Airport Art: Flying High Again

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt.
Photos by Maurice Hewitt, except those that are Courtesy of the Airport, as noted.

 

 A mixed media piece made of natural fibers, stainless steel, aluminum, copper, and acrylic, created by Mexican American artist Becky Guttin, who lives in San Diego and shows on both sides of the border.
Location: Terminal 2 West, Gate 28, on the way to Baggage Claim.

Remember when—in the years pre-pandemic—you could go to San Diego International Airport to view art installations, not just to catch or meet a flight? Now you can do that again, with Espacios & Lines, an exhibition of artworks by 16 artists from both sides of the border, mostly spread out along the main floor of Terminal 2 and on view through the end of the year. It’s a great response to the designation of the San Diego-Tijuana region as World Design Capital 2024. 

Maurice and I were lucky enough to join a preliminary tour of the exhibition earlier this month, led by Daniel Dennert, curator of the airport arts program, who shared stories about the artists, their materials, and their processes. Here’s a look at some of our favorites.

 

Night-time lighting gives Becky Guttin's piece a magical glow after dark.
Photo courtesy of San Diego International Airport.

 One of four figures featured in painted acrylic panels on canvas backgrounds by Laura Lehman, who was born in the U.S. and raised in Mexico. Each panel portrays a common scene from one side of the border and viewers are encouraged to imagine switching characters and backgrounds.
Location: Terminal 2 East, Gate 28.

Artist Kelly Witmar, based in Joshua Tree, turns rusted-out car parts into engaging sculptures.
Location: Terminal 2 East, pre-Security. East End Gallery.

An upcycled jacket by Chicana fashion designer Claudia Rodriguez-Biezunski, famed for her unique studio/shop in Barrio Logan, Sew Loca. (Get it?) Her motto: “Sewing is Life.”

 Beside Claudia Rodriguez-Biezunski’s SD jacket: a display of its components.
Location: Terminal 2 West, pre-Security. Corridor exhibit cases.

 Tim Novara is a San Diego-based artist with a background in architecture. In this elegant multi-layered piece he uses mirroring, drawing, and acrylic painting to give an inspired new existence to what he saw in his local photographs.
Location: Terminal 2 West. Gate 33 cases. 

 A moving portrayal of indigenous Mexican women by Irene Monárrez, a mixed media artist from Juarez who now lives in Chula Vista.
Terminal 2 East. Transition Corridor.

 Hugo Crosthwaite is a multi-award-winning artist who was born in Tijuana, raised in Rosarito, and graduated from San Diego State University. After winning a national competition and commission from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, he created a stop-motion-drawing-animation of Dr. Anthony Fauci that now hangs in the Smithsonian. He loves working in black-and-white, but here his use of color vividly brings the town he grew up in to life. 
Photo courtesy of San Diego International Airport.
Location: Terminal 2 West. North Concourse.

 

All the artworks in Espacios & Lines invite up-close contemplation, and have informative placards close by. Keep an eye out for the useful and attractive exhibition brochures; you’re welcome to take one home as a souvenir. 

If not listed above as “pre-Security” all locations are “post-Security,” but the airport offers occasional tours of the exhibition. If you’re interested, the next one is Thursday, June 20; contact arts@san.org for details. Or come early for your next flight, pick up a brochure, and you can browse through the art on your own. 

 

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

San Diego Natural History Museum: We don’t feel a day over 149

by Patricia Frischer

 

Natural History Museum, Balboa Park

In 1875, group of naturalists in San Diego got together to study and share their love of their home.  Obviously, this in not because the museum building is 150 years old. We know that the actual site of the current museum was used in the 1915 Exposition as a Civic Auditorium (which was originally called the Southern California Counties Building).  It burned down, embarrassingly, while hosting a fireman’s ball! The current building was designed by William Templeton Johnson in 1930 and built in 1933. You can see the animal motifs he used on the front of the entrance.

Photo of 1915 Southern California Counties Building
Image Courtesy of San Diego History Center 

Blue print plans of the new building held in the Natural History Museum Library

detail of the current building

I learned this by visiting a library on the third floor of the museum that I didn’t even know existed. Many artists visit this museum to reference the collection of objects. You can draw an animal which won’t move since it is preserved or be inspired by the colors and shapes of exotic stones.  But there are 56,000 volumes in the library with endless illustrations of plants and research information to stimulate and entertain you.

 

John James Audubon, The Birds of America, 1858-1860

This year we say Happy 150^th birthday to the San Diego Natural History Museum. Visit the site for a whole list of birthday events in 2024 and continue to use this resource to enhance your art and learn about how our environments need to be protected and preserved. 

Jasper Johns: Drawings and Prints at San Diego Museum of Art

 by Patricia Frischer

Jasper Johns, Untitled, ink on plastic. 1983/84

On my trip to Balboa Park, I started with a very quick viewing at the Timken Museum to visit the Kehinde Wiley, Equestrian Portrait of Prince Tommaso of Savoy-Carignan (2015). You may have seen reproductions, but make sure and see the real thing. It has an overwhelming presence and I was particularly intrigued as you could not see one brush stroke. It almost looks like a printed canvas. Only on view until the end of May, so make sure and stop in and visit this masterwork.
 
In this new exhibition at the San Diego Art Museum, Jasper Johns: Drawings and Prints, my key descriptive words, in sharp contrast to the Wiley, is intimate and completely hands on. You get a chance to see 14 works on paper and experience the touch of the artist hand in a close and personal way. The works date from 1960 to 2021. That is over 60 years in one small room. John Digesare, Senior Registrar at SDMA, and curator for this exhibition  was able to draw from a private and the museum’s collection, as well as six drawings generously loaned directly from Jasper Johns. This is not the first Johns exhibition that Digesare has curated. Besides the previous one at the museum where Johns was included, Modern American Prints: 1920-1948, in 2019,  Digesare is also was responsible for Jasper Johns: Selected Prints, 1963 - 2008 in the Hoehn Family Galleries at the University of San Diego in 2009.

 
Johns, in his personal sketchbook, has said, “Take an object / Do something to it / Do something else to it. [Repeat].” We all know his early flag and number art works and they are well represented here. Motifs that are developed early on appear over and over, always with variations. He used classic tricks the eye illusions in two of these works. Did you know if you are under 30 the majority of people see the young women first and over 30 you see the old woman?  The vase with two facing portraits is a classic Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain exercise.
 
The After Picasso work obviously based on Picasso’s Women in a Straw Hat with Blue Leaves, is a clue to a recent discovery. Johns was not known to be a fan of Rodin, but the Green Angel has now been referenced to Rodin’s Torso of the Woman Centaur and Minotaur. There are many variations on that work.  

A tracing of a soldier from the Isenheim altarpiece was further altered by hand colored acrylic over intaglio. He did many of these and the strokes of his brush are very noticeably applied over the colors of the original print. This makes each of them unique.

 
Unique and personal is definitely evident in the small hand-colored etching of three artists holding brushed poised behind a skeleton head. Dated 2021, it is the latest work in the show by this 94-year-old artist. Loaned by an anonymous owner, we are lucky to be able to see this selection of Jasper Johns artwork specially selected by John Digesare. 

Jasper Johns: Drawings and Prints
San Diego Museum of Art
May 18 – Oct 27, 2024

Photos by Patricia Frischer unless otherwise stated. 

John Digesare, curator and Senior Registrar, SDMA

Jaspar Johns, Two Flags. 1960, graphite

Jasper Johns, Flag on Orange, 1998, etching with aquatint

Jasper Johns, Spring, 1986, pastel and charcoal

Jasper Johns, After Picasso, 1986, charcoal 

Jasper Johns, Green Angel, 1991. etching. Gift of the artist, 2006.135. © 2024 Jasper Johns and ULAE / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, Published by Universal Limited Art Editions.

Auguste Rodin, Torso of the Woman Centaur and Minotaur c. 1910, Musée Rodin, Meudon, France.

Jaspar Johns, Untitled, 1999, hand colored acrylic over intaglio

Jaspar Johns, Green Angel 2, 1997, etching

Jaspar Johns, Untitled, 1990, mixed media

 

Jaspar Johns, Untitled. 2021, mixed media

Kehinde Wiley, Equestrian Portrait of Prince Tommaso of Savoy-Carignan, 2015 at the Timken Museum (photo: Timkin Museum)

World Design Capitol 2024 SD/Tj Demystified

 By Patricia Frischer

Proyecto ReCREA – Repurposing Waste for Coastal Resilience consists of a collaboration between A Su Futuro/Advancing Students Forward (ASF), Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve (TRNERR), Waste for Life (WFL), and Centro de Comunidad Tecolote. On Sat, 08 Jun 2024 in TJ.

Like lots of you, I am confused about the World Design Capitol 2024 year of activities. I did a deep dive for you on the website. I found it confusing, but I think I now have a handle on it.

The World Design Capitol 2024 (WDC) SD/TJ is an international award which for the first time was given to two cities at once. This prestigious award is, itself, designed to be a cross border collaboration.  It encompasses more than just design in a purely art context. Yes, there is Arts and Culture but also climate/sustainability, health/wellbeing, planning/placemaking, science/technology, and youth/education.

“Design is a universal language. It speaks to the heart of human experience. It is inherently optimistic, always seeking to improve, to enhance and to solve. Design allows us to see the world. Not as it is now, but as it should be. Remember, every idea we consider together, every project we develop together contributes to a larger narrative. It's a narrative of hope, of progress, of a future built by all of us, for all of us. So whatever your connection to the world Design Community Capital 2024 this year belongs to the San Diego Tijuana community.” Thomas Garvey, president of the World Design Organization

One of the emphases for this WDC 2024 SD/TJ is to broaden the idea of design beyond its immediate use. Design needs now to take into consideration the effect the creative impulse has on the whole production of a product or service. That might means designing an environmentally friendly process as well as product by serving not just humans but humanity as a whole. For example, if an art works is heavy and has to be shipped, that makes it more expensive in fuel for delivery and maybe packaging. If resources are renewable or recyclable, we need to consider that as an advantage.

February:  The launch with the World Design SpotLight

May:  World Design Festival Tijuana included the annual Tijuana Design Week of design-related programming, exhibits and lectures including 100 events across 40 different venues. You can watch many of the lectures and panels with links on Facebook or LinkedIn. Most of them are in Spanish. Here is one visual arts exhibition that featured Fernanda Uribe.

Fernanda Uribe

Bosque (Forest)  by Fernanda Uribe

Coming up in September and November are other official events of the World Design Capitol 2024 (WDC) SD/TJ

September:
The date is set for Vanguard Culture’s second annual  ENVZN24 Urban Art Takeover . The biennial visual and performing arts festival will transform areas of Commercial Street in Logan Heights with immersive and interactive art experiences on Sat, September 14, 2024 from 2:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. The full list of artists and performers will be released on May 22.

November:
The World Design Policy Conference with be at UCSD Tue, Nov 12 to Wed, Nov 13 2024

World Design Network of Cities Meeting is a forum for public administrators in Tijuana  Fri, Nov 15 2024

World Design Convocation Ceremony is  a symbolic event highlighting the official “handover” of the WDC title from WDC San Diego Tijuana 2024 to the next host city on Sat, Nov 16 2024 

Night-time lighting gives Becky Guttin's piece a magical glow after dark.
Photo courtesy of San Diego International Airport.

One of the first exhibitions at the SD International Airport Espacios & Lines started in March with cross boarder artists. You can read our report - Airport Art: Flying High Again Picked RAW Peeled by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt

As well as Proyecto ReCREA – Repurposing Waste for Coastal Resilience, the following events are happening in June as part of WDC 2024

Borders Are Imaginary: Co-creating the Future of Innovative Education in San Diego-Tijuana. Co-creating a future of Innovative Education in a transformative one-day workshop in San Diego, blending Design Thinking and play frameworks.   Jun 9, 2024 • 9 am - 3 pm.

The 50th anniversary of Temporary Paradise? (1974), is the inspiration for  Vision 2074. This is a call upon our designers of the region to boldly envision what our region can become in the next 50 years and beyond. Sponsored by World Design Capital San Diego Tijuana 2024 (WDC 2024) multinational teams are encouraged but not required.  Project submission deadline is July 31^st.  Submissions to vision2074@wdc2024.org

Some design events are not found on the WDC calendar like Comic-Con Museum, in collaboration with the Consulate General of Mexico in San Diego and sponsored in part by Cross Border Xpress, announces the opening of Border Blitz: Artistas del Cómic de Tijuana, a binational exhibition which is participating in  World Design Capital San Diego Tijuana 2024 community initiative. The exhibit showcases the work of Tijuana artists Charles Glaubitz, Alejandra Yépiz Portillo, and Urbano Mata, representing three generations.

On June 8 and 9, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), in partnership with Good Faith and Mortis Studio, will host EXPO, a celebration of publishing, design, music and fashion in San Diego.The first event of its kind and scale in the city, the free EXPO Design Market will showcase local markers, publishers, and creatives from all across San Diego, Tijuana and neighboring communities. 

San Diego Design Week in collaboration with Mingei International Museum will be Wed, Sep 18 - Wed, Sep 25, 2024

In the rest of the website you find the following:

The Community Program page is just a list of design related events but it does not have live links or dates so you have to do more research on these events yourself. But you can go to the top of the site to see the Calendar page. Featured events are at the top, but scroll half way down to get to May/June and look for the pink Arts and Culture events. On the way you can see what you might have missed. On the bottom of most other pages on the site you can see what is featured every day of the current month.

There is a Youth Club page for those under 30 called WDC2024 Club. They offer school credit and special invites. 

There is a Grants page which list the 17 organizations that received funding between $10k - $75K. In the visual arts Casa Familiar, Insiteart, The Design Academy, Inc. were big winners. But Art Produce got $25K and Project [BLANK] and San Diego Craft Collective,  Here & There/ Aquí y Allá design residency all got $10K.

The Legacy Program is the future-focused extension of our vibrant community program which prioritizes investment and support for initiatives with the potential to bring about long lasting transformative regional change. UC San Diego Design Lab was hired to create this program and the Design to Action Networks which should be ongoing. Susanna Peredo Swap & Rodolfo Argote are the Arts and culture leads for this program. There are five other subject areas as well.

More info: join their newsletter and go to the site: World Design Capitol 2024 (WDC) SD/TJ