Commentary on the San Diego Art Institute: When media distort events and history, just re-write the essay

Ben Sutton of Hyperallergic recently penned an essay, Rebirth of Stagnant San Diego Art Institute Riles Some of Its Members.  (I confess to being one of the riled.)

Much of what Sutton says has been distilled from a distance; despite that distance, he shows flashes of accuracy. 

However, his essay might have been more appropriately titled, Rebirth of San Diego Art Institute: It could have been achieved through collaboration instead of slash-and-burn and violating its City lease.

Let's take a closer look at some of the things Sutton said. This revisionist perspective is not intended to be complete, but rather to illuminate the challenges of writing about institutional change.

Revising the Sutton essay

By Sutton: 
These accusations, irrespective of their validity (or lack thereof), speak volumes about an institution that was long run like a members-only club in a city badly in need of a more inclusive and forward-thinking municipal art gallery.

Sutton's sentence should be revised as follows:
The institution was intended by the City Council to be run as a place for San Diego artists to develop, hone their skills and exhibit their work – this is far from a club; instead it is an incubator model that has its place in the City arts scene. Other institutions, like those run for the 1% elites, promote the clubbiness of the insular avant-garde.  .  .  . 

By Sutton:
“I’ve been in town for over 30 years, and during that period the Art Institute was a space with a terrific location in the heart of Balboa Park and a nice facility in terms of the height of the ceilings and quality of light and that sort of thing,” Hugh Davies, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) told Hyperallergic over the phone. 

(Delete the sentence in Sutton's essay alleging a lack of quality in SDAI shows as opined by Davies and replace with a more informed observation)

Sutton's sentence should be revised as follows:
If Davies ever really took in the new shows at SDAI, he would have seen a new type of shoddiness with poor wall tags, poor use of lighting, and a taste for the bizarre.

Here are two exhibited images from the new Porcella regime. If you consider misogyny, religious intolerance and anti-Americanism the highpoints of artistic endeavor, well, there is much to applaud. However, if one is willing to tamp down the thrills of shock-art for actual professional competence, one comes away a bit disappointed at what the elites consider to be ‘good’ art.
    

By Sutton:
The organization of solo exhibitions was not up to a curator, but rather determined by a point system: members who received enough prizes in the juried shows were eventually rewarded with solo shows. “It’s almost like you get miles for flying on American and then you get a first-class seat,” said Davies. [Delete the following sentence] “It’s the most bizarre and primitive way to run an arts organization.” The point system, like much of the SDAI operations pre-2008, seems to have been a vestige of the institute’s early years — it was founded in 1941 as the San Diego Business Men’s Art Club to showcase members’ landscape paintings.

Sutton's sentence should be revised as follows:
Davies, whose salary is about $440,000, looks down upon an organization that continued its development after 1996 in the style of a grass roots organization – unlike its beginnings as a place for San Diego businessmen in the 1940s and 50s.

Sutton's summary of views he heard:
Most people Hyperallergic spoke to about the institute and its place in the San Diego art scene agree that the shift away from a “members first” approach is very welcome.

Sutton's sentence should be revised as follows:
Most people that Hyperallergic spoke to about the Institute were not lawyers (Nalven was a former litigator) and most failed to understand lease requirements. Apparently, if the City cannot enforce this lease with its clear requirements, how can the City be expected to enforce any of its leases whether in the Park or throughout the City?

Sutton's embracing of Porcella's opinion is one of those say-anythings:
“We’re not in violation of our bylaws or charter; we’ve even met with the city of San Diego, their lawyers, our lawyers, we’ve looked into it, we’re not doing anything untoward,” Porcella said.

A more informed perspective would have stated:
Porcella, who is not an attorney, apparently has failed to understand the provisions of the City’s lease. A close reading of the lease suggests that she, and SDAI, can do what they want, but just not in Balboa Park.

Perhaps, MCASD and Hugh Davies can offer SDAI a space in its downtown location. That would resolve the issue for the City as a win-win result.

Here is the BIG picture
Sutton fails to capture the sense that this crisis could easily have been avoided had the director, Ginger Shulick Porcella, and the Board of Directors invited collaboration with its artist members. Instead, many of the artist members were shunned and a top down management change was put in place.

As a former Chair of the Institute's Board of Directors, and as a former litigator, I realized that such a path could be followed, regardless of its organizational merits -- except for one sticking point. In order to follow that path, Porcella and the Board would have to leave its premises in Balboa Park as a result of violating its lease with the City of San Diego.  (See key lease provision below - 1.2 a)

Rebranding SDAI as running up to Los Angeles, as Porcella and the Board intend, was not part of the City's deal with this artist organization. It was intended for San Diego artists. 

This is where Sutton ought to have started his essay and, after many words, ended it on this point as well.

Comments (either from email or submitted to blog)

Jane FletcherGreat job, Joe! Unfortunately, the lack of opportunity at the San Diego Art Institute has left the art of many San Diego artists homeless. Sadly, the admired goal of many of today's "sophisticated" art elite is shock and baseness instead of beauty and upliftment, almost as if they are encouraging and applauding social decay. One wonders if they are just competing to see who can reach the lowest.

Buhm Hong Awarded Digital Art Guild Prize at SDAI 2015 International Exhibit

The 53rd San Diego Art International Exhibition for 2015 awarded Buhm Hong the Digital Art Guild Prize. 

As one walks into the SDAI entryway, about to descend to the lower level gallery, one senses the presence of Hong's memory-like animation on the wall space immediately across the open space.

It is a challenge to present the animation with the ambient lighting. Nevertheless, the imagery tugs at one's curiosity. Here are two samples of the animated flow.

Buhm Hong / Panoramic still from animation:  Floating Dreams
medium : Cinema 4D, HD projectors, media player, speaker; size : 1920 X 1080 (pixel); date : 2014

Joe Nalven: I imagine that most viewers will stand in amazement, wondering how this video came into being. Would you share your process with the readers?

Buhm Hong: Let me talk about the process of making a video work 'Floating Dreams' briefly. I took photographs of the wallpapers from the houses of redevelopment areas and used for the backgrounds of the video. The lights of window frames were made by a 3D program 'Cinema 4D' that simulates the movements of the lights and the shapes  of the houses.

Thinking of abandoned and vanished towns and houses, I tried to draw the living memories within. I scanned the drawings and through the post productions in computer, they appear and disappear with moving lights.

In this exhibition, I projected to a wall of the gallery space. I aimed to show an optical illusion as if the light comes from outside with a constant changes of walls and drawings.

Buhm Hong / Details from 12 minute animation Floating Dreams

Hong describes his art-video-animation journey: 

"Memories continuously shape our worldview, including our perception of real and imagined spaces. My multidisciplinary practice is an attempt to understand how people accept new and strange places, including the liminal space between “being there” and “being here”. I focus on the origin of consciousness that can connect two disparate yet related places through fragmented, stream-of-consciousness thoughts that gradually form organic structures such as pipes and mirrors. I work across various artistic platforms including video, sculpture, installation, and drawing to express remnants of multi-layered memories that become landscapes of my profound imagination. I create spaces that seem to exist only in our subconscious—places that are simultaneously nostalgic and utterly foreign. I concretize my ideas regarding the structure of memories in the three-dimensional world, often utilizing organic and industrial imagery such as pipes and mirrors, intertwined with labyrinthine elaborateness. The pipes serve as a conduit for the flow of memories, while the mirrors’ poignant reflections constantly change through the shadows of the pipes, forming an infinite loop of faded recollections."

To get a sense of Hong's animation style, visit his Floating Dreams.

Artist at work / Buhm Hong setting up projector

Also on display at the rear of the gallery is 5 Rooms.

The exhibition was juried by juried by David A. Ross.

Nb. The color variation in the selected details from the animation resulted from the image editing process. Joe Nalven

Balboa Park Centennial: Art in 1915, Art in 2015

In the year of Balboa Park’s Centennial, the many museums and activity centers located there are finding ways to reflect on the park’s past and wonder about its future.

A Point of Departure: Visual Fine Art - Then and Now

I’d like to suggest a comparison for its immediacy. Consider Will Given’s 2015 photograph, Echoes, with the prize winning painting by William Wendt, Mountain Infinity, at the Panama–California Exposition in 1915.

In 1915, photography was made for more for picture postcards and the daily papers - even with the exhibition including a separate section for fine art photography in the Fine Arts Building.  

Over the past century, photography has become an important medium in the visual fine arts and has experienced major technological transformations, particularly digital capture and digital editing. Given’s photograph, Echoes, embodies high resolution digital photography (mirrorless full frame Sony a7r digital camera that produces a 36.4 megapixel image with multiple images composited in studio); Givens also picks a modern theme of time and memory, with an after image creating a metaphor of the mind’s stuttering attempt to locate the object in time. Think of the movie Inception!

Will Given, Echoes

"The goal for Echoes is to show how through Balboa’s 100-year history. It is the constant that unites us all, even across temporal space. It is the place that allows us to feel a connection to our past, and to envision our own future when we are able to share the experience of the park with generations yet to come. It is a place where memory and nostalgia blend with the active engagement of progress. It is a place where we can look to the future in excitement over what the next 100 years will bring."

William Wendt’s painting, Mountain Infinity, captures a different California mood – of landscape, the outdoors and a spiritual connection found more in nature than the urban metropolis. 

Although Anthony Anderson's description in the Los Angeles Times (1911) is of Wendt's painting Topanga, one could easily apply it to Mountain Infinity. "[It is] with the perfect understanding that comes from perfect love. In his pictures of this wonderful canyon the very spirit of the out-of-doors and also -- what is equally to the point -- the very soul of Southern California, is felt." [Cited in William Wendt: Plein Air Painter of California by Will South]

William Wendt / Mountain Infinity, Grand Prize Winner at California Exposition, 1915 (L);

W.E. Averett / Picture Postcard, Aerial Photo of Panama-California Exposition, 1915 (R)

Curating a Contemporary Mindset: The San Diego Art Institute's Exhibit - San Diego Keeps Her Promise: Balboa Park at 100

The San Diego Art Institute (SDAI) houses multiple exhibits of contemporary art thoughout the year. Located in the House of Charm that was originally the Indian Arts Building, SDAI captures the many-faceted ways in which artists compose the world. This exhibit - San Diego Keeps Her Promise - is no different:  Balboa Park is visualized, textured, heard and sensed with the fragrances of the area.  

I've taken a sample of the artwork to illustrate how Balboa Park has been imagined in these various ways. Needless to add, go and see the exhibit to enjoy the full range of this past, present and imagined perspectives of Balboa Park.

A Sentiment Worth Sharing

Kathleen Kane-Murrell's Crossing Bridge evokes the sentiment that one enjoys in visiting Balboa Park. Kane-Murrell sees her images of this place capturing what William Wendt capured in his work some 100 years ago. "Someone recently said to me there is a spiritual nature to this place."

Not quite the landscape of Julian or the Anza-Borrego Desert, but an urban retreat. Presumably that's what a good park conveys. 

Kathleen Kane-Murrell / Crossing Bridge

"For 'Crossing Cabrillo in 2015' I used the materials common to me as an art teacher for children- crayon, paper, pencil, collage and acrylic paint. I embedded images and words from the Union Tribune’s last publication of 2014. I was struck by many things but in particular the lack of women listed as noteworthy in the last year.  One hundred years ago in San Diego women marched with banners that said, “I am a Person.” In 2015 women still ask to be recognized for who they are and what they contribute.  I can’t help but imagine how this landscape might change in the next hundred years." 

Textured Perspectives - More than Sight: Sound, Smell, Stitching and a Walkabout

How do we explore Balboa Park with all five senses? Many of us favor the Prado Restaurant for taste - and why not! But what about those other senses? How do we build those into a fine art perspective?

Brian Goeltzenleuchter and Charmaine Banach

One way to experience the Park is to do a walkabout with a map. Goeltzenleuchter and Banach printed 2000 maps of the Park that takes you on an interesting and unsual tour. The legend marks the following landmarks - each with its own story:
The Pheromone Story - Next to the Carousel
The Date Story - In Front of the Botanical Building
The Drug Story - North of Pepper Grove Playground
The Basketball Story - In the Municipal Gym
The Lily Pond Story - Near the Lily Pond
The Grandma Story - Between the Cactus Garden and the Rose Garden
Goeltzenleuchter summarizes this art work "as an art walk which uses locative media, olfactory art, digital audio and printed ephemera to take the participant on a narrative journey through Balboa Park."

Brian Goeltzenleuchter and Charmaine Banach / Balboa Stories / Park Map with Landmarks and Stories

San Diegans were asked if they had smell memories of Balboa Park - the sense of smell being a powerful memory trigger. The stories the San Diegans told were intimate, and often strange, slices of life: a perverse sports injury, a blissed-out drug trip, a romantic tryst gone awry. As opposed to taking a historical tone these stories are more like something you overhear at a bar - fish stories and shaggy dog stories. We preserved the stories’ spoken word form by digitally recording the narrative as told by the person who experienced it.

Cat Chiu Phillips

In days gone by, inspiring locations would be visualized on tapestries. Late Medieval and Renaissance churches and castles were home to decorative weavings that presented large figurative images. 

Cat Chiu Phillips work are not replicas of those historical tapestries, but one can sense the mix of textile and paper as echoing that sense of grandness and the importance of architectural figure. Her larger installations can be found at the San Diego Airport in Terminal 2. At SDAI, the smaller paper works are her artist proofs/sketche; the more intimate presentation should be equally compelling.

Cat Chiu Phillips / St. Francis Chapel / Mixed media with embroidery

"I have created works on paper focusing on the seven historical landmarks that have become permanent structures from the 1915 Panama Exposition.  This includes the Cabrillo Bridge, Botanical Building, Spreckels Pavilion, California State Building (now part of Museum of Man), Chapel of St. Francis, Fine Arts Building, and the California Bell Tower.  Each work is on paper and layered with archival images from the 1915 Exposition along with modern day informational handouts; each one is stitched together with architectural details from each respective structure. This juxtaposition invites the viewer to see each landmark's historical richness, cultural significance, and aesthetic timeless appeal." 

Franciso Eme 

Francisco Eme takes the Park as a series of milieux that influence us - in sight and sound. He composites his own impressions as a video and soundscape. 

Francisco Eme / Architectural Voice / Installation

The first time I visited Balboa Park I was surprised to see that its architecture had a lot of Mexican and Spanish influences. That same day I made an audio recording of  an American teenager musical trio that was playing a Mexican bolero called “Amor de mis amores”  outside the San Diego Museum of Art. The message was clear, Balboa Park is a multicultural place.  Along the day I kept recording audio finding a musical duo (Asian and Afroamerican musicians) playing “Cielito Lindo” a Mexican folk song on a steelpan, a musical instrument originated from Trinidad y Tobago.  Later the same day I went to the spot where you can see and hear airplanes so close because they are about to land, so they fly just above your head so I recorded that too. All on my very first day.

On my next visits to Balboa Park the impressions kept strengthening, finding musicians playing Didjeridoo, American folk, and a lot of different kinds of music from all around the world. So I kept recording. When listening to my recordings I found out that the soundscapes included phrases in many languages, the visitors of Balboa Park come from different countries too. Maybe because of California´s history  (that once was a Mexican territory) and San Diego´s condition in the present as a border city,  I think this mixture of cultures is natural. Later, when reading about Balboa Park´s history I discovered that its architecture was influenced by many Mexican colonial buildings and suddenly everything was clear to me. There is a reciprocity: the geography, the history and the people influenced Balboa Park´s architecture, and 100 years later the architecture influences the people and everything that happens in there. 

Architectural voice is a multimedia composition for 5.1 audio channels and 1 video. The video part contains images taken from the original Balboa´s 1914 architectural blueprints, while the  musical part is constructed from audio recordings of Balboa Park I have been doing  for some months, including a lot of different musicians and soundscapes. I call  Architectural Voice to those sounds that emerge from the human-architectural interaction. One hundred years after its creation, this is the Architectural Voice of Balboa Park. 

Connecting the Memory Dots

Over the past century plus, the most common way for us to connect our personal histories is with photographs. There was the Brownie Hawkeye and now cell phone cameras. Snap, snap, snap. Shoeboxes filled with family photos have given away to file folders on our computers. The photograph is the material side of holding on to our memories.

Paul Turounet also works with memory - cultural and personal. His approach is photographic, both contemporary and historical, and seeks the ‘normal’ in how Balboa Park was and is: “The photograph and picture postcard, front and back provides a narrative vignette to consider Balboa Park in relationship to our sense of memory and culture, collapsing our understanding of time and history from 1915 to 2015.”  

Indeed, a melancholy imagery. 

Paul Turounet / A Land That Makes Men Kind (excerpt) / an ongoing suite of vintage postcards from 1915 of the Panama - California Exposition and photographs from 2015 of Balboa Park

The Radical Departure: Digital Reflections 

Photography has had a bumpy road to acceptance as a fine art. Similarly, digital art - or contemporary art in digital media - has had a reluctant acceptance outside of digital cameras, FX movies and most of commercial photography. But what better way to conceptualize the future and alternative realities than with the playground of digital media. 

Vincent Mattina has selected one of the most photographer locations in Balboa Park - the reflecting pool in front of the arboretum. Mattina's surrealism follows the grand tradition of Salvador Dali in bending reality, but with the toolsets common to digital media - whether photographic, painting or other techniques. 

Vincent Mattina / Arboretum Hours

"My images convey a post-apocalyptic setting within Balboa Park perhaps 100 years from now. Although the images may appear as a melancholy epitaph to our current view, the viewer may see a ray of hope at the end of mankind's weary journey."

An alternative approach to surrealism and sci-fi is the hyper real technique that can fool the eye. Collaging a faux reality can present a problem for the unwary, but used in a transparent way such faux realities can provoke laughter and wonder. This image represents a park reality that could be true given the fascination with green technology, energy saving programs and a dubious water supply.

Joe Nalven / Sustainable Plaza

"If sustainability was really implemented at the Park, the aesthetic view would yield to views of functional energy and water technology. Perhaps, too, there is a hidden sign telling the public that the potable water they drink has been recycled."

San Diego Keeps Her Promise: Balboa Park at 100 Curated by Ginger Shulick Porcella and Francis French  January 23 through February 22, 2015 San Diego Art Institute 1439 El Prado, Balboa Park San Diego, California 92101 Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10am to 4pm Sunday 12 noon to 4pm Closed Mondays and major holidays Tel: 619-236-0011

And then there was the nudist colony . . . 

San Diego is no stranger to outdoor bathing au naturel. Its Black's Beach has had an up and down history with acceptance by local (now prohibited) and state authorities (allowed). Trip Advisor still carries a page about the success of clothing optional swimming. 

The challenge for an artist focusing on public nudity is how to capture this mindset - something more than what is available on the internet, the movies and cable TV. 

The 1935 - 1936 Pacific International Exposition in Balboa Park featured a nudist colony (actually hired performers) in what is now the Zoro Butterfly Garden. The outdoor attraction was the best money maker and was billed as a place to see "[h]ealthy young men and women, indulging in the freedom of outdoor living in which they so devoutly believe, [and] opened their colony to the friendly, curious gaze of the public." [From David Marshall's San Diego's Balboa Park. See also David Marshall and Iris Engstrand, Pictorial Essay.] 

Saulo Cisneros's video installation combines the place (Zoro Garden Nudist Colony) with the photographic approach of Eadweard Muybridge: "I am not trying to recreate reality. What I am doing is to create moving scenes with series of still images. It is a homage to both Muybridge and to the nudist colony."

Saul Cisneros / The Zoro Garden Nudist Colony reimagined through Muybridge / Muybridge image (L); installed video at the rear (R)

"The video installation is called The Zoro Garden Nudist Colony reimagined through Muybridge. It is a video composed of animated photographies of the Eadweard Muybridge motion studies that reimagines (at this time and space) how individuals would have been hanging around at the nudist colony. The video is projected onto three layered translucid banners that measure 5' x 10' giving the video a three dimensional, but also a ghostly, texture. You can appreciate the piece from any side (so the projector shines onto you). You can see the projection with a visual overlapping of the SDAI crowd (which are the people that frequent Balboa Park at the present)."

And a reminder of gunboat diplomacy .  .  . 

Carlos Castro Arias’ presentation is a story about the U.S. and President Theodore Roosevelt’s taking over the French attempt to construct the Panama Canal. The French effort collapsed due to engineering difficulties and the high mortality due to malaria and yellow fever. The building of the canal was first proposed in 1534 by Charles V with the Spanish considering an easy way to voyage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Scotland attempted an overland route in 1698. The Panama Railway opened in 1855. The U.S. negotiated a treaty with Colombia in 1903 to take over the canal project but the Colombian Senate failed to ratify it. The U.S. then threw its support to Panamanian rebels and the U.S. benefitted from the formation of a new country. This was an example of U.S. gunboat diplomacy at that time.  It should be noted that a large part of South America that had been known as Gran Colombia (Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador and parts of other countries) could have been a major counterpoint to the United States, but it fell apart in 1831. The question lingers why South America failed to have the success that the United States had with an equal amount of natural resources. 

Arias’ artwork and story emphasizes the U.S.’s dominant influence in the region, but the reasons for the failure of Latin America to achieve a similar success go back to earlier than U.S. dominance for the difficulties of Latin American regional integration. Also of note, the Nicaragua Canal – a route considered by the U.S. and others – was approved in 2013 in collaboration with Hong Kong. However, questions continue whether the financing is secure. 

Carlos Castro Arias / Other Stories
1915’s Panama - California Exposition commemorates the construction of the Panama Canal at the same time that Balboa Park was founded. At the same time, the Exposition is a memorial of a theft. Panama was part of Colombia until in 1903 when it was proclaimed independent after the intervention of the United States so they could build and own Panama’s canal for 85 years. Through the use appropriation of historical images, re-contextualization of objects and humor, the project Other Stories is conceived as an investigation and a creative inquiry about human condition in the Americas.

Each artist has crafted a distinct imagined park - as would be expected. But taken together, the exhibit offers a concept within a memory of what was and what could be.

Participating artists:  Carlos Castro Arias, Cat Chiu Phillips, Saulo Cisneros, Kate Clark & Hermione Spriggs, Francisco Eme, Ruben Franco Notch, Dave Ghilarducci, Will Given, Brian Goeltzenleuchter & Charmaine Banach, Jasna Gopic, Beliz Iristay, Vincent Mattina, Kathleen Kane-Murrell, Diego Leon, Chuck McPherson, Joe Nalven, Denise Strahm,  Paul Turounet, Scott Polach, Bianca Romani, Suzanne Thorpe, and Alex Young.


Notes:
I was intrigued by Francisco Eme's reference to the song, Amor de mis amores. There are a number of YouTube covers, but my favorite is one by Melissa Robles. 
Joe Nalven is a Board member of the San Diego Art Institute.
A thank you to Will Givens for information about the present of photography at the Fine Arts Building (1915 Exposition). 

A personal commentary: Visual art in 2014 - in San Diego, of course

This is not a commentary about the best art in San Diego in 2014, nor the most expensive, the most brilliant new artist, and certainly not the most clicks and blinks (virtual or otherwise). 

Some have written about the downturn in art galleries or raised questions about what might come in 2015.

I'd like to recall the curious and offer a question: What are some of the lessons learned about the visual arts in San Diego as we close out 2014?

A caveat:  Since this is a personal commentary and what I have seen and/or written about, I readily acknowledge there was much more in San Diego to enjoy and reflect upon. If you have a favorite with a lesson learned, send me a comment.

Even at the clearance sale
The San Diego Art Institute runs a C-Note fundraiser in the Spring and Winter. Artists get to sell art at the one to three hundred dollar level with a majority of the proceeds going to the Art Institute. I've sold a piece or two in the past, but I find it difficult to part with my objects despite the need to clear out space for newer work. 

Looking beyond my own vanity to what others put on the walls, I am reminded that there is compelling work to be found created by San Diego artists. Since the standards for good or strong art have become confusing in the past century with so much pluralism in styles, techniques and media, the Institute's C-Note event becomes an adventure in finding a personal favorite (and let the experts express their favorites at a biennale or Sotheby's). 

One of my favorites was Bonnie Woods' In thought for its choice and organization of color, a portrait that aptly reflects the title using not just the face but the alignment of the body as well as the juxtaposition of wild and geometric form. Also reminiscent of Frederic Leighton's Flaming June from another era and another approach to the portrayal of the languid female form.

Bonnie Woods / In thought

Why does it matter if the artist is an amateur, an emerging or established artist, local or out-of-town? What does it matter if the exhibit is at a museum or an arts partnership?
Context is often important in understanding why an art object is picked for an exhibit. Curators generally provide some narrative, and jurors much less so. Frustration sets in when one has to ask, 'Really?' I recall one juror who was willing to share about the pick of a photograph for an international show - something about a Heinz 57 bottle being in the collection of objects in the photography, something from her childhood memory.  Honest? Yes. Satisfying? Not for me. Many comfort me by saying, 'the juror's choice is more about the juror than about the selected art.'
 
Compare the two photographs, both of which I enjoyed viewing at local exhibits.

Robert Treat / Prague Wildlife / PhotoArtsGroup Urban Landscapes

Millee Tibbs / Mountains + Valleys, Origami Yosemite #4 at MOPA After Ansel Adams

Both photographs intrigue me with their use of texture, composition, point of view and addressing the theme of landscape - urban versus nature. Treat's Prague scene reminds me of my own early morning wanderings in that city. His is the challenge of the urban adventurer, looking for that odd juxtaposition of things and Treat's collection stops the viewer with a 'what have we here?' moment. The juxtaposition of textures adds to the image's interest -- glass, stone masonry, paint and tile, interesting also in the horizontal and vertical arrangement in an assortment of grays. 

Tibbs' use of origami connects me with my own musing about sculptural photography and adding texture to the 2D flat art experience. Tibbs also delights the reinterpretation and extension of Ansel Adams' landscape. 

Is the goodness of each photograph affected by the context of venue (Escondido Arts Partnership vs. Museum of Photographic Arts) or the photographer's qualification (emerging, established, professional, amateur)? 

The lesson learned is not that there are no art standards or that there is no way to discriminate among art objects; rather, the lesson is to remind oneself that there is a pecking order in our community, just as there is in most communities. The pecking order is reflected in the news media, in what collectors' learn to desire and assumptions that venue and the artist's history determine the goodness of the art object. I admit that this lesson is one that I repeat frequently:  good or strong art is all over San Diego - in artist studios, in what might be called 'off Broadway' venues and other than the well-funded institutions.  Be mindful of that dictum and you will enjoy far more art in the San Diego community than you might otherwise allow. 

Jane Lazerow / In her home studio explaining her painting of the Abraham and Isaac Akeda story

Elena Lomakin / In her home studio with her installation of musical birch trees

Josue Castro / In his Little Italy studio with one of his imagined identity photographs

The new kid on the block - at a community college?!
While one notable La Jolla private art gallery closed, another publicly-funded one opened at San Diego City College.  I don't know whether there is a trend in this recent up-and-down of venues that present art, but it is worth noting that places that show art evolves. The new art space at the downtown San Diego Public Library main branch adds to the spaces provided at many branch libraries, including what had been the major voice for the San Diego public library (Taylor Branch in Pacific Beach, but also the Riford Library in La Jolla).

Yoonchung Kim /J's Memory (detail) in Casting Plus exhibit

One of the first exhibits at San Diego City College's Visual Arts Gallery featured a collection of ceramic pieces, in Casting Plus. Both the exhibit and the exhibit space were startling. I hadn't expected the quality of either and this will be a challenge for the visual arts department to meet in the coming years.  

The lesson learned is obvious, though often forgotten. We need to pay attention to the evolution of San Diego, not only where people live, the highways and public transportation, where the foodies go as well as places for the homeless, but also where spaces for art emerge and decline.

Technology platforms:  Youtube, editing software, movies, print services, smartphones, etc.
My, oh, my - do we need to pay attention to visual artistry that connects our locality to the world and the internet? The answer is a resounding yes and there are way too many lessons to be learned that I can discuss in this commentary. But consider the following.

While these digital platforms have been with us for awhile - sometimes extending analog platforms, but others emerging newborn on the internet (Facebook anyone?) - it is important to recognize how they compete for our attention, dollars and value when compared to the more 'traditional' venues for art presentation.  Sometimes interacting, sometimes as alternatives.

Joe Nalven / documenting a viewer at ArtFair San Diego 2014 / Samsung camera painting app

As I wandered through ArtFair San Diego this past November, I documented what I viewed with a point-and-shoot camera. Nothing unusual about that. What was different was that I relied more on the camera's painting app. I could literally 'take a painting' instead of shooting a photorealistic image. 

Here I combined a digital camera with a dreaded app ('dreaded' because it confused the artist's compositional skills with the algorithmic stylization) in picturing the Contemporary Art of a Miami-based artist (Darian Rodriguez Mederos) as viewed by a passerby.

The challenge with many of the digital platforms is that many translate the world in novel ways, ways that have yet to be valued as 'legitimate' art - partly because of the algorithms that make the artistry appear too easy, partly because they can be distributed to millions by going viral (and with pixel transmissions that have yet to be taxed), and partly because anyone and everyone can do it. The challenge is here to stay and one that has yet to be incorporated into 21st century discussions of 'what is art.'  One can view the wide variety of art using digital media in Filters & Masks at the Pacific Beach Taylor Library.

Movies are part of the discussion, but I will simply note that I wait til the end of the movie to watch the credits unfold. Are the artists listed as CG (computer graphic) artists, digital painters, FX (special effects) artists) or digital artists?  Many labels for those frequently doing the 'same' art in digital media.

Consider, though, the use of YouTube with a bricks-and-mortar exhibit. The LFJCC's Gotthelf Art Gallery presented the expressionist-styled art of Hanan Harchol. But the art is not silent. The graphic novel style of several of the artist's narratives speak to what makes the art at Comic Con so popular. More so, the heart of the 2D flat art is on YouTube. There is a conversation about ethical issues (envy, gratitude, faith) between the artist and his father and between the artist and both parents. 

Hanan Harchol / from Forgiveness

The interests here are several:  discussing ethical issues as problem-solving rather than the moralism found in religious art of socialist realism or environmental heart-rending; the connecting of video, internet and art gallery in art presentation (this goes beyond marketing concerns); exploration of art styles more suitable to the graphic novel format.

And, now, your thoughts about 2014?