SD Art Prize 2021 at Bread & Salt, plus Sugar Museum and Best Practice

by Patricia Frischer

We are so pleased to share with you a little taste of the SD Art Prize 2021 presented by the San Diego Visual Arts Network at Bread & Salt. Hopefully this will encourage you to see the exhibition, collect a free catalog (as long as they last!) that was fundraised by the arts community. This is a stellar show curated by Chi Essary  for the prize started in 2006. The exhibition is open until Dec 31, 2021 and features all of our recipients for 2021: Beliz Iristay, Hugo Crosthwaite, PANCA, Perry Vasquez

While you are at the Bread & Salt building, don't miss the First Supper: Post Pandemic, Sugar Museum at the Athenaeum Art Center, Logan Heights,  and Alida Cervantes at Best Practices. Great thanks to James Brown and Isabel Dutra was supporting this wonderful space for local arts. 

Watch for a full report by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt with Photos by Maurice Hewitt coming soon. 

 

Patricia Frischer, Founder and Coordinator of San Diego Visual Arts Network

First Supper Post Pandemic, Sugar Museum at the Athenaeum Art Center, Logan Heights, Bread and Salt

     

Alida Cervantes at Best Practices, Bread & Salt

    

Kumeyaay Pictographs, Petroglyphs & More, by Don Liponi, Ph.D., Imperial Valley Historical Museum

 By Patricia Frischer

Don Liponi, Ph. D., Imperial Valley Historical Museum, member of the Kumeyaay Education Council and Instructor, Kumeyaay Internship Program was our guide and the photographer for a lecture on rock images. The spiritual communications of the Kumeyaay and Tipai Native Americans are recorded in their pictographs (mineral based paintings on rocks) and petroglyphs (carvings into the rocks). Even though many of these images have seemed to disappear, there is a new DStretch technology that makes it possible to see these works using your digital phone with a special app. 

There has been a cultural genocide of the Kumeyaay way of life but the prehistory and ancient history of the Tipai Shaman records a life harmoniously with nature. This tradition of ancient art is called La Rumorosa, after a site in northeastern Baja, Mexico. These photos record first some geometric shapes and the shape of a man, then a half man/half animal and animals that were guide for the Shamanistic hallucination travels and finally man transformed/ with geometric shapes.

I found these images so compelling and the idea of understanding more about native American Shaman fascinating. These seemingly very basic images which we think of as the foundation of primitive art, may after all be much more sophisticated and be a conduit to living a more wholistic and balanced life. This is just a taste of the lecture sponsored by Mira Costa’s LIFE so make sure and watch it for yourself as it is available until the end of the year. 

Don Liponi

New Sculptures Enliven the Streets of Del Mar

 By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

Moonshadow, by Jeffrey Laudenslager & Deanne Sabeck, one of the new temporary outdoor sculptures now on view in Del Mar. See it on the northeast corner of 9^th Street and Camino del Mar—bright sunshine makes it look even better—and don’t be afraid to touch it gently and change the way it moves.  

If you haven’t strolled through Del Mar lately, now is a good time to go. Since the City of Del Mar established a public art policy and created an Arts Advisory Committee, there’s been an upsurge of artful activity here, with the Del MarFoundation stepping in to underwrite the costs of the newest installations: five sculptures between 9^th and 15^th Streets.

They’re all by contemporary local artists and will be on view for the next 23 months, and they’re all for sale… but must stay in place for a minimum of 12 months.  Then if sold, a fresh piece will be selected to replace it for the duration of this exhibit.  We recently got to see them and some of Del Mar’s more permanent public artworks with Naomi Nussbaum, who was engaged by the Del Mar Foundation to oversee the Temporary Outdoor Sculpture Program almost two years ago.  

A sought-after art consultant who lived in Del Mar in the late 1980s, Naomi Nussbaum is also executive director of Synergy Arts Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to supporting local artists and arts organizations. When pandemic lockdowns made in-person interaction impossible, she put out an online call to artists and received 41 submissions, which had to be passed on to a subcommittee before making their way to the Arts Advisory Committee, who made the final five choices and selected their sites.

Terpsichore, by David Beck Brown. (SE corner of 12^th Street & Camino del Mar)

Bird’s Eye View of Torrey Pines Beach, by Robert Petrello & Drew Graham. (SE corner of 14^th Street & Camino del Mar)

Pasaje a lo Infinito, by Hugo Heredia. (15^th Street, west of Camino del Mar)

Hanging Out #3, by Maidy Morhous. (15^th Street & Stratford Court)

Here are a few of the permanent artworks we also enjoyed seeing on our walk: 

Outside the Del Mar Library, on 13^th Street & Camino del Mar: Baby Boomers Google! —a bronze, apple-topped bookstack by Maidy Morhous, with a partial view of the grand mosaic mural created in 2002-2003 by Betsy Schulz and Pat Welsh with the help of community volunteers.

Yet another bronze by Maidy Morhous, originally submitted to the Temporary Sculpture Program, which only allowed one piece per artist to be chosen. It was immediately purchased by Del Mar Plaza owner Marc Brutten and now has a prominent place on the top deck of the Plaza, as part of its Public Art Collection.  

“This Temporary Outdoor Sculpture Program was a pioneering project for Del Mar and I think it’s a great start,” Nussbaum said, after we’d seen the artworks and were comfortably seated on the Plaza’s upper deck. “I hope the City of Del Mar will embrace more public art since there are so many potential sites here and it will not only enhance the cultural life of local residents, but also increase cultural tourism.” 

To make it easier for you to tour Del Mar’s public artworks on your own, here’s a map, created by the Del Mar Foundation.  Enjoy!

Del Mar Art Walk Map

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has written about arts and lifestyle for the La Jolla Light and other local media for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net

Full Circle but with No Center: Doris Bittar lecture

 By Patricia Frischer

Doris Bittar is a local artist that loves patterns and decorative motifs. She just doesn’t reproduce them, invent them and display them, she also researches them. In this lecture, she shared her belief in the evidence of how patterns can trace the paths of cultural development. Patterns are shared, changed and evolve. The title of this lecture, The Silk Road and Its Arab Milieu, part of the China³ series of the San Diego Chinese Historical Society and Museum and SDSU Chinese Cultural Center is just a starting place for her exploration of the influences of the Arab community, and on this community by Egyptians, Asians and western civilization.

We are shown patterns as calligraphy, lattices, screens, rugs, facades as they crisscross across the millennia and around the world.  This cross cultural exchange shows how uncentered in one place these belief really are. The ebb and flow and understanding this might help us to decentralized our own beliefs.  

Doris Bittar was born in Baghdad, Iraq to Lebanese and Palestinian parents who immigrated to New York. She received her BFA from the State University of New York and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. She taught at the UCSD, the American University of Beirut, among others and was a visiting scholar at New York University in 2017. She is a member of Arab Amp, and a founding member of Gulf Labor.

I recommend that you watch the recorded zoom lecture. That will help you connect the dots of these images.

Egyptian Pyramids and Arab Mosques

Chinese doors and Muslim pattern tools

Mosaics from Rome and the Byzintine

Early tapestries influence modern designs

Arab screens

Details of handmade spindles used in screens

Varieties of patterns used world wide

The calligraphy is actually figurative and based on proportions. It is a myth that Muslims disallow depictions of humans, animals, and nature. 

Calligraphy as landscape.

Modern testimonial to the Dump people of the world . Elseed’s Perception  Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first.

A full cycle, the whole body used to carry forward the calligraphy tradition. 

An artwork by Doris Bittar. "Tarab Soundings"  2010 -2014

A Grand Opening in Balboa Park: Unity and Variety at the New ICA Central

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt.  Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

A partial view of the eye-catching neon piece that ushers you into Unity and Variety.

For months, we’ve been looking forward to the opening of the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego (ICA) —the new collaborative entity formed by Lux Art Institute in Encinitas (now ICA North) and SDAI (now ICA Central) in Balboa Park.

Chosen to create ICA’s first exhibition is Mexican artist Gabriel Rico, whose work has been shown in museums and galleries around the world and included in the 2019 Venice Biennale. Another first: this is Rico’s first solo show in California.

And it’s a great debut—a seriously engaging installation that is both spacious and loaded with interesting details. With his Unity in Variety  theme, Rico appropriately expresses the emphasis on diversity embraced by ICA, and uses a mix of organic and manmade materials like neon, TV screens, twigs, sand, steel rods…and lots of stuffed wildlife provided by the Natural History Museum (The Nat, just a short stroll down the Prado) to create a surreal environment that invites consideration of the mixed relationships we have with our natural environment—specifically, the one around San Diego.

A partial view of the exhibition, with a feather-hatted, mirror-ball-headed, neon-lit-sheet-clad sculpture in the foreground.

There are no informational labels on the mostly anthropomorphic sculptures. Andrew Utt, ICA’s founding Executive Director and the organizing force behind the exhibition, explained why: “We see this as an immersive installation, so we don’t think of them as individual pieces. It’s a complete experience on multiple levels.”

So it is. And the titles of some of the pieces—like “Fish begin to stink by the head”—might tend to lead one astray. But here are a few of our favorites from that series—and what they’re made of:

TV screen, corrugated steel rod, hand-painted ceramic, rope, seashell, volcanic rock, neon and metal.

Found objects, neon, gold leaf, concrete, popotillo grass and a bamboo stick—with a taxidermied coyote from The Nat standing nearby. 

TV screen, firefighter jacket, corrugated steel rod, hand-painted ceramic, brass, neon, mirror, coins and plastic figures. 

Closeup of the firefighter’s TV-screen head.

Besides the grand neon overhanging the gallery, the artist includes neon in more than a few of his sculptures. “Neon represents invisibility versus the tangible,” Andrew Utt told us, as he walked us through the exhibition. “It’s a gas, so when it’s turned off, you can’t see it.”

He pointed out something else we hadn’t noticed, about the hanging neon: it’s all based on fives—5 fingers, 5 senses, 5 numbers, 5 vowels.  If you’re eager for information like this about any of the pieces, just ask one of the EGs—Engagement Guides—in the gallery. That’s what they’re there for.

There are no boundaries in Unity and Variety, though it has much to do with our border, that un-natural boundary created to divide and control. That’s not how Gabriel Rico sees things. “The entire ecosystem from Baja California, Sonora, and California works together like a unity,” he says. “Fish can cross the border, so do mammals and insects.”

But there are always invisible barriers—the dead birds in one piece didn’t make it; they crashed into a glass wall. And there are things littering Rico’s sandy beaches, the detritus of our consumerist culture—an Oreo cookie-box wrapper, a discarded towel, Coca-Cola bottles. 

Taxidermy birds, Coca-Cola bottles and popotillo grass on sand.

A number of the sculptures have TV-screen faces—do take the time to watch at least portions of the videos. And check out the gold-leaf “leaves” attached to some twigs: if you wave at them, they’ll move in the breeze you create. And here’s one last piece from the “Fish” series: this powerful one has a powerful name—Tsar Bomb.

TV screen, corrugated steel rod, plastic skeleton, kimono, volcanic rock, hand-painted ceramic, tin can, plastic dice, fake banana, orange and plant. Tsar Bomb was the most powerful nuclear bomb ever created, developed in the USSR and tested in October 1961.

On a lighter note: definitely ask an EG for the coyote-led tour of Unity and Variety, a short Augmented Reality video you can access on your own smartphone or borrow a tablet from the front desk. It’s a trip letting the AR Coyote be your guide—we did it twice.

 And definitely don’t miss this exhibition. It’s a winner in all ways…and admission is free!

 Unity and Variety, on view through January 23, 2022 at ICA Central
1439 El Prado, Balboa Park
Thursday-Sunday, 12-5 p.m.
619-236-0011/ icasandiego.org

P.S. You may also want to check out Gabriel Rico’s accompanying installation to Unity and Variety at The Nat, on view in their Unshelved exhibition space through January 23. The Nat is open Friday-Tuesday, 10-4, with admission ranging from Free-$19.95.  

I’ll be writing about the Christine Howard Sandoval exhibit at ICA North in Part 2 of this ICA story, coming soon.

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has written about arts and lifestyle for the La Jolla Light and other local media for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net.