Bread and Salt - Five at a time: Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio, Insite Erratic Fields, Annie Alarcon, ERRE, Anya Gallaccio

 By Patricia Frischer

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio 

A whole slew of art is now newly on view at the Bread and Salt building which hosts the Bread and Salt Galleries, The Athenaeum's Catherine and Robert Palmer Gallery, The Sculpture Garden and Quint’s One as well as Best Practice and ICE Gallery, plus many individual artists studios. 

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio Noncompliant 

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio detail

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio's exhibition at Bread and Salt  explores how time can feel different for people with disabilities or illnesses. Sometimes, for example,  they need more time, rest, or flexibility. This idea is often called “crip time.” Using paintings, drawings, installations, and a large mural, the artist shows how normal schedules and rules in society don’t always work for everyone. The artwork asks people to think about how we decide what makes a life valuable and how people spend their time.

The exhibition is called Noncompliant. The word usually signifying when someone doesn’t follow rules. Ortiz-Rubio uses it in a new way—as a positive idea about standing up for yourself and not always following unfair expectations. The goal of the show is to help viewers think about how society treats people, especially when it comes to work, care, and human worth.

Ortiz-Rubio  received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art and currently teaches drawing at the University of San Diego. Ortiz-Rubio was a 2018 IMPACT Artist-in-Residence at Bread and Salt, and this exhibition is the first time the gallery presents her work in a solo exhibition. She is the recipient of the 2026 San Diego Art Prize and will be showing with other recipient Danielle Dean and Ingrid Hernandez at the Oceanside Museum of Art in September, 2026

Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio Noncompliant  
Bread and Salt Gallery
March 14 -  May 23, 2026

 

Erratic Fields: INSITE Commonplaces, The Sedimentary Effect

detail

Anya Gallaccio, Beautiful Minds - detail

Anya Gallaccio, Beautiful Minds

Erratic Fields is an art exhibition that looks at the nature and history of the region shared by Baja California and Southern California. It is part of a long project by INSITE called The Sedimentary Effect. Erratic Fields took about five years of research, trips, and conversations with artists, scientists, and nature experts. It is rather like a chapter within this large body of mostly conceptual projects and installations. 

The Erratic Fields exhibition curated by Andrea Torreblanca showcases these long-term projects with artists living in the area. New commissions are by artists Alex Bazán, Johnnie Chatman, Lael Corbin, Leslie García, and Archivo Familiar del Río Colorado, as well as new iterations of past projects by Mark Dion, Anya Gallaccio, Allan McCollum, Allan Sekula, Gary Simmons, and Yukinori Yanagi. We recommend watching this INSITE video of the artists speaking about their commissions. For example, Lael Corbin explained that he was able to tread lightly with the wind and experience a give and take that made him feel closer than ever to the environment. 

• Mark Dion’s house installation – Dion rebuilt a small research-style house based on one he made near the Tijuana Estuary. Visitors can go inside and learn about birds and wildlife that live in the border wetlands.

• A machine that builds a mountain – One artwork uses a machine that slowly piles up material to form a small “mountain.” It shows how landscapes can change over time and how humans also reshape the land.

• San Andreas Fault monitoring artwork – A piece uses sonar or radar technology to track earthquakes in real time along the San Andreas Fault. It reminds visitors that the land in California is always moving beneath our feet.

• Photography about trade and factories – Work inspired by photographer Allan Sekula explores how shipping, factories in Baja California, and global trade affect people, the ocean, and the environment.

• Sculptures, drawings, and films by several artists show things like dust storms, wind, migration routes, and desert landscapes, helping people think about how nature and human activity mix together in the Californias.

The artists explored places like deserts, volcanoes, dunes, and coastlines to understand how natural forces—such as earthquakes, winds, droughts, and animal migration—shape the land and the people who live there. The exhibition shows that the U.S.–Mexico border region is really one connected environment, even though it is divided by politics. The show helps visitors think about how nature, history, and politics are all connected, and how even small events in nature can have big effects on the world around us. The next book in the series will be published shortly. 

Erratic Fields: INSITE Commonplaces, The Sedimentary Effect
Produced by INSITE - Art Practices in the Public Sphere
Athenaeum Art Center at Bread and Salt Building
Mar 14  to June 28, 2026

Annie Alarcon: Forms of Devotion

Annie Alarcon

Annie Alarcon

Annie Alarcon

Annie Alarcon

Annie Alarcon

Small delicate engraved porcelain vessels created by Annie Alarcon are hanging  separately, no chance of touching, each one inspired by ancient Greek perfume bottles.  Annie Alarcón makes us wonder what they are holding.  We all know how a scent can bring back a memory in a very strong, even emotional way. And one holds a bottle, gently, and applies the potion to your pulse points. It is a very intimate act, almost a ritual of preparation.

But there are other containers in the show, ones on the wall that are spilling out light, large heavy pots with natural botanicals placed on top, and tiny discs that look like flattened doll dishes.

One amphora stands out as somewhere in-between with the written words, “What once was held.”   Amphoras have pointed bottoms and were usually used for storing oil or wine. They last for years and years and were used for shipping as they could be stacked between other cargo. Sediment settled at the bottom and it was easy to tip this shape for pouring. These art works might not be meant for use, but they symbolize a lasting place to carry and keep safe whatever is important to us.  

Annie Alarcon: Forms of Devotion
Athenaeum Catherine and Robert Palmer Gallery
March 14–May 7, 2026

Marcos Ramírez ERRE’s  The Prisoner

Marcos Ramírez ERRE’s  The Prisoner

Marcos Ramírez ERRE’s  The Prisoner
detail reflection on the ground

“Utopia is imprisoned, come help us free it!” -ERRE

Marcos Ramírez ERRE’s sculpture, The Prisoner, stands eight feet tall, composed of a central concrete tower with mirrored letters spelling “UTOPIA,” enclosed in a rusted iron cage. It is viewable from Julian Ave in the Gallery Sculpture Garden in front of Best Practice. ERRE is a previous SD Art Prize recipient and has a long history of work with words with a focus on the US-Mexico border region. 

Marcos Ramírez ERRE: The Prisoner
Bread and Salk Sculpture Garden
From March 14, 2026
Bread and Salk Sculpture Garden
From March 14, 2026

Anya Gallaccio’s When Black is Burned 

Anya Gallaccio’s When Black is Burned 

Quint Gallery is showing Anya Gallaccio’s When Black is Burned at the ONE space at Bread and Salt. The artwork is a large wall sculpture made from obsidian, a shiny black glass that forms when hot lava cools very quickly during a volcanic eruption. The artist cut and polished this stone so it is reflective like a mirror. (see video above) This sculpture is different from some of her other artworks that slowly change or disappear over time. Instead, obsidian forms over a very long time in nature, so the piece connects to the slow processes of the Earth.

Another project by Gallaccio called Beautiful Minds is being shown in the Insite project, Erractic Fields.  In that project she uses a 3-D clay printer to create versions of Devils Tower. And there is more work by Anya Gallaccio at Quint Gallery in La Jolla until May 23

Anya Gallaccio: When Black is Burned
Quint ONE at Bread and Salt
March 14 to April 25, 2026

Bread & Salt 
1955 Julian Avenue, San Diego, 92113
Hours:Tuesday – Saturday 11 am – 4 pm
Please check with individual galleries for opening days and hours. 

Best Practice was unfortunately not open during the afternoon of my visit. Their exhibition A Unifying Force: The Art of Revision San Diego is on view until April 18. ICE Gallery (Michael James Armstrong withThomas DeMello) was also not open.

A Heartfelt Conversation with the Creators of Palpitations: The Cadence of Heartbeats

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

The Talk

On the morning of February 3rd in the theater at MOPA, which is now the Museum of Photographic Arts at The San Diego Museum of Art, acclaimed painter Marianela de la Hoz and Grammy-award-winning sound artist Marc Urselli gave their audience an illuminating look into the details of Palpitations: The Cadence of Heartbeats, their innovative installation at SDMA.

The talk was moderated by Deirdre Guevara, SDMA’s Director of Community Engagement, and the audience was totally captivated by the story of their unique collaboration.

Marianela, born in Mexico and based in San Diego, is known for her artworks created with egg tempera, an ancient and painstaking technique that involves egg yolks and was used by Byzantine and early Christian icon painters, reaching its height in the Italian Renaissance with master painters like Botticelli. 

Marc, who lives in New York, said he first discovered Marianela’s work about five years ago, when he dropped in at the museum on a break from a project in L.A. and her altar piece “Heaven and Earth” really spoke to him. He loved multimedia things and thought it would be great if they could do something together. 

Years of phone conversations followed.  Was there a way that a piece of art could play music?  Maybe she could try painting on a speaker cone!  If he used low frequencies, they could even make a piece seem to move. But egg tempera wouldn’t work. The heat created by low frequency sound would cause the piece to crack.

Marianela confessed that she was terrified at first. She couldn’t use her favorite medium and would have to use acrylic, and she didn’t know how she could paint on one of those cones.

“I like to be very detailed,” she said. “I’d have to use gesso and put extra layers on; it would be a completely different experience.”

“For the first year, we just exchanged emails of things we liked,” Marc said. “And we gave each other complete freedom.”

“Everything has a heartbeat, so we chose that as our theme,” said Marianela.

Finally, she sent him a painting… he created sound for it…and Palpitations was on its way.

“We’d even include a speaker that could defy gravity, climb up the walls!” Marc said. “And except for one breakfast in L.A., we didn’t even get together until the installation!”

“Painting the three pieces in the Tryptich took six or seven months,” said Marianela. “And as I was painting The Tree of Life and Death: From Cradle to Tomb, my companion cat died.” 

Her beloved cat, Fausto, who had been ailing, and often curled up on one of the speakers, was dead. “It brought clear to me that there’s nothing that won’t come to an end,” she said, sadly…. and audience members sighed along with her.

                The Tryptich: The Tree of Life and Death: From Cradle to Tomb.

“Each of my paintings is full of details--some of them cryptic to me!” she went on. “You can look for what each character is saying. I write a lot too: how can I express a message that I want people to see and feel?  I didn’t know I could be so detailed with acrylic, but I could.”

War

Hope

“She writes about her pieces before she paints them!” Marc said. “And I wanted the room to be welcoming; I wanted there to be a story told.  There’s the Tree of Life…War…Hope… and you’ll never hear the same thing twice unless you stay there for hours. Every time the lights are turned on, a new sound cycle starts.”

Every sound cycle, he added, takes 7 ½ minutes… and he recommended that visitors stay for that full amount of time, and listen for the different subtle sounds that come up with each piece.

“If you’re there at the right time, you can hear the dead man and the dead cat snoring,” he said. “My intent was to bring as much physicality to a two-dimensional artwork as possible… to insert three-dimensionality…like when you throw a stone into water.” 

At the end, there were heartfelt questions from the audience, and heartfelt responses. 

How would the artists like viewers to respond to their artwork?

Said Marianela: “For me, as an artist, I want people to feel and think and observe my painting…not just say: Oh, it’s beautiful!  It goes with the colors of my sofa!”

Could sound damage the paint?

The audience, myself included, loved Marianela’s response: “I put layers of gesso on…I don’t think it will crack. But if it does, maybe they can find hairs of my cat….”

I had seen Palpitations before, but seeing it again after the Artists’ Conversation, I was able to notice so much more and my experience was fuller and deeper.

If you read this after Feb 22, 2026, Palpitations will no longer be on display at SDMA… but the Tryptich has been donated to the museum, so you may be able to see and hear it there n the future. Until then, we’ve included  a glimpse of some of the paintings here, and I’ll end with the one called  Seikilos Epitaph, which I’ve learned is the world’s oldest surviving complete musical composition. It was found written on an ancient Greek tombstone…and if you look closely, you’ll see its words inscribed in English on Marianela’s piece.

 

Seikilos Epitaph

 

                 While you live, shine.
                Have no grief at all.
                Life exists only for a short while 
                And time demands its toll

 And for a fine musical conclusion, go to this 3-minute performance of Seikilos Epitaph by the YK Band on You Tube.

Palpitations: The Cadence of Heartbeats - on view until Feb 22, 2026
The San Diego Museum of Art 
Balboa Park, San Diego. 

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

Nick Cave: A Conversation on Art and Identity presented by the San Diego Museum of Art

by Patricia Frischer

This summary is from the conversation between the artist Nick Cave and the interviewer Deidre Guevara held at the San Diego Museum of Art. 

Nick Cave is a charming speaker, authentic and one of my personal heroes. He is one of 7 boys born a year apart from each and very early on, he was no trouble because he was always drawing and occupying himself. His parents were very supportive. He went to the Kansas City Art Institute which was liberating. But at one point his mother was concerned about his pink hair. He grew out of that phase and has certainly made his family proud.

During his time at school, he learned he was able to gather people and collaborate. But after school he needed to focus. First working at Macy’s as a visual coordinator doing window displays,  then on to Hallmark which was not a good match. So, he went to Cranbrook and was near Detroit. He was committed and pushed and was immediately hired at the teaching school of the Chicago Art Institute in 1991.

The Rodney King beating happened in 1992. Harm to black bodies was not unusual, but  this  was the first incident that was seen on video…so vulgar and so violent. It was devastating and brought to his attention the need to communicate to the white world of his colleagues. The riots in LA were galvanizing and a real awakening for him. He needed to speak louder and the Sound Suits were born out of that need. He gathered twigs thinking they would be a sculpture, but then as he assembled them, he realized he could wear the sculpture and when he put it on it made sound.  He was not ready to reveal this work publicly and put a dozen of them into a closet for about a decade. He needed time to understand what he was making and why .

In these works, the wearer is covered and protected, but the shape determined what the suits became. A friend showed his work to the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York. After he checked them out, he agreed to a meeting in Chicago. When ask what he wanted, he had to be honest with himself and he replied, “I want to be famous.” The gallery came to Chicago and sold out his show, but this was shocking to him. It took him awhile to ask for help, because they wanted more art. When they launched, his life changed. Success was sudden and dizzying. To take these Sound Suits out of the closet and lose the protection that his work provided, took courage. 

Discarded materials, excess, re-use, re-purpose all floated in his mind. He was really continuing his material studies. Cave was a weaver  and constructing a cloth and moving it from 2-D to 3-D  was comfortable for him. The concept of beauty from the thrown away, for him, is almost a rebellion. But a rebellion that is optimistic, hopeful and filled with forgiveness.

Most of the work is used color and pattern  His influences are self-declared Baroque as well as haute culture and decadence. Gaudy, excessive turned into fabulous are his words to describe the style of the work.

Nick Cave, Rescue, 2013. Mixed media including ceramic French bulldog,
ceramic birds, metal flowers, and barrel chair.
© Nick Cave. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Museum purchase with funds from the bequest of Dr. Janet Brody Esser, 2022.18

Rescue is his piece owned by SDMA.  This series was the first time he starting building out the idea while shopping for supplies. The Doberman was the first one he found and he knew if should be sitting on a settee. Dogs have loyalty. Pure bred dogs denote status in society. He felts he needed to create a den for the dogs, a safe space.

He obviously does not need to teach but he is interested in the next generation and wanting to make sure that those who need him are involved. He removed his own art from his teaching life which focuses on getting the students to trust themselves. His community work involves exhibitions spaces that are curated but are also flexible to the moment. He calls these call and response spaces.  He wants to empower the community not to wait for an institution to approve, but to do a project that they believe in immediately.

Nick Cave is interested in how AI is influencing the making of things and utilizes it as a tool. He makes art without limits or boundaries. That invites us to dive into the work in the same way. 

Nick Cave, live at the San Diego Museum of Art