of the hundreds of participants in Breathe With Me, a collaborative event by Danish artist Jeppe Hein, the newest addition to UCSD’s illustrious Stuart Collection.

 For over forty years, the Stuart Collection at UC San Diego has been commissioning site-specific, permanent artworks for the campus, beginning with  Niki de Ste Phalle’s colorful Sun God in 1983.

The 23^rd addition to the Collection is something different: it includes 90 canvasses featuring the brushstrokes of hundreds of participants--1,200 UCSD staff, students, and visitors--all encouraged by artist Jeppe Hein to breathe deeply as they added their blue acrylic strokes to this latest version of his world-wide communal art project Breathe With Me on a very special three-day weekend in late October.

 

Portrait of the Artist and a Breathe With Me canvas.

“With every new work, I ask myself how I can move people…and how I can bring people closer to each other and to themselves.”--Jeppe Hein.

A quote from the artist’s introduction to his book Nothing is as it appears, illustrated with his painted impressions of yoga asanas and photos of some of his international installations. 

Breathe With Me has also appeared at the United Nations, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Central Park in New York City, and Maurice and I were lucky enough to be able to breathe, brush, and chat with Jeppe Hein at UCSD. He’s a delightful conversationalist, with a great sense of humor, but what he shared about the origins of BWM was not all good news. 

“In 2009, I was doing installations all over the world,” he said. “I was on 143 flights that year, to different locations, and suddenly, on one of those flights, I had a panic attack; I couldn’t breathe. When I got off the plane, I tried to phone my wife, but she wasn’t home. So I phoned my mother; when she heard how I sounded, she said: ‘Breathe with me’, and I did.”

It took years to get himself together. “I was diagnosed with Burnout,” he said. “I’d been looking for things outside myself; I had to find a new way to live.”

Yoga helped him find his way, to open his heart, face facts long buried inside himself, and find joy and a real feeling of interconnectedness in his work and his life. 

“This is not just an art project,” he said. What he offers is a challenge: to completely concentrate on what you are doing, while knowing that you’re sharing the experience with others.

Jess Berlanga Taylor, Director and Curator of the Stuart Collection,
with her companion Kai.

The 90 BWM canvases created here will not be permanent outdoor installations like the rest of the Stuart Collection. Since they’re weather sensitive, they’ll all be indoors, used for instructional purposes by various departments and not yet on view to visitors. 

Meanwhile, there’s a link to information on Jeppe Hein, which will soon be updated to include an interview with him, locations where campus visitors will be able to see the Breathe With Me canvasses, and more videos to give a better feel for the experience.  
https://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/artist/hein.html

And if you’d like to try to feel the experience right now, here’s a how-to from the artist.

Breathe With Me Instructions

 

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has been writing about arts and lifestyles in San Diego County for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net.

Primal Instincts at Techne Art Center

by Patricia Frischer

Kelly Witmer

Another large group show loosely strung together by Chuck Thomas and Jason Clay Lewis. Most of the work is simple and striking but it seems more likely that primal is used to describe the basic instinct to create.

Kelly Witmer has combined kiln softened glass with welded metal or ceramic to stunning affect where bulges and domes seem squeezed and ready to burst out. Whether back lit or just reflective, they all seem to glow. She says she is influenced by not just the natural shapes around her, but interior spaces of her own home.

Kaori Fukuyama, a SD Art Prize recipient in 2020, gives us an outstanding work of movement, color and reflection as she continues her exploration of how hue and shapes can manipulate a space.  

John Brinton Hogan challenges to look twice at his dark landscapes that are illuminated with words. It turns out these words are cut out from the celebration grocery store mylar balloons we now see at most check out counters.  You can also find them cluttering various real landscapes!

Coming around a corner to a wall of head sticking their tongues out by Hannah Pierce, has to bring a smile to your face.   All of her ceramic and mixed media sculptures have a sense of humor, but more a delight in the world around her. They are playful almost child-like narrative works that fit fully into the Pop Surrealism movement.

Irén Tété is a self-declared oscillator. This is reflected in her piece Gently booked ended by And and Not. That is a stance that we can all relate to as the world turns around us. 

Kelly Witmer

Kaori Fukuyama

Kaori Fukuyama, detail

John Brinton Hogan

John Brinton Hogan

John Brinton Hogan

Hannah Pierce

Hannah Pierce

Irén Tété

Featured other artists including  Eva Struble,  Michael Hernandez, Alexandra Carter, Jesse Ring, as well as artists from the BEVERLY’S collective including Leah Dixon, Jack Henry, Maxx Wade, Tadashi Adamson, Morgan Mandalay, Jesus Antonio, and Maddie Butler.

Primal Instincts at Techne Art Center
Nov 11 to March 22, 2025
Thurs.,  Fri., St. 1-6pm
1609 Ord Way, Oceanside, 92056
917.972.1752 chuckthomas@techneartcenter.com