San Diego Visual Arts Network presents SD Art Prize 2026 Soft Power: On Color, Time, and Resistance

 by Patricia Frischer

Lara Bullock, Ph.D introduces the exhibition to the docents of OMA

San Diego Visual Arts Network was created to encourage artists to connect, create, and shine. At the heart of our work is the belief that art has the power to quiet personal worries, change how we see the world, and bring people together.

The San Diego Art Prize  is one of SDVAN’s signature initiatives. It recognizes the excellence of visual artists in our region and helps bring their work to a wider audience. Since its beginning, the Art Prize has celebrated artists who are shaping the future of San Diego’s creative community.

The Art Prize is not something artists simply “win.” It is a recognition of a sustained career in the arts, ideally awarded when an artist is at the top of their game. Selectors consider work created within the previous three years. Our long-term goal is to continue expanding the Prize so that, over time, we can recognize the many outstanding artists who contribute to San Diego’s cultural life.

The San Diego Art Prize turns local talent into lasting impact.

2026 San Diego Art Prize

This year’s exhibition, Soft Power: On Color, Time, and Resistance with artists Danielle Dean, Ingrid Hernández, Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio, Together, these artists represent the diverse and innovative practices that are defining San Diego art today. Together, these artists represent the diverse and innovative practices that are defining San Diego art today. The show is curated by Lara Bullock, Ph.D.

This year’s recipients bring a particularly meaningful dimension to the Art Prize. For the first time, all three are women with young children—an extraordinary reminder of the many demands artists balance while creating exceptional work. Each artist has a distinctive voice and practice, and bringing them together creates both an opportunity and a challenge. Our curator has approached that challenge with intelligence and care.

Presenting the Art Prize at the Oceanside Museum of Art has also allowed us to reach and engage new and more diverse audiences. We believe that San Diego is one creative community—connected by bold art, big ideas, and a shared commitment to creativity.

The 2026 Art Prize presentation will include a panel discussion, giving audiences an opportunity to hear directly from the artists about their work and creative practices. We have also developed educational lesson plans, created by Brenda Andrews, for use at the museum and online.

A catalog designed by Mark Murphy of Murphy Designs will be available in both print and digital formats, with the online version connecting readers to video content and additional resources. Our thanks to our SD Art Prize administrator Andrea Rodriguez Chamberlin.  

Above all, we believe that art connects us. SDVAN is proud to help make those connections happen—between artists and audiences, ideas and communities, and San Diego and the wider art world.

That is our legacy.

Danielle A. Dean - clip from film White

Danielle A. Dean uses resources like archives, videos, performances, community projects, sculptures, and drawings to explore how ideas and images get repeated and recycled in ways that help keep global capitalism going. She works with different types of media and often involves other people in her projects to take a closer look at the cracks and problems in this system that seems like it’s stuck in a loop. In this video work she takes her inspiration from a British industry campaign that features cows as one of economic drivers post WWII. In this work, an imaged scene is drenched in white over a period of time. The white is symbolic of not only milk but the whiteness of the power in the world.  Dean received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and is an alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program. Danielle Dean is currently an associate professor or art at UCSD. 

Danielle A. Dean - clip from film White

Danielle A. Dean - clip from film White

Danielle A. Dean - clip from film White

Actual vintage promotion card for British Industries

Danielle A. Dean - clip from film White

Ingrid Hernández, from Tijuana, Mexico, explores how cities change by looking at how people relate to their homes. With a background in both sociology and visual art, she focuses on communities built by migrants, deportees, and people who’ve been displaced, especially near the US-Mexico border. She often depicts discarded materials from the U.S. and local Mexican maquiladoras in her work. Her projects usually involve long-term collaborations, including interviews, photography, and exploring shared memories. Ingrid Hernández is co-founder of Relaciones Inesperadas, a teaching space for the development of contemporary artistic practices and the fostering of critical dialogue in the arts established in Tijuana.

Ingrid Hernández

Ingrid Hernández

Ingrid Hernández

Ingrid Hernández

Ingrid Hernández

Ingrid Hernández

Ingrid Hernández

Ingrid Hernández

Ingrid Hernández

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio explores the world on a most personal scale. She confronts how caregiving for loved ones can displace time and reshape perception. The work is quiet, contemplative with an understanding of cosmic astrophysics. She is creating architecture on an atmospheric, emotional level with installations of drawing and painting that gives us a glimpse of an always changing universe of challenges. She received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art and BA in art history and visual arts at the University of San Diego. Ortiz-Rubio currently teaches drawing and painting at University of San Diego.

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Lara Bullock, Ph.D  with OMA docents

Brenda Andrews, creator of the SD Art Prize lesson plans demonstrating Head in the Clouds Brain Storm  part of the WALK WITH ARTIST’S EYES Initiative

San Diego Visual Arts Network presents SD Art Prize 2026
Soft Power: On Color, Time, and Resistance: Danielle Dean, Ingrid Hernández, Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio. 
Curated by Lara Bullock, Ph.D.
Opening reception: Sat. Sept 19 from 5 to 7 pm Buy tickets here.

Soft Power in Practice: A Conversation with the 2026 San Diego Art Prize Recipients is on Sun Sept 27th from 2 to 4 pm, Buy tickes here.
This panel will be moderated by Lara Bullock, Ph.D and each artist will be introduced by the champion of their work:
For Tatiana Ortiz Rubio:  Jim Brown, Public Architecture and  Isabel Dutra
For Ingrid Hernández: Amy-Sanchez Artega, artist, (Cog•nate Collective, previous SD Art Prize recipient in 2022)  and educator (SDSU)
For Danielle Dean: Christine E. Jones, Manager of Art, Film and Creative Industries, Office of Economic Development and Government Affairs

Oceanside Museum of Art
On view until January 17, 2027
704 Pier View Way, Oceanside, CA 92054 (760) 435-3720
Hours: Wednesday to  Sunday 11 to 5. Extended Hours on First Fridays 11 to 8
OMA Museum is open FREE on First Fridays 5 - 8 and First Sundays 11 - 5 of every month.

Changing Terrain: Regional Artists Interpret Our Landscape at the Oceanside Museum of Art

by Patricia Frischer

Kevin Perrault (detail)

Changing Terrain: Regional Artists Interpret Our Landscape is an unusual combination of invited artists, a number of artists from the previous 2013 exhibition Nature Improved: San Diego Artists Interpret Our Landscape and an open call for artists. The Curatorial Advisory Committee was Johnny Bear Contreras (sculptor and Kumeyaay public artist), Gabriel Boils Teran (visual artist and cultural agent), Katie Dolgov (Director of Exhibitions and Collections at Oceanside Museum of Art- OMA), and Tina Zarpour (Vice President of Community Engagement, Education & Collections at San Diego History Center SDHC). It is also unusual as it is a joint exhibition shown at the same time at OMA and SDHC. OMA has 2 venues for this show, the main galleries at Pier View Way and also OMA West at the Seabird.

There are  58 artists included at OMA, all are contemporary and all are from Southern California and Baja. This makes for a very large ranges of mediums and styles. Shown here are just a very few but they cover subjects such as a women’s role in society, plastic waste in the oceans, man’s relationship to nature,  climate change, wild fires and a pleathera of environmental issues. However, you can just enjoy the works for the way they look.

Kevin Perrault

Omar Campos

Jeanne Dunne

Wick Alexander

Judi Pettite

Irene Abraham

 

Emberly Modine

We happily report that Kevin Inman, Gail Roberts, Irma Sophia Poeter who have works in this show are past San Diego Art Prize recipients and you can see the 2026 SD Art Prize recipients in the large upstairs gallery: SD Art Prize 2026 Soft Power: On Color, Time, and Resistance: Danielle Dean, Ingrid Hernández, Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio. They share an Opening reception: Sat. Sept 19 from 5 to 7 pm Buy tickets here. PLUS: Soft Power in Practice: A Conversation with the 2026 San Diego Art Prize Recipients is on Sun Sept 27th from 2 to 4 pm, Buy tickets here.

Changing Terrain: Regional Artists Interpret Our Landscape
Oceanside Museum of Art and concurrently at San Diego History Center (SDHC) and
August 22–January 17, 2027
704 Pier View Way, Oceanside, CA 92054 (760) 435-3720
Hours: Wednesday to  Sunday 11 to 5. Extended Hours on First Fridays 11 to 8
OMA Museum is open FREE on First Fridays 5 - 8 and First Sundays 11 - 5 of every month.

Future Flowers: Memory, Meaning, Mischief - Thao Huynh French at Mesa College Art Gallery

 by Patricia Frischer

Sailor Sisters

This exhibition with its vivid red colors puts us in mind of the movie The Women which features an ending scene with our heroine deciding to win her husband back from a hussy by painting her fingernails Jungle Red. Thao Huynh French has been on a journey of survival from Viet Nam, with a stop in a Philippian refugee camp to her life in San Diego. Along the way her mother painted many nails as a manicurist to support the family.

For French, flowers are a symbol of resilience and transformation and we see them in all their red glory. In Asia, red symbolizes good  luck and prosperity. It is believed to attract wealth, success, and positive energy and is a celebration of joy But it also wards off evil. Red is a life force.

This is French’s very first exhibition but with her husband, she has painted over 400 murals including the recently commissioned ones for San Diego Mesa College. Mindful Murals is aptly named as there is real substance and a message in all of her works, especially the installations here that document that refugee camp and her world view. She shows graphic designs, dress fabric and painted shoes, a grouping of red Asian holiday objects as well as a series of canvases.

We can see a progression in her work from the blue Rebirth image done in 2021 at the beginning of the exhibition to the blue note book at the end which ask for your memories and stories, perhaps for her future inspiration as she includes all of us in her journey. 

Tom Yum

Miniature angry panda mural at Shank and Bone restaurant

Flow of Life - Mesa College mural

Decolonize Yourself You Dumb Hoe

A world worth saving - small book

Rebirth, 2021

Future Flowers: Memory, Meaning, Mischief - Thao Huynh French
San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery
On view until Sept 17^th, 2026
FA103, 7250 Mesa College Drive, SD 92111
Gallery Hours: Monday through Thursday, 12 – 5 pm. Closed Fridays and weekends. Closed Monday Memorial Day Sept 7.
Info: Alessandra Moctezuma 619.388.2829

Water for Elephants: A Really Big Show at Civic Theatre for a really short time.

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photo Credits: Matthew Murphy.

 

The Circus Onstage

Zachary Keller & Helen Krushinski
as young Jacob Jankowski & Marlena,
the lovely circus performer, with Rosie the Elephant.

Robert Tully as old Mr. Jankowski, with Zachary Keller as his younger self, Jacob, whose life changed when he hopped onto a small-time circus freight train and became their veterinarian. The two men are surrounded by the show’s animal puppets. 

Water for Elephants, based on a novel by Sara Gruen which also inspired a movie you can see on the Disney Channel or Apple TV is currently a major musical that originated on Broadway and is now on an extensive North American tour. It just spent a few days at downtown’s Civic Theatre from August 18-23.

The real star of the show was Rosie the Elephant, a massive puppet created by Ray Wetmore & JR Goodman and Camille LaBarre, who designed all the amazing animal puppets for the show.  Local hotshot designer David Reynoso was nominated for a Tony Award in 2024 for designing the costumes for the original Broadway production and his designs were happily notable here.

Water for Elephants
San Diego Civic Theatre

1100 Third Ave SD 92101
On view only Aug 20-23, 2026

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