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Local Art for Local Kids by Local Teacher in Ocean Beach

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By Ruth McGraw

Drawing and painting were always easy for me. When I was five, I drew a giant green peace sign on my parents’ freshly painted wall. Needless to say they were less than pleased, but that was when I knew I wanted to paint every wall, everywhere.

In what feels like a former life, I served in the Marine Corps and then as a Civil Service agent, and achieved my bachelors in Homeland Security and Emergency Management. I am very proud of my service and grateful for the friendships made and life lessons learned.

However, those days are passed. I finally realized that the taxing paranoia of constantly waiting for the “worst case scenario” was inhibiting my growth as a person. I was tired of expecting and seeing the bad in the world.   [Read more…]

Plaza De Panama – A Host of People-First Changes Make a Big Impact in Balboa Park

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Plaza de Panama is the central plaza in Balboa Park and for many years was devoted to automobile parking. In June 2013 reviled former Mayor Bob Filner led a push that removed the parking spots from the Plaza de Panama and created a public space for strolling, sitting, and enjoying the surrounding museums and sunshine.

Today our family had a small picnic lunch on the plaza and there were people everywhere – a newlywed couple taking photos on the steps of the Museum of Art, small children riding bikes and scooters, people of all ages sitting or taking photos. In short, it felt like an authentic plaza: “a public square, marketplace, or similar open space in a built-up area“.
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Hogarth at the San Diego Public Library

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By Brett Warnke

“What’s your proposal? To build the just city? I will.” –W.H. Auden

What does it mean to construct the just city today? San Diego is admittedly no Flint. As I write this, there are unpunished poisoners like Rick Snyder still giving speeches, doing fundraisers, outside of a prison cell, with the craven media establishment recording every utterance. And even further east, goldbricker frauds on Wall Street giggle their way through new swindles—ones we won’t discover until we once again stand at the lip of another recession when “tough choices” will again “have to be made” in order to “save Main Street.”

But San Diego is a city not immune to corruption. Our streets, too, are peopled with the chalked bodies of unarmed black and brown men. In July 2015 we even played host to the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC), that great instrument of business elites to capture the regulatory powers of the state for its own tax loopholes and favors. And just this year our local democracy was used by the Chamber of Commerce to thwart wage increases for thousands of workers.

What does it mean to construct a just city in such a corroded republic? “America’s finest city” is a city 41% more expensive than the rest of America, where people of every shade are scrabbling at the lower slopes of the wage scale and where 38% of residents, regardless of their neighborhood, are unable to earn enough to make a living. One method of coping is to laugh. Ours is a golden age of satire.   [Read more…]

Ceramic Heights: A New Creative Outlet for City Heights

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Have you ever taken a ceramics class? If you were lucky, maybe your high school art class or summer camp let you play around with hand building. But for most of us, we’ve either never had the chance or think of ceramics as “that thing I tried once upon a time”. For Amanda Gardner, ceramics has been a hobby since she was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Chicago.

Fast forward to adulthood and Amanda joined the coast guard. She was stationed in San Diego in 2007 and spent 4 years in the service as an electrician. After leaving the coast guard, she found herself picking up a variety of different jobs, constantly learning new skills.   [Read more…]

Ed Ruscha ‘Then and Now’ Opens at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

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The Museum of Contemporary Art opened their new exhibit Friday evening January 29th at the La Jolla location. The paintings of Ed Ruscha and Alvaro Blancarte were presented in the Museum’s two main galleries.

The opening reception was crowded with an eclectic mix of members and non-members. Jazz sounds by the New Jazz Trio were only interrupted by speeches and acknowledgments by Museum staff and the artists themselves. The bar had three lines all evening although drinks were not allowed in the exhibition spaces.

It’s always curious what people experience or are seeking at an art opening in a museum.   [Read more…]

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2016 in Balboa Park

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By Mukul Khurana

The 2016 Human Rights Watch Film Festival is in town and opened on Thursday, January 21 at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park. This is not the first year for this kind of event, but the care taken in the selection of films and the scheduling seems to point to a well thought out experience. Credit goes to the collaboration between Paolo Zuniga of MOPA and Andrea Holley of Human Rights Watch (not to mention the excellent artists selected for the 2016 festival).   [Read more…]

The Impossibility of the Present: Collection Elias-Fontes at CECUT, Centro Cultural of Tijuana

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By Jill Holslin

If you haven’t been to Tijuana in a while, now’s the time to come for a visit. The show “Collection of Elias-Fontes Historia y Relato” (History and Story) at The Centro Cultural of Tijuana in Zona Rio, is an exhibition that asks serious questions about the role of the artist in the context of the relentless, pulsating vitality of contemporary capitalism.

Bringing together the work of a generation of northern Baja California artists, the work is remarkable for its variety of materials and forms: metal, industrial refuse, adobe, ceramic, fabric, found objects, and acrylic paint formed into collage, photography, video, sculpture, ready-mades and installation.   [Read more…]

Teleconference: Roland S. Martin Explains Why Black Media Matters

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Gwen Pierce / The Chocolate Voice

Roland S. Martin, host and managing editor of News One Now held a teleconference on January 8, 2016, with “The Chocolate Voice” and a select group of other Black media outlets. Martin shared his insight and analysis on covering stories that are largely ignored by mainstream media.

The award winning journalist was at the top of his game in covering the most impactful stories from 2015, and is looking ahead to being at the forefront of covering hot stories in 2016.   [Read more…]

Abe Ordover and Images of Beauty in a New Year

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What a New Year we San Diegans have had so far: a January filled with rain. Rain that has brought us both beauty and pain, blessing us with precious drinking water and boosting our wishes for a drought to end on the one hand, and then, on the other hand, damning us with devastating floods that have rushed through people’s living rooms and kitchens and dens, dimming their hopes and dreams.

And we, with no other choice, wade on, as life doesn’t stand still, come rain or come shine. In spite of it all, though, I’ve seen beauty all around me as this year unfolds.   [Read more…]

‘The Best There Is’: World Mourns Artistic Maverick David Bowie

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“I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman,” Bowie once sang.

By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams

The world on Monday mourned the death of David Bowie, the iconic rock star, record producer, artist, and performer whose influence spanned generations and whose ideas constantly pushed boundaries of creativity, sexuality, and custom.

Bowie’s death was confirmed by a post on his Facebook page, which said that the artist died peacefully in New York City on Sunday “surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle with cancer.” He had just celebrated his 69th birthday on January 8.

Bowie, born David Robert Jones in Brixton, south London, was lauded as a performer who was always ahead of his time.   [Read more…]

The Earthships Have Landed: Inside New Mexico’s Off-Grid Community Made from Trash

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By Yes! staff / Yes! Magazine

This short film directed by Flora Lichtman and Katherine Wells for the podcast The Adaptors takes you inside the Earthships of Taos, New Mexico—a community of off-grid homes made from trash.

After studying architecture, Earthships creator Michael Reynolds decided he wanted to experiment with different materials. “We build out of trees, but we don’t want to get rid of them,” says Reynolds, explaining how the project began 30 years ago. “We want to get rid of garbage, so why don’t we try to build out of garbage? It started as kind of a contrived effort to recycle, and has ended up the best way I know of to build, regardless of recycling.”
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A Brief History of Vagina Worship

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The vagina has been seen as a symbol of strength and fertility—and sometimes punishment

By Carrie Weisman / AlterNet

Despite the prevalence of sexually suggestive imagery in our culture, we’re still a bit squeamish when it comes to vaginas. But that wasn’t always the case.

“Before Western religion introduced the pesky concept of shame, female genitalia were venerated in ancient mythology,” writes Catherine Blackledge, author of The Story of V: A Natural History of Female Sexuality. Blackledge details how skirt lifting, or “ana suromai,” was once thought to help ward off evil and increase crop yields. She points out that 17th-century drinking mugs used to sport depictions of Satan cowering at the sight of an exposed vagina. Meanwhile, the ancient Greeks paraded around cakes shaped like vulvas during the three-day, women-only Syracusan Thesmophoria festival.   [Read more…]

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