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san diego art

Civic Pride

January 4, 2011 – 12:01 am

We continue to find reasons to be proud of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Joining the Smithsonian protest is just the latest in a series of decisions at MCASD that show us an organization creating dialogue, embracing the community, and evolving into a new era.

Don’t get us wrong, Viva la Revolución was rad, but it wasn’t the exhibition itself that most impressed us. It was when they brought in prolific local artist (not to mention talented community builder!) Mike Maxwell, who gathered 26 street artists for the Live Free Wall featured at the Viva-edition of TNT in August. It was when they found solid ways to support Sezio, ourselves, and Turista Libre during the Tijuego Street Art Bike Tour. And more recently, it was when they called up our Barrio Logan neighbors, The Roots Factory to put on a live screen-printing session at the TNT in October.

But perhaps our proudest moment was the unexpectedly visionary hiring of local artist Wes Bruce to run the MCASD Teen Art Council. Bruce is a natural born teacher, a dedicated community builder, and a tireless creator of inspiring work that has captured the imagination of many people, young and old, over the past few years. He’s a great fit to lead TAC, and we think it’ll have a big impact on the young art leaders growing up around us in San Diego.

You set the bar high in 2010, MCASD. So with a new year ahead of us, what’s next?

Update: Wes brought his teen group to the Bakery for a visit, and we’re really excited to see these young art leaders push the envelope in the coming years.

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Kwangho Lee: transforming the ordinary

July 28, 2010 – 11:05 am

This September at Current – an exhibition of hand-crafted design, guests will experience the intriguing work and story of Korean designer Kwangho Lee. His rural upbringing inspired him to apply traditional hand-crafted techniques (knitting) to otherwise uninspired urban materials (power cables), to create transformative and sculptural lighting installations.

As a very young child, his grandparents looked after him on their farm in rural Korea, where the ability to transform everyday materials into useful tools and objects is a way of life. Lee’s grandfather worked stone, rope, wood, and clay into implements for growing vegetables, raising cattle, and supporting the family. His mother points out that from a very early age, Kwangho became adept at manipulating material with his hands, which led him to an interest in the arts.

When Lee moved to the city to begin primary school he continued to visit his grandparents in the country, splitting time between urban and rural environments, forming a pattern of duality that inspired his creative output. Prairie and parking-lot met and became his muse.

Between his grandfather’s farm tools and his mother’s habit of knitting (check out the sweater vest above), Lee started down a path with the thought that “works done by hands can bring new meanings and value to the ordinary things.”

We’re honored to present Kwangho Lee’s work at Current – an exhibition of hand-crafted design – with an Opening Reception on Saturday, September 4th, at The Bakery in Barrio Logan, San Diego, California USA. For details on the events, including the Patrons’ Night gathering September 1, click here.

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Grandpa Grumpypants meets OBEY

July 16, 2010 – 12:55 pm

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There were plenty of onlookers during the second day of work on the OBEY GIANT mural in South Park (San Diego) by Shepard Fairey and his crew (day one here). The crowd was a good mix of photogs, hipsters, fixie riders, random curious ladies taking neighborhood walks…and along came a man who seemed to be plucked straight out of a Quentin Tarantino film.

He moaned some nonsense about how he “owned most of all this…” property next door to the mural, and whined, “I gotta look at this every day!?” The hipsters had some fun chatting with him as Grandpa Grumpypants kept staring up with fire in his eyes at the scissor-lift while Fairey & co. cut huge stencils of a cloaked figure.

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It was interesting to see the artists cutting their stencils directly on the cinderblock building. Seems like a mundane detail, simply a time-intensive task required to get a huge mural up on the side of a building – and indeed it is.

But it’s also a reminder that the patronage of a museum like MCASD (or for that matter, lending our own wall to Mike Maxwell) can make a world of difference for what an artist is able to do with a public work. Having several days to underpaint, create background patterns, wheat-paste in several layers, and overlay figurative images with enormous grid-based stencils is a lot different than showing up at 3am with a pre-cut stencil and a couple cans of aerosol.

Both modes of operation have their owns merits, but they are vastly different when it comes to decorative complexity or the context created by risking arrest.

We’re pretty happy about the freedoms granted to the artists of Viva La Revolucion, and hope the extra time they’re spending on these pieces will open more dialogue with Grandpa Grumpypants or anyone else who’s a stranger to street art.

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An Explosion of Street Art Creates Dialogue in San Diego

July 9, 2010 – 9:09 pm

The upcoming exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), entitled “Viva La Revolucion,” has generated a tremendous amount of dialogue around the idea of street art, and with that dialogue – controversy. This came to a head with Barry McGee‘s (TWIST) mural across the street from the city hall. Mike Maxwell has been documenting as well as contributing to the explosion of murals showing up on walls across the city, and caught some great footage of McGee’s team attacking an enormous wall while under scrutiny.

Although it’s a common practice to commission walls for artist murals, and we totally understand the value of MCASD grabbing some walls for these artists, we find it a little ironic that an exhibition specifically about the street art movement includes officially sanctioned walls for artists (especially if the MCASD backs down under local criticism).

The beautiful thing about the museum’s exhibition is that while some walls are “official”, some are very much unofficial works done by the artists under their own accord. You may be able to take the street artist off the street, but you can’t take the street out of the street artist.

We’re looking forward to watch this play out over the coming weeks (the exhibition opens to the public on July 18th), and see how MCASD handles ongoing criticism and subsequent education/outreach. One thing is for certain so far: this museum is doing their job by starting dialogue and pushing this city to consider what contemporary art is or should be.

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Thieves!

June 30, 2010 – 11:30 pm

We launched the Farm Proper to make the most of an unused industrial lot and start a dialogue about re-imagining the way we grow food. After coverage from Fox5 and DesignBoom, a conversation did start indeed (see here and some lively comments on this post).

A response to our critics:

  1. We do not endorse stealing shopping carts.
  2. We encourage and celebrate creative and resourceful ways of growing food in urban environments (such as making use of broken shopping carts or wooden produce crates that have been thrown out)
  3. We question the logic of an industrialized food system, and our use of shopping carts as planters is a symbolic way for us to encourage this discussion

Thanks for stopping by. We invite you to join us at the Farm Proper anytime!

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