Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

4 Tons of Magic

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

The Jade Buddha for Universal PeaceSadly, the Jade Buddha for Universal Peace will only be with us for 2 more days.  But it’s pretty amazing he made it here as fast as he did.

The 18-ton gem-quality boulder from which he sprang was only discovered (in Northern Canada) 10 years ago, and it wasn’t until 2003 that a Buddhist lama, Zopa Rinpoche, divined that the boulder had to be made into a holy object and offered to the world. By giant Buddha-carving standards, the next 5 years saw a frenzy of activity: raising money to buy the jade; making multiple prototypes (modeled after the most famous Buddha in the world, which resides inside the Mahabodhi Stupa in Bodh Gaya, India),  and assembling a team of jade-carving masters in Thailand. The carving and polishing were completed in December of 2008. Named (by Zopa Rinpoche) the Jade Buddha for Universal Peace, the massive object began a world tour that took it first to Vietnam. There an estimated 3.5 million people paid their respects to it. It went on to spend 6 months in Australia and then arrived at the Phap Vuong Monastery in Escondido on Superbowl Sunday.

Monastery officials later estimated that more than 10,000 people turned out well before the big game began, and the monastery has been abuzz with round-the-clock activity ever since. When I arrived around noon yesterday, more than 100 cars filled the parking lot, and the flags lining the central pathway fluttered against a cobalt sky. A festive crowd moved throughout the grounds, milling around tables bearing jade chips for sale, and eating rice and stir-fried vegetables at long communal tables. The nexus of excitement, though, was the tent sheltering the statue, a riot of colorful fruit and flowers and fabrics.  Some of those who stood, barefoot, on the bamboo mats surrounding the pavilion snapped photos, while others prostrated themselves, reverent.  The Buddha’s face is painted with non-reflecting gold, a Tibetan and Nepalese tradition.  He looked happy.

He’ll move on to Florida next, followed by a dozen and a half more stops in the US and Canada. Then he’ll make his way through Europe, finally settling down to a permanent home in Australia.  If he works his magic the way Zopa Rinpoche predicted, he’ll bring inconceivable peace and happiness to the world. That can’t come a moment too soon.  

Posted in Art, San Diego Sights, Special Events | 1 Comment »

Slime City?

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

algae.jpgTerri Somers’s April 29 article in the San Diego Union-Tribune announcing the formation of the new San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology (SD-CAB) included some interesting nuggets about the impact the green stuff is already having on the local economy. Quoting a recent assessment by the San Diego Association of Governments, the article states that about 272 scientists and other workers here are already involved in researching the potential of algae for use as a biofuel, generating nearly $16.5 million in payroll and $33 million in economic activity.

Of course, that’s chump change compared to the predictions of the economic gusher that will shower the region should the scientists solve the essential problem of algae-to-fuel production. That problem is not how to do it, but rather how to do it at least 15 times more cheaply than is current possible. Instead of $30 a gallon, the going rate for algal-derived biofuel would have to drop to under $2. It’s such a knotty problem that after funding an algae program from 1978 to 1996, the U.S. Department of Energy concluded it was insoluble, according to a recent Voice of San Diego report on the local San Diego algae boosters.

The newly formed “center” sounds like it’s really just a lobbying group at the moment, one hoping to grab some of the $800 million in Department of Energy stimulus money, along with state and local investment. All the big local techno-guns are on board, including UCSD, the Scripps Research Institute, the Salk Institute, San Diego State University, and the algae start-ups already in operation. The biggest among those start-ups is Sapphire Energy, which last year received $100 million in venture capital and employs 80 people. General Atomics is another significant player. It expects to receive $40 million the Pentagon over the next three years, and currently has about 40 folks studying the slimy stuff.

Besides the technological challenges, making algae the green fuel of the future instead of ethanol will require some political muscle to counter the formidable corn-farming agribusiness interests. The new SD-CAB would seem to be a warm-up for that.

Posted in Art, Green San Diego, The San Diego economy | No Comments »

Conquering Heroes

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

el-cid-closeup.jpgVisitors to Balboa Park often comment on the striking statue of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa that stands roughly midway between the Spreckels Organ Pavilion and the San Diego Museum of Art. The only problem is — it’s not Balboa.

It might make sense for the park to contain a heroic, oversized representation of the first European expedition leader to lay eyes on the Pacific Ocean near the Isthmus of Panama. According to one researcher, San Diego’s city fathers wanted to commission such a tribute after Balboa’s name was picked to replace the prosaic “City Park” moniker when the site was being readied for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. (The expo celebrated the long-awaited opening of the Panama Canal.) But money for a public sculpture wasn’t available at the time.

More than a dozen years passed before a deep-pocketed benefactor stepped up with an offer. He was Archer M. Huntington, son of California railroad magnate Collis P. and cousin to Henry Edward Huntington (who gave Pasadena its magnificent library). Archer was a lover of Spanish art and architecture, and when he saw the plans for San Diego’s Spanish Renaissance-style Fine Arts Building, he offered to pony up the funds not only for a library within it but also for a statue of the legendary Spanish warrior El Cid, to be erected in front of the art museum. Archer’s wife Anna, a celebrated sculptress, had just created such a work, and the Huntingtons gave one replica of it to the city of Sevilla in Spain. A second went to the New York-based American Hispanic Society, which Archer had founded. The philanthropic couple sent a third replica to a 1929 Exhibition of American Sculpture in San Francisco, but once that ended, the six-ton statue was moved to its current location in Balboa Park.

It was installed on a 14-foot-tall Indiana limestone base designed by William Templeton Johnson, the Fine Arts Building’s architect, and pomp and speechifying marked the statue’s official debut on July 5, 1930. After delivering a florid tribute, the Spanish ambassador to the United States (sent by the King of Spain to honor the occasion), pulled a cord designed to unveil the art work. But the cloth got caught on El Cid’s brandished spear, and two young boys in the crowd had to be recruited to scramble up and free the tangle. el-cid-silhouette.jpg

Since then the statue has endured other minor occasional indignities. Teenagers have painted it, and when the Navy occupied the park during World War II, officers (oblivious to the protective value of the patina) ordered that its brass be polished to a shine.

The statue also faced the threat of some competition in the early 1990s, when arts patron Elizabeth North offered to commission a sculpture of Balboa and donate it for placement within the park.  But critics of the offer charged that Balboa was a brutal mass murderer unworthy of glorification. Others protested the scale of the proposed design. Squabbling over where to put any Balboa statue also helped to derail the Balboa project, but North ultimately wound up donating the money to fund the lovely fountain that now graces the plaza in front of the museum.

Posted in Art, Balboa Park, San Diego Sights | No Comments »

Tweet Spot

Monday, November 24th, 2008

sign.jpgI can’t imagine many folks making a special trip to visit Tweet Street, the city’s new “bird park” located on Date Street between 6th and 10th avenues downtown. But this tiny, not-quite-secret garden is almost certain to elicit smiles from residents of Cortez Hill who frequent it and any outsiders who happen to stumble upon it.

What’s there to smile about? First and foremost, there are the 10 birdhouses created by local artists and erected on poles along the path that now meanders through what not long ago was a blighted freeway overlook. Designed to accommodate the neighborhood house finches, western bluebirds, oak titmice, bewick’s wrens, and robins, the bird shelters range from the whimsical to the comedic. Birds aren’t the only fauna singled out for attention. Several “dog stations” are equipped with brightly painted fake fire hydrants as well as plastic poop-clean-up bags. And human toddlers can play on equipment that still looked shiny and new when I visited more than eight months after the park’s dedication in March of 2008.

The romance of the place would be perfect if the magic of inspired volunteerism had made it materialize, but the reality is more bureaucratic. The Centre City Development Corporation reportedly spent $1.7 million in redevelopment tax monies over the course of eight years to make it happen. Graphic artists Candice and Rafael Lopez, prime movers behind downtown’s Urban Art Trail, supplied a lot of the artistic direction and inspiration.

dogstation.jpgBalboa Park’s very first plantings and buildings (including a home for wayward women, an orphan’s home, and a pesticide storage facility) once occupied this area, before the interstate freeways slashed through and isolated this thin shard from the main body of the park. Today the cars and trucks and buses on the freeway still rule supreme. But on Tweet Street, the people are communing with a tiny piece of nature again, and there’s some satisfaction in that.

Posted in Art, Free and fun, Kidstuff, The Natural World | No Comments »

Larger than Life

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

venet-sculpture.jpgSculpture gardens are a natural fit for San Diego, considering our weather, and we’ve got several standouts. One is in Escondido’s Kit Carson Park, where Niki de Saint Phalle’s pieces playfully explore California’s roots (mythic, historic, and cultural). The San Diego Museum of Art’s Balboa Park sculpture garden, though small, includes important pieces by Moore,  Miró, Calder, and other 20th Century artists. And going on a treasure hunt to find all the pieces in the Stuart Collection at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) is the coolest way I know to experience the campus.

Now another world-class installation is gracing the San Diego landscape — at least for the next 12 months.  “Waterfront Steel: The Tidelands Sculpture Exhibition” consists of 13 monumental steel sculptures by  French-born, Manhattan-based Bernar Venet, considered by some to be one of the world’s most important living sculptors. Scott White, Venet’s West Coast dealer, organized the exhibition in collaboration with the Port of San Diego. Venet’s works have been exhibited in major cities in the US, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and South Africa.

For a complete listing of the works, see Robert L. Pincus’s insightful review in the Union-Tribune. The Scott White Contemporary Art gallery in Little Italy has also mounted an exhibition running now through January 3 that includes more sculptures, as well as pastel on paper drawings.

Posted in Art, Free and fun, San Diego Sights | No Comments »

Urban Treescape

Monday, August 25th, 2008

mike-at-the-kaleidoscope-425-wide.jpgHere’s our vote for Most Charming among the new crop of Urban Trees installed (August 3) along the waterfront downtown: Californiascope, the creation of artists Vicki Leon, Harmon Nelson, and Steve Riggs.  When we walked by the other day, it had passersby lined up to peer through the kaleidoscopic viewing port. Twisting various dials changes the patterns, and the piece is fun to look at, as well as through.

This is the fifth incarnation of the arboreal public art installation, sponsored by the Port of San Diego. Even if you quibble over whether the sculptures, each built around a pole set in a heavy planter box — constitutes a “tree,” you have to concede the collection spices up the already lively pleasures of strolling along the Embarcadero. They trees are planted along the half mile stretching from the Cruise Ship Terminal to north Hawthorn Street.

This time 122 proposals were submitted, of which 31 were chosen. The Port provides each artist with about $2,000 for materials, and at the end of the year-long installation, the works will be offered for sale.

The Port District has compiled a detailed map, for those who take their tree-sighting seriously.

Posted in Art, San Diego Sights | No Comments »