VOTE Like your life depended on it

Everyone is allowed to support whatever party they want this November. We at San Diego Visual Arts Network, (SDVAN) join with North County Arts Network (NCAN) and the San Diego Regional  Arts and Culture Coalition (SDRACC) to encourage you to find out which candidates support the arts in your community, your city, your county, your state and nationwide. And then VOTE for them.  

The Candidates' Forum for District 5  County Supervisor race with  Michelle Garcia and Jim Desmond is presented by North County Arts Network and moderated by the League of Women Voters. It will occur on Friday Sept 21 from 6 to 7 pm at Miracosta Community College, the Oceanside Campus at 1 Barnard Dr, Oceanside, CA 92056 at the Little Theatre (OC3601) 

This is a county wide race and it is very important that we have a winning candidate that supports the arts. Watch for a time and place to be announced for this event. Also watch for a list of candidates that support the arts to be prepared by SDRACC. 

I want to make a final plea for everyone, no matter who you vote for, to cast a ballot and be part of the process. Since only a bit more than 50% of American actually vote, that makes your vote doubly important.  

Ten Reasons to Support the Arts in San Diego

Patricia Frischer, The Sooner, the Better, gouache on paper, handed painted frame

The Arts:

1. Contribute to our Economic Success: According to Americans for the Arts, 4.3% of our GDP is derived from the arts, which is more than tourism, more than transportation, more than agriculture. Arts events affect communities positively by attracting cultural tourist who spend more per day and stay longer than other tourists.
   
   
2. Help to Recruit Talent: Employees want to live and work in a vibrant community where culture is thriving.
   
   
3. Put the city in the spotlight: The arts help businesses build market share, enhance brands and reach new audiences. The arts help get the message across in engaging ways.
   
   
4. Foster critical thinking: Creativity is among the top applied skills sought by employers and innovation is the most valuable resource we have. 
   
   
5. Engage our Citizens: Sitting on an art organization’s board is great training for city government, taking art classes, attending performances and exhibitions, expressing oneself in creatives way enlivens our community.
   
   
6. Embrace diversity and team building: The arts create an environment that blends backgrounds, ethnicities and cultures.
   
   
7. Ensure Safety: The arts engage young people, keep them off the streets and decrease vandalism. They increase academic performance shown through higher test scores and higher grade averages.
   
   
8. Say thanks and best wishes: The arts are a great way to show you appreciate your staff and friends by providing tickets to events or maybe a museum memberships.
   
   
9. Contribute to the Health of Community: The arts are essential to the health and vitality of neighborhoods, cities, states and our nation. Nearly half of the health care institutes nationwide provide arts for healing programs.
   
   
10. Are Fundamental to our Humanity: The arts ennoble and inspire us.

North County Arts Events: Lux Art Couture and SD Botanic Gardens

by Patricia Frischer

We will be featuring lots of North County arts events leading up to the arts month in October Open Your Hearts to North County Arts promoted by SDVAN and NCAN.

Lux Art Institute made a call for 5 artists to be selected to exhibit during Lux Art Institute’s Art Couture event. Artists were asked to submit an art piece for competition and this was the fun cocktail party that celebrated those artists and their completed works inspired by 5 fashions. The 5 chosen artists were give the fashion outfit just two weeks before the party and asked to complete the work on the night so the audience was able to see some live art creation.

Lux will be the host on Oct 13 to the San Diego Fashion Week catwalk show for all the designer  K2, HiM Brand, HMO by Harumi Momota, Hulabelle, I Am Sublime, Irina Madan, Leili Meshki, LyCass Classic Design, Sierra Mitchell, Uqsha, VaughnBerry. They will also host two other event on Oct 12 and Oct 14, a backstage experience before and a trunk show after. 

Cat Chiu Phillips

Michael Amorillo

Frieda & Jason Gould

Scott Shoemate

Wren Polansky

Cat Chui Phillips

Scott Shoemate

Michael Amorillo

Wren Polansky

Jason Gould

Open from now, through October to next May is the new group of sculptures at the SD Botanic Garden in Encinitas. Naomi Nussbaum is responsible for this changing exhibition where art works are sited throughout the lovely gardens. 

Andrew Carson - don't miss this delightful work right at the entrance which is kinetic and moves in the breeze. 

All the artists that were present at the opening celebration. 

Elon Ebanks

Cheryl Tall

Cheryl Tall

Peter Mitten - a breaking seed pod with life springing forth.

Charles Snowden

Tracie Monk - this photo lines up so perfectly as to make the foliage and background of the central work look like a full face.. 

Becky Guttin - three homes set in the bamboo forest.  

Becky Guttin

Becky Guttin

Jon Koehler 

Julia Rasor

Other artists with links to their include the following:

Yuriy AkopovLaurenn BarkerEv Bessar 
Buzz BlodgettMary Buckman David Campbell
Lynn Forbes
Sergey Gornushkin
Syd Harris 
Bobbi HirschkoffIlya Idelchik 
Cherrie La Porte
Benjamin Lavender 
Kim Ogburn
Patty Palenschat
Bob Petrello
Mark Rafter
Marsha Rafter
Gail Schneider
Hans Tegebo
Ed Whitmore
Donna Wood

Look at #MeToo

Maybe my antennae is super sharpened right now, but an off shoot of the attention that women in general are getting right now seems to manifest itself in a series of exhibitions of women in America.  

Here is San Diego there are three shows featuring women of color.   Alanna Airitam has made a series of works called the Golden Age which places black portraits in historical context. The result is a lush, proud and generous view of a people who were made to feel less than for far too long. The Artist Odyssey commissioned David and Barbarella Fokos to create From Haarlem to Harlem: short film about the Golden Age which is well worth the 20 minutes. Her work will be featured in About Face from April 21 until June at the San Diego Art Institute. You need to see these works in person as they seem to straddle a line between photo and painting even through they are printed images. 

Alanna Airitram, works on loan to the exhibition by Larry and Debra Poteet

Alanna Airitram

Basically working with the same issues, “It is hard for me to recall seeing a Black person represented in a museum or contemporary space as a young person,” reflects artist Erica Deeman, showing her photo series Silhouettes and Brown at the Museum of Photographic Arts as part of its “Artist Speaks” which started at the end of April. “I reflect back upon this and wonder upon the impact for me personally. I think one of the reasons I make the work I do is to address this absence.” This show is on until September. 

The color of the background matches the color of the skin in this Brown series

Notice the reflection of the artist in the eye of the sitter

Silhouettes are very large images and are not just the outlines but subtle highlights revealing contours. 

The artist herself speaks directly to you about both series on display. I loved this very large video which made me feel she was in the room with me. She was raised in England but noticed the strong difference in how people of color are treated in the US when she moved here. 

Another women of color speaking out is Sadie Barnette: DEAR 1968,… In Dear 1968,… artist Sadie Barnette has taken  the file that the FBI amassed after her father joined the Black Panther Party in 1968. She was born in 1984, thus the title refers to a large drawing in graphite, “Dear 1968,” “Love, 1984” Barnette got  her father’s 500-page FBI file through the Freedom of Information Act which she has decorated in various glittery vinyl and rhinestone stickers.

What appears black printing in this photo is dark graphite pencil hand drawn.

On another wall, she has transformed the file’s official stamps into a domestic-style wallpaper. On top of the wallpaper, a pair of photographs show her father in his Army uniform after being drafted to fight in Vietnam in 1966, and just two years later in his Black Panther uniform, fighting against racism on his own soil.

I have recently written Picked RAW Peeled blogs about the following exhibitions:

SD Art Prize 2017 at the Athenaeum and 2018 announcement Picked RAW Peeled by Patricia Frischer

Artist Eleanor Greer selected as 2018 Business of Art Scholar Picked RAW Peeled by Patricia Frischer
Gabrielle Bakker at Lux Institute Picked RAW Peeled by Patricia Frischer 

Seventeen on Being 17 at the Cannon Art Gallery Picked RAW Peeled by Patricia Frischer

I would be remiss not to mention the women of the 2017 and 2018 SD Art Prize at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla.  Rizzhel Mae Javier and Victoria Victoria Fu with Mathew Rich are showing May and June 2018 and Anne Mudge with emerging artist Erin Dace Behling will be showing in 2019 along with and established artist Robert Matheny with emerging artist Max Robert Daily 

Rizzhel  Mae Javier and Fu/rich in the background. at the Athenaeum. Please Note{ Rizzhel Mae Javiar is also artist in residence at the New Children's Museum currently. 

Ann Mudge

Erin Dace Behling

Artist Eleanor Greer selected as 2018 Business of Art Scholar  and was featured at Mission Federal ArtWAK as part of her scholarship sponsored by SDVAN. She was also part of the SDSU student award exhibition that is on at the same time as the SD Art Prize at the Athenaeum. 

Gabrielle Bakker is artist in residence at Lux Institute and the work will be on view during Lux at Night on May 19th, 2018 

Prom Dresses: Seventeen on Being 17. Seventeen female artists evoke and interpret being 17 years old through the great American Prom. In their work, the artists explore this girlhood rite of passage and all its uncertainty, excitement, doubt and hype. Why does Prom still carry such meaning for many, even years later? Featuring the work of Maite Benito Agahnia, Manuelita Brown, Diana Carey, Bronle Crosby, Susan Darnall, Ellen Dieter, Kaori Fukuyama, Julia C R Gray, Diane Hall, Kathleen Kane-Murrell, Kathy McChesney, Lori Mitchell, Gillian Moss, Alison Haley Paul, Julia San Roman, Christine Schwimmer, Gail Titus, Theresa Vandenberg Donche, Brenda York. Cannon Art Gallery, Carlsbad End June 17 and showing Tuesday - Saturday 11 am - 5 pm Sunday 1 - 5 pm

Christine Schwimmer

In just reading 2-3 editions of the New Yorker Magazine in the last month, I have noticed the following exhibitions.

Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil at the Museum of Modern Art in New York was the inspiration for my own set of banners painted as the backdrop for the Passport to Brazil event produced by the Encinitas Friends of the Art.

Tarsila

Encinitas Friends of the Arts Presents Passport to Brazil Picked RAW Peeled by Patricia Frischer. Four banners by Patricia Frischer

Shelia Hicks from Nebraska at age 83 is and has a show at the Pompidou honoring seven decades of work in Paris.

Francesca DiMattio has a solo show at Salon 94 Bowery in New York of her amazing ceramic works described as “a rollicking revenge fantasy for every women artist who has ever been dismissed as de trop.”

Radical Women; Latin American Art 1960-1985 is showing at the Brooklyn Museum with a theme of resisting oppression. We loved the photograph by Liliana Porter called Untitled (hands and triangle) from 1973.

Men on Boats at new Village Arts, Carlsbad until April 22

by Patricia Frischer

Men on Boats, a play by Jaclyn Backhaus at New Village Arts in Carlsbad  (March 31 – April 22) is having its premiere on the west coast. The whole cast is women but the play is about the male explorers of 1896 that went down the rivers of the grand canyon for the first time. We were extremely impressed by the dedication of the cast who prepared physically for this performance. The director, Melissa Coleman-Reed put them through their paces with a variety of mind/body/movement techniques (one of which was the Susuki method) that she had learned and used in previous plays. We saw them do a demonstration of some of these rigorous exercises and it was beyond impressive. 

The  Executive Artistic Director of New Village Arts,  Kristianne Kurner, who is also the founder of NVA,  plays John Wesley Powell and a great cast of 9 other female actors make up the ten man expedition. 

The way this play depicts the river trip is through movements that are choreographed like dance. There is a bit of song, rather like ditties sung over the campfire and some unison spoken word segments that are powerful. The men all have distinct characters that are revealed over the course of the journey. But this is not a play about women pretending to be men. Instead we see revealed the things that drive men to be adventurous, to be bold, to be courageous. We see the results of power struggle and fear. In the end we see how frivolous, vain and silly men can be. And we are left with the question, should women be more like these men, or are  men and women more alike than we realize. Certainly the women in the cast had a team experience and conveyed that experience with its humor, joys and struggles. 


 Murillo’s set, Elisa Benzoni’s costumes, Melanie Chen Cole’s sound and Sarah Schwartz’s lights 

Photos by Daren Scott except for last image of set by Patricia Frischer

A shout out now to the set designed and lighting that helped make the sequences on the rive come alive.  Christopher Scott Murillo’s set, Elisa Benzoni’s costumes, Melanie Chen Cole’s sound and Sarah Schwartz’s lights 

Cast

• 
  Kristianne Kurneras John Wesley Powell
• 
  Brianna Dodsonas Bradley
• 
  Paloma Dominguezas Sumner
• 
  Samantha Ginnas Hawkins
• 
  Joy Yvonne Jonesas Hall
• 
  Tamara McMillianas Seneca/The Bishop
• 
  Melba Novoaas OG/Tsauwiat
• 
  Milena (Sellers) Phillips*as Old Shady
• 
  Nancy Rossas Dunn
• 
  Tiffany Tangas Goodman/Mr. Asa
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  

Read more: Men On Boats: True(ish) history comes to life on Carlsbad stage La Jolla Light by Lonnie Hewitt Burstein


One Program Note Is Key to Inventive ‘Men on Boats  San Diego Story by Martin Jones Westlin