Stretched Language: Bonita Museum obeys Rule 42

By Patricia Frischer

Catalog cover by Alexander Kohnke

Rule 42: Stretched Language is an exploration into Visual, Concrete and Mathematical Poetry which runs from November 6 – December 3, 2021 at the Bonita Museum and Cultural Center. This exhibition of evocative, visual expressions curated by Vallo Riberto explores our human language as a method for examining the world. Yes, it stretches language and challenges the viewer.

Visual/Concrete and Mathematical Poetry is art that uses text such as icon-graphics, composed or designed to be read and seen for the complete experience. The individual poet or artist blurs boundaries, for example fusing visual poetry (with its many sub types such as concrete poetry, ideogram and calligram and mathematical visual poetry) and word painting, abstract calligraphy, mathematical poetry and abstract writing. 

The catalog for this show designed by one of the artists, Alexander Kohnke, is not only a guide to the show but presents a history of these genres and some essays by its proponents. Why Rule 42? If you are confused, you could be said to be at sixes and sevens. 6 X 7 = 42. If you remember your Louis Carroll's Alice and Wonderland, rule 42 was that 'All persons more than a mile high must leave the court." Drink from the bottle, grow larger and be prepared to stretch your imagination and take a fresh look at the art of words. 

Alex Caldiero, Alexander Kohnke, Allison Wiese, Avital Oehler,
David Quattrociocchi, Db Foster, Douglas Mcculloh, Gustavo Mayoral,
Harry Polkinhorn, John Dillemuth, John Halaka, Karl Kempton,
Kazmier Maslanka, Kristine Dikeman with Lisa Mansfield & Liz Waugh,
Paul Gailiunas, Toru Nakatani, Trinh Mai. 
Spoken word performances by Alex Caldiero, Gerda Govine and Rosa Sandoval on Nov 6 from 4:30 to 7:30

 I visited the show before it was fully hung and  please excuse the quality of my photographs. Thanks to Lonnie Burstein Hewitt for her additional images. There is much, much more to explore in this exhibition than the small taste below so allow plenty of time.

Kazmier Maslanka, with the curator Vallo Roberto and our partners spent one wonderful day and night discussing this show and coming up with the tag line of stretched language. With my years of working with Kaz on the DNA of Creativity for his team's effort  PAMM - PolyAesthetic Mapping: The Muses, I have become familiar with Mathematical Poetry and the niche these works inhabits. So I am going to take a bit of time to explain some of this art as they grow so much in meaning with his guidance. The work is wonderful, but the work with Kaz standing next to you is divine. I encourage you to attend  Similar Triangle Poems Workshop Sat. Nov.13 by Kaz Maslanka who will introduce a system for creating mathematical poetry where participants can create their own math based poetry.

Kazmier Maslanka - This is one of the latest works he created during the the upsetting times of the pandemic. Kaz makes word mathematical formulas.  The non attached soul is to a A Jury of 13 acute anxieties in a shouting match, what  my corporal body is to a dark cloud of 13 vultures circling the corpse that my soul drags. When you read these words, you have to create a picture in your mind.  This is followed by the words for 11+ 2 and 12 + 1. Both numbers equal 13. Then look hard at the circles in the image. There are 13 and each is connected to the same letter because the phrases eleven plus two and twelve plus one have exactly the same letters. The skeleton, the vulture and the monkey brain references are all there. 

Kazmier Maslanka - I shall leave this one for you to ponder, or,please, go the show where there is a QR code next to each work for a deeper dive. 

Kazmier Maslanka - This older work is about a hermaphrodite whose mother made the decision for the male organs to be removed. Latter in life this "women" decided she was a man. When close to the work, it dissolves with no identity, but as you step back you can see a figure with glasses. Try squinting your eyes. The loss soul is to being on an ocean raft, as Cosmic noise is to Time Square. 

Kazmier Maslanka - In this wall of works, the speed of a shape is noted to increase or decrease depending on its shape and direction. Once you notice that,  formulas can be created to describe this effect. 

 

Kazmier Maslanka

Kazmier Maslanka - Don't miss the computer and the printer at the end of his darkened corridor of illuminated works. This is a work that answers the age old question about how time goes faster the older we get. At the time of your birth you were going at the speed of light compared to your mother age (according to Einstein theory of relativity). A formula can be devised that tells you your relative speed today compared to your mom's speed today. Extrapolated to the nth degree this becomes almost infinity. if you enter your birth date and that of your mother, you can get a print out of this exact difference in the relative speed of life going by between any two birth dates. 

Daniel Foster is known to many of us for his time at the San Diego Art Institute more than 20 years ago, his stint running the Oceanside Museum of Art, Riverside Museum and Riverside Foundation. But db Foster is the artist hermit that lies within. He has almost 40 years of work that he shows very rarely and never sells. Much of this work consist of a trunkful of journals where language, words, paragraph, graphics are used to record an inner life. Some of his other work is conceptual, some abstract but it only has a life when it is contextualized. 

db Foster - using children's letter to form temporary word poems in the sand. Photo by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt

db Foster

db Foster

When I saw this wall of work by Karl Kempton, I had no idea that these images were originally only in book form. Vallo Riberto, as curator, actually took the images and made 3-d works. This make the art come alive in a way far beyond the usual curatorial duties. 

Karl Kempton - visual poems stamped in color tin.

Karl Kempton -  a work enhance with color and cut out shown with the book image. Photo by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt

Karl Kempton - a work transformed into an embroidery mini tapestry.

Vallo Roberto -  curator with the work of Karl Kempton

Kristine Dikeman collaborated with Lisa Mansfield and Liz Waugh after a workshop she gave on zoom to a much wider audience than normal. One lady from the UK, one from Australia with Kristine constructed three books with conductive wires that broadcast stories. The great North Sea Floods from 1953, 100 years from then 2053 when the fires are still raging in California and 2153 when Australia becomes a frozen wasteland give us past, near present and possible future.  

Kristine Dikeman

Kristine Dikeman.  Photo by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt

John Dillemuth gives us Tickle My Fancy, Pray Please, Scram and You Take the Cake where the shadows are as important as the words.

John Dillemuth 

John Halaka - within each circle floats the names of so many Palestinian refugees and farmers. He considers himself as a public servant. 

Alex Caldiero -  a performance artist who I know has recited Allen Ginsberg poem The Howl. I saw that in person read by Ginsberg more than 50 years ago and would love to hear it again. 

 Alexander Kohnke - a series of braille images which are the dark dots that spell out "florescent black" but since they are under glass, they can't be felt. Alexander Kohnke was a San Diego Art Prize recipient in 2017

Douglas McCulloh - a 200 foot role of paper which names every single battle in history 

Douglas McCulloh - Vallo Riberto showing us the very first entry 2400 BC 

 

Harry Pokinhorn - In the late 1970s and early 1980s he co-founded Atticus Press and co-edited Atticus Review. He is a psychoanalyst, professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University, and director of SDSU Press. I found it interesting that he studied Walter Iten color theory and that might explain the confident use of color in his work. 

Gerda Govine - who doesn't Weave Together Pain Pain and and and but only Gerda makes JOY

Toru Nakatani - The signifiers and the signified, just the faintest pencil in the word bubbles for this Japanese artist interested in concrete poetry. 

Avital Oehler is represented by this brilliantly installed video, another  curatorial decision that  transforms the Bonita Museum into a space fully reaching its potential. As you can hear in the video, this is a visual documentation of the series of blood test over a period of time when the artist discovered she had an autoimmune disease. 

Gerda Govine read this poem Hands privately in Cardiff by the Sea, but as part of the Rule 42 Stretched Language exhibition curated by Vallo Riberto at the Bonita Museum.

Some wonderful installation views sent by Kaz Maslanka

Prizewinning Artists Bring Tasty Art to Bread and Salt

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

At the October 9^th opening, Perry Vasquez, one of the four SD Art Prize 2021 winners, struck a pose with his four flaming palm trees. 

Fifteen years ago, San Diego Visual Arts Network established the San Diego Art Prize an annual award that would encourage collaborations between established and emerging local artists and give them an exhibition at year’s end. Details and venues have changed over time, but the event that SDVAN-founder Patricia Frischer first put in motion in 2006 is still going strong in 2021. 

This year, it takes place at Bread and Salt Gallery in Barrio Logan, the four prizewinners are all well-established, and all lead creative lives on both sides of the border…and beyond.  

Chi Essary, curator of the San Diego Art Prize, welcomed visitors to the opening of the exhibition.

The Four Winners, and a look at some of their art.

Beliz Iristay: Born and raised in Turkey, Beliz Irastay first came to San Diego over 15 years ago, and is now mostly based in Ensenada, where she lives with her husband, Jamex, one of the artful De la Torre Brothers. A mixed-media artist best-known as a ceramicist, she combines influences from the Eastern and Western cultures that shaped her, adding a special point of view to her blend of contemporary and traditional techniques, which has made her a prizewinner at international biennials.  

Cundina. The lips on this piece made of slip-cast porcelain and low-fired Raku were inspired by a Turkish motif. The title refers to a traditional gathering of Mexican women who come together to eat, chat, support each other, and raise money for community charities.  

Tracing Acculturation is a Turkish design on hand-painted glazed tiles made from Mexican red clay.

Hugo Crosthwaite: Born in Tijuana, with a B.A. in applied art from SDSU, Hugo Crosthwaite lives and works on both sides of the border, and his artworks can be seen in museums and private collections in Mexico and the U.S. He works primarily in black and white, his pieces are strongly narrative, and many are large-scale and ephemeral—murals that deal with the human condition and are meant to be experienced but not to last. 

Pasaje Urbano Tijuana, #1-5.  The wall of improvised drawings.

The centerpiece of this impressive wall installation is a video of three stop-motion drawing animations. I was so enthralled by the power of the images that I lost track of where one piece ended and another began, though they had different socio-political themes. The artist, who loves improvisation, has often created drawings before a live audience, accompanied by music and dance performances. The ink-and-acrylic drawings here were gradually improvised over four days, in response to the video’s narratives. In 2019, he was the first Latino artist to receive first prize in the Smithsonian’s triennial National Portrait Competition—with a stop-motion drawing animation. 

A still from one of the stop-motion drawing animations.

Perry Vasquez: A multi-disciplinary artist with degrees in political science, painting, and criticism, Perry Vasquez is also an art professor at Southwestern College who has called the San Diego/Tijuana region home for over three decades. He has an unusual background: his father was born into a family of Mexican migrant workers in Indiana and his mother was a West Virginia coal-miner’s daughter; they met in Los Angeles, where he was born, though he was raised in small-town, evangelical North Carolina—not the most direct route into the art world. Recently obsessed with creating images of burning palm trees, he has now been engaged to create a mural for the new San Diego County Probation Office. 

The Gates of Heck: According to the artist, this eye-catching painting was inspired by “the mythologies of superhero-dom and Rodin’s Porte de l’Enfer.”

PANCA: Born in Chula Vista to Mexican parents, PANCA grew up speaking English at school and Spanish at home, and currently lives in Tijuana. Her work has been shown in museums, magazines, and on the streets, and her most recent artwork is a book, just published by Bread and Salt.

Entering the gallery ahead of the crowds on opening night, I was immediately drawn into the black-and-white room created by this artist who generally works in super-vivid color—witness her 45-foot-high mural on the outside wall of Bread and Salt. I spent many minutes alone in that surreally-cartoony room, enchanted by its walls, floor, and ceiling and mostly overlooking the bright-colored ice cream cone. I would have stayed even longer if there weren’t so much else to see that evening, and so many other visitors arriving. 

The PANCA Room

The PANCA Room: a second look

SD Art Prize 2021 will be on view through December, and it’s definitely worth the drive.  While you’re there, take time to explore the rest of the 45,000-square-foot space, where you’ll find other interesting exhibits.

San Diego Art Prize Exhibition 2021
presented by the San Diego Visual Arts Network
On view through December 31.
Bread and Salt
1955 Julian Ave. San Diego, CA 92113
HOURS: Tuesday-Saturday, 12-4 p.m. 
breadandsaltgallery@gmail.com

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

Yolanda Lopez: Portrait of the (Late) Artist at MCASD

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt. 

Running: On My Own (1977). A large-scale self-portrait of the artist on the UCSD campus, where she developed an interest in running while pursuing her MFA.

After a long Covid-caused shutdown, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) has opened its downtown doors again with a fascinating exhibition of some of the groundbreaking works of Yolanda Lopez, a Chicana artist and activist who was born in San Diego and received her MFA from UCSD in 1979.

Sadly, the artist died at 79, just a few weeks before the show was due to open, having spent half a century creating art that made her people—especially the women—defiantly visible. “The work that Yolanda did as an artist, activist, and mother continues with all of us,’’ her son wrote. “Keep on getting into good trouble.” 

This exhibit is a great memorial tribute, a display of over 50 artworks, revealing her special interests and some of the “good trouble” she got into during her time in San Diego.

At the entry is an array of six larger-than-life-size charcoal portraits of Yolanda, her mother, and her grandmother. In the second three, each woman is shown imitating the pose of one of the others in the first three.

Grandmother and Artist Standing as Grandmother, from the series of six portraits in Three Generations: Tres Mujeres.

Curator Jill Dawsey, with the artist’s self-portrait from Three Generations.

Here’s what she wrote in 1978, while working on her MFA: “Such stereotypes as the Latin bombshell and the passive long-suffering wife/mother negate the humanity of Raza women. The depth and breadth of our potential for moral, intellectual, spiritual and physical courage has rarely been displayed.”

Small but mighty, this 1978 photo of the artist in performance by Susan Mogul—a UCSD friend—shows her brandishing a handful of paintbrushes, wearing running shoes and an exuberant smile. 

The Guadalupe Triptych is another look at the tres mujeres—all portrayed as the Virgin of Guadalupe, encircled by rays of sunlight, with the Virgin’s starry cloak somewhere in the picture. “Because I feel living, breathing women also deserve the respect and love given to Guadalupe, I have chosen to transform the image,” Yolanda wrote.

Her own image here—truly that of an activist artist—is the best-known, but the others are also engaging: her mother, at the industrial sewing machine she used in her job at the Naval Training Center, shown here working on the starry cloak; and her grandmother, seated on the cloak, quietly holding a rattlesnake and a knife in her hands.

The Guadalupe Triptych: Grandmother

The Guadalupe Triptych:  Mother 

The Guadalupe Triptych:  Artist

Arriba Yolanda y Las Guadalupes! Thanks to MCASD Director/CEO Kathryn Kanjo and her staff for presenting such a timely and well-thought-out show.

Afterword: There are two other interesting exhibits on view here, both drawn from the museum’s permanent collection. You can’t miss Abstract Vocabularies in the main lobby, but take time to check out Joan Jonas’ weird and colorful video installations in the right-side gallery as well.

YOLANDA LOPEZ, Activist Artist (1942-2021)

Born and raised in Barrio Logan, Yolanda Lopez spent most of her life in San Francisco, returning to San Diego to complete her advanced education with a BA from SDSU in 1975 and an MFA from UCSD in 1979. She returned to San Francisco to continue her work as an artist/activist, became Director of Education at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, and taught art at UC Berkeley and Stanford. But until recently, she has largely been ignored by mainstream arts institutions. The MCASD exhibition is her first solo museum show.

Yolanda Lopez: Portrait of the Artist
On view until April 24, 2022
MCASD Downtown, 1100 Kettner Blvd., San Diego
HOURS:  Thurs-Sunday, 10 am-4 pm. Free Admission.
NOTE: Free tickets will be available for two-hour time slots, but visitors must reserve in advance. Questions?  info@mcasd.org or 213-633-5351.  

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.

Ocean Prototype Nights: Reclaiming Native Waterways, from the Kumeyaay Coast to Lake Cahuilla ICA North, Birch Aquarium & Old Town

 By Patricia Frischer

Click this link to watch all of this 3 part virtual presentation.

Part 1: Kumeyaay tule boats (ha kwaiyo) link land and sea, past and present in the Kumeyaay language and culture revitalization movement.

Stanley Rodriguez, in dialog with Amy Sara Carroll and Nan Renner at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps. Professor Rodriquez was truly an elegant spokesperson who brought to life the charm and sincerity of the Kumeyaay people. He explained how the native language is in severe danger of being lost. This can be prevented not by teaching it like English. It has to be emersion training of the young. In their culture every place is a school. Learning is all the time and hands on. You do, to learn, and you do together in a community and holistically. He spoke of the importance of water above and water below being a spiritual reality. Having a good cry is cleansing. Tears are salty like the ocean. He was so poetic and funny and authentic. He passionately cares about passing this experience on to the younger generation so it does not die.

Rodriquez used his native language to show and tell about fishing for sea urchin, abalone, lobster, starfish, sand crabs, shrimp, grunion all caught with line made of yucca  plants, with rock weights and fish bone hooks in tule boats.  Traps were made with willow. They used to fish for whale with harpoons that had paralyzing poison on their tips. In September of this year, they launched 22 tule boats made by family and volunteers.  This is the first time tule boats were on the bay in 100 years.

Stanley Rodriguez with some of the samples at Scripps Birch Aquarium

An acorn gathering basket, set up on logs so the bottom will not rot.  Material gathered for the boats. 

20 tule boats ready to launch

An anonymous artist catches the scene, most appropriately in water color

Part 2: Kumeyaay coiled weaving, from baskets (some made of pine needles) to fishnets, show artistry and ingenuity, drawing from a varied terrain from the coast to the Colorado River.

In contrast Martha Rodriguez, was in dialog with Ricardo Dominguez and Lisa Cartwright  to take us on a tour of the Kosay Kumeyaay Market. This was hard to hear and see, which means to really experience it you need to go to Old Town where you can find not only find baskets but ceramics and rattles, paintings, stone work, and abalone jewelry. Some of the tule boats are stored here.

Part 3: Position Vector Salton Sea measures the rapid disappearance of the Salton Sea on tribal lands (site of ancient Lake Cahuilla) in a site-specific art installation created by the Torres Martinez Cahuilla Desert Indian Tribal Community in partnership with land artist Hans Baumann. Documentation is on view at Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego/North (ICA North) until Nov 14, 2021.

Hans Baumann in dialog with James Nisbet, Manuel Schvartzberg Carrió and Joe Riley at the ICA North was unfortunately filled with a bit too much art speak. But the project is so worthwhile and it appears that the students taught the artist quite a bit about thinking in a different way about land and sea.   The Collective of 40 students worked to build large cauldrons out of clay to mark the disappearing of the water from the sea. These were so large that they were fired on site by building fires within. The young people were also challenged to make a communal drawing of the tribal land that started in the present, imagined the future and then imagined the past. The exhibition at ICA North has artifacts, film, photography and these drawings. There was a discussion about the political nature of land ownership as well as information about why the Salton Sea shrinks and comes back.

Estimate of how the the shore will recede by 2030

Photo only a few weeks apart, showing a ladder near the shore, and it's current location

Firing the clay

Marking the recession of the water over time.

Installation view at ICA North

Note: This was a virtual event in three parts which is part of an ongoing series called Ocean Prototype Nights, which is in turn a UC San Diego Navigating the Pacific project anticipating Getty Pacific Standard Time "Art + Science" 2024. It is produced by Paolo Zuñiga and hosted and sponsored by UC San Diego Visual Arts, Birch Aquarium at Scripps, Institute of Arts and Humanities, Design Lab, and the Getty Foundation.

There are six live-streamed evening dialogs twice a quarter from October through June about the Navigating the Pacific project, as well as a dozen 3-year artist-scientist-scholar collaborations about oceanographic and Indigenous ocean art and science. They will culminate in 2024, in rolling exhibitions at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps and the Geisel Library.

Part of the Getty Pacific Standard Time 2024 regional collaboration of exhibitions, this year themed Graphic Ocean and Navigating the Pacific, there are forthcoming publication and exhibitions promoting intersections between art and science around oceanic conservation, contestation, and communities of practice. These dialogs are "prototypes" in the sense that they show ideas in progress. See https://www.graphicocean.org/ for art/science projects in development at UC San Diego as part of Getty Pacific Standard Time 2024 exhibitions.

Seeking Truth & Other Science-Inspired Installations at La Jolla Historical Society

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

Standing by their TRUTH: Artists Debby & Larry Kline at the focal point of their 16-foot-long installation Seeking Truth.

There’s an art exhibition now on view at La Jolla Historical Society (LJHS) that will open your eyes to new ways of seeing and thinking about art, science, philanthropy, and life. 

Trifecta: Art, Science, Patron, curated by Chi Essary, features ten pieces by regional artists who were paired with scientists from the Salk Institute and asked to create artworks inspired by their meetings. Essary previously curated a memorable art-and-science exhibition at San Diego Art Institute in 2017 but this one recognizes an additional component: funding.

Wanting to give the LJHS show some appropriate historical context, she researched the history of Salk Institute and discovered that Irwin Jacobs, co-founder of Qualcomm, had initiated what was known as the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Chair Challenge to encourage local philanthropists to endow scientists’ chairs at Salk.

“If donors came up with two million dollars, he'd supply the additional million needed to endow each chair,” Essary explained. “Scientists spend an inordinate amount of time writing grants to fund their work, so when a chair is endowed, it basically means they can just do their cutting-edge science, which we can all benefit from. This visionary gift to society—which has endowed over 30 chairs— really touched me. So I reached out to the endowed chairs to see if they’d be interested in meeting with an artist and the rest is history.”  

Two of the Trifecta artists—who were part of the 2017 exhibition—are Debby and Larry Kline, whose immersive installation Seeking Truth is the star of the current show. It’s the first piece on your right as you enter, and the one that invites the most contemplation.  

The scientist they met with, Dr. Thomas Albright (Conrad T. Prebys Chair in Vision Research), is a neuroscientist who studies how we perceive—and misperceive—visual information. He has worked with the criminal justice system, pointing out why having eyewitnesses identify the perpetrator in a lineup is often fallible, and why seeing only two people at a time could yield more reliable results. He has also worked with schools, designing classrooms that are conducive to learning, and showing how even fixing a school’s architecture can make students do better. His 2016 TED talk Why eyewitnesses fail (you can watch it on youtube) ends with these words: “Seeing is believing, but neither seeing nor believing is equivalent to truth.” And the Klines used what they learned from him to create their own Truth. 

Though I immediately found their installation interesting, I couldn’t perceive their Truth. As I stood in the entry to the tunnel of tilted walls, half-hearing soft voices on both sides reciting poetry, and half-seeing what looked like a rectangle of shimmering stars against the rear wall, the artists asked me: What do you see?

They were surprised by my response, as was my husband, who had easily seen the Truth himself. Walking slowly to the tunnel’s end, I passed between a cacophony of voices and came face to face with a polished granite slab that no longer looked starry but held no sign of Truth. Then I stood under each of two domed speakers listening to the same voices I’d heard at first, now reciting something that sounded like Latin—a language I’d never learned. 

Encouraged by the Klines, I started over, went back to the entry and just stared at the slab for a few minutes until—at last!—I saw the word TRUTH emerging on its surface. Evidently, all I needed was a little time and distance to be able to see the truth. 

Afterwards, they gave me an explanation: They’d created a kind of forced perspective—those tilted walls—and added competing sounds from multiple directions that were meant to be confusing, even a little disturbing—a demonstration of how distractions affect perception. The TRUTH carved into the granite slab was stippled to look blurry: the word appeared gradually in 15-minute cycles, then water jets washed it away. Dim lighting made things even more confusing, and I couldn’t hear myself in the cacophony of voices, recorded at a 2017 tribute to the late poet David Antin, where all of us present read one of his poems in unison. The solo voices belonged to his widow, artist Eleanor Antin, and their close friend, poet Jerome Rothenberg, reading two of David’s poems…and some Latin gibberish. 

“It’s like the political scene these days,” Larry Kline said. “So many voices, you can’t really hear.” Added Debby: “We are the Truth and the Light!” Then turning to Larry, she said: “You wanna be Truth this week, or you wanna be the Light?” The Klines and their artworks are both serious and playful—a fortunate combination.

Suggestion to visitors: Try entering Seeking Truth alone, taking time to stop, look, and listen, maybe closing your eyes now and then, to see how that affects your perception. One way or another, persevere and you’ll find your own truth here. 

There are other attention-grabbing pieces in this exhibition; we’ve included a few photos below. But what’s on view really needs to be experienced. Trifecta, originally scheduled for 2020 but postponed when Covid took over, shows LJHS at the top of its form, and it’s great to be back in their gallery again. 

2020  by Marcos Raminez ERRE.  

(Clodagh O’Shea, Professor, Molecular & Cell Biology Laboratory, Wicklow Chair)

     This large-scale crossword was not ERRE’s original intention. But when pandemic lockdowns made his complex art-and-science project impossible, he decided to address some of the issues we all had to face in the title year instead. Covering aluminum panels with automotive paint and rust, he created “a series of definitions that fade and…certainties that collapse,” and a puzzle that has easier solutions than the problems we’re still facing. If you’re looking for answers, you’ll find them in the current issue of Timekeeper magazine, at the gallery’s front desk.

Interactome, by Christopher Puzio.

(Dr. Geoffrey Wahl, Professor, Gene Expression Laboratory, Daniel & Martina Lewis Chair)

      Yes, it is a real word, referring to physical interactions between molecules and/or indirect interactions among genes. And Puzio is an artist who has a background in metalwork and has long been interested in the interactions between art and science. This impressive stainless-steel piece is kinetic; if you’d like to interact with it, ask at the front desk.

Hand of the Milkmaid, by Siobhan Arnold.

(Susan Kaech, Professor and Director, NOMIS Center for Immunobiology & Microbial Pathogenesis, NOMIS Chair)

      Responding to Dr. Kaech’s studies in the role memory plays in developing our bodies’ protective responses to deadly pathogens, the artist became interested in the way lymphocytes gather together to create immune responses. She also explored the history of vaccination, and the story of the young cowpox-infected milkmaid who supposedly provided Edward Jenner with material for developing the first smallpox vaccine. Hand-spun fibers imitate the form of the lymphatic system, and there’s a woven “memory” inside each node.  

Fountainhead, by David Adey.

(Jan Karlseder, Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory, Donald & Darlene Shiley Chair.)

     A contemporary view of the legendary Fountain of Youth: a neon waterfall pouring down from a garden-like mass that’s actually an assemblage of green plastic cleaning products, with neon-haloed lambs—remember Dolly, the cloned sheep? 

The Artist Lineup: (Come see them all!)  David Adey, Siobhan Arnold, Mely Barragan, Cesar&Lois Collective, De la Torre Brothers, Marcos Ramirez ERRE, Debby&Larry Kline, Wendy Maruyama, Xuchi Nayngayan Eggleton, Christopher Puzio

Trifecta: Art, Science, Patron
LaJolla Historical Society
Wisteria Cottage Gallery
780 Prospect Street, La Jolla
HOURS: Wed-Sunday, 12-4 p.m. through January 16. Free admission.
(858) 459-5335

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

Coming Home: Unearthing Indigenous History at ICA North

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

An indoor/outdoor view from the main gallery: Christine Howard Sandoval’s  Surveillance Mound—like a surveyor’s tripod looking out on the SoCal landscape—and one of her wall hangings: Angle of Integration.

 

Closeup of Surveillance Mound.

This month, ICA North—the former Lux Art Institute—is giving new life to the long-buried history of the indigenous people of California, who inhabited the area for thousands of years before the missionaries marched in.

Christine Howard Sandoval, an artist of mixed indigenous, Mexican, and Spanish ancestry who received her art education in New York City and is currently teaching interdisciplinary art in Vancouver, has for some time been trying to unearth the complicated history of California’s indigenous people, including her own. By digging deep into mission archives, she is tracing the migration of her northern California Chalon Ohlone ancestors, piecing together the story of her community and her family, and effectively coming home to California.

Following the missionaries’ arrival in the late 18^th century and the Gold Rush up north in the mid-19^th century, California’s indigenous people were dislocated, stripped of their identities, and often killed. Treaties were broken, and they were subjected to countless indignities, including forced labor and virtual eradication from California history. But what Howard Sandoval found embedded in the archives is a wealth of information on the language, traditions, and plant knowledge of her indigenous ancestors.

In her examination of mission architecture, she noted that the arches commonly used in entrances and passageways had the same shape as indigenous mounds and woven baskets, as well as the wooden hobbles that were commonly placed between the legs of defiant Mission Indians. In her ICA North exhibit, she uses the arch as a passageway into the somber truths of indigenous history. 

False Arch—the span of an opening (adobe mud and graphite on paper).

A large, impressively textured piece—120 x 52 inches.

To create the pieces during her month-long residency here, she hand-mixed adobe mud that she made from soil, clay, sand and water, using glue as a binder. She would do a drawing on paper, marking out negative spaces with masking tape, then covering it with adobe, removing the tape before the adobe dried to reveal the final artwork.

Document Mound. Application for Enrollment with the Indians of the State of California (Inkjet print on vinyl tape, adobe mud and steel—including strips of paper from a copy of the document)

An interesting factoid, shared by Guusje Sanders, ICA’s associate curator, who took us through the exhibit: adobe was not used by indigenous people in California, but was introduced by the Spanish for the building of their missions. 

For the Transportation of Water. Water was carried long distances by indigenous people for construction of the missions.

In her artist statement online, Christine Howard Sandoval writes: “Artistically, research drives my ideas and ideas determine aesthetics… I seek long-term engagement with places and their people as a means of exploring my own self-identity that is intimately formed by land and community.”

Be sure to get up close to admire the texture of her pieces and consider the history behind them. And on your way out, enjoy the lovely landscape, and check out the installation at the street-level Education Pavilion, created by artist Hans Baumann in collaboration with young tribal people who live near the Salton Sea.

 

Christine Howard Sandoval: Coming Home

On view through Oct 31 at ICA North.

Thursday-Sunday, 12-5 p.m. Free admission.

ICA San Diego North

1550 S El Camino Real, Encinitas

760-436-6611/ icasandiego.org/

Special Event: Art Exploration

Drinks and discussion of the exhibit on October 28, 5-6 p.m. Free.

 

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.