Arts Report: Painstaking Picture-Hanging

Think about the bent nails, busted plaster and holey walls of do-it-yourself picture-hanging endeavors. (I know I’m not alone here.)

Now imagine it’s your job to hang precious artworks in a prestigious museum, where it’s presumably less acceptable to just move the picture over a bit to cover that hole you just made.

This is the daunting task of the buzzing workers at the San Diego Museum of Art, readying the museum for a forthcoming exhibit of two British painters. Our Guide from the Inside blogger, Dani Dodge, has been chronicling this process, the kind of behind-the-scenes hum that happens at most of the county’s museums several times a year.

I’ve always wanted to know how museums get those exhibit introductions and artist statements on the wall — the ones where the text is not printed on paper but rather each letter is a sticker stuck directly to the painted wall. Turns out part of that process is called “weeding the vinyl,” and in the case of this exhibit, production assistant Naomi Salmon was on weeding duty last time Dodge checked in.

Thanks for reading the Arts Report, where we round up the week’s news and issues driving the San Diego arts community, as published in our Behind the Scene blog and elsewhere.

Made by Locals:

• When Candye Kane was nine years old, her mother taught her to shoplift. The San Diego veteran blues vixen’s autobiographical musical “The Toughest Girl Alive” opened Saturday, chronicling the radical upbringing and tumultuous adult life of the singer/songwriter. The musical, which is directed and adapted by San Diego Ballet co-director Javier Velasco from Candye’s memoirs, features 25 original songs and Kane’s own touring band. (U-T)

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• Meet the women behind Moxie Theatre, where that play is being presented. (La Jolla Light)

• A local artist is compiling a rejection show for herself and others who don’t get into the Mission Federal ArtWalk. (CityBeat)

• The local theater crowd turned out in droves to see who won recognition by several of the county’s theater critics. Hooting and hollering ensued. One guy wore a pink coat.

• Arthur Ollman, director of San Diego State University’s school of art, design and art history, met one of his heroes, photographer Ingrid Cunningham, in the 1970s using the simplest of social networking tools: the phone book. “To his surprise, the veteran photographer answered. And to his delight, after professing his admiration for her work, she invited him over to her house,” writes the U-T’s James Chute. Some of Cunningham’s photos are now on display in Oceanside. (U-T)

• I went on my own house call a couple of weeks ago, visiting local artist Mike Maxwell’s home in East County. We recorded our first-ever conversation in a venue other than Twitter. And we certainly took advantage of having more room than 140 characters; listen to the podcast if you’ve got an extra hour. (My first conversations with Maxwell revolved around this comment thread about how art is covered by journalists and bloggers in San Diego.)

• A look inside the “past, present and possible future” of computer graphics, video and other art made with new media, via the bright minds working in and around UCSD’s California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, or Calit2. (CityBeat)

• A local choreographer and founder of the Champion Ballroom Academy, Mary Murphy, returns as a judge on “So You Think You Can Dance.” (Broadway World)

In other news:

• Chula Vista’s had to downsize its graffiti-removal program. (KPBS)

• Infamous basketball star Ron Artest was invoked in this review of pianist Lang Lang’s “spectacular” performance last weekend with the San Diego Symphony. (U-T)

• Gotham City is yours for the taking. San Diego’s own Sony Online Entertainment just released its newest brainchild, which was originally slated for release in 2009, “DC Universe Online,” an innovative online combat game that allows thousands of users to interact with each other in real time. The $50 million project is aimed to be the first real competitor with Activision Blizzard Inc.’s popular World of Warcraft. The game is also groundbreaking in its artistic detail, which was overseen for five years by La Jolla’s Jim Lee, a Comic-Con star. (L.A. Times)

• Experimental music-maker Joe Mariglio, getting his Ph.D. from UCSD, once hooked up electrodes to a pound of raw hamburger and created an “overpoweringly loud drone” sound as the meat cooked. He’s trying out some new work at a couple of different local venues. (Reader)

And no, it’s not for dinner.

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Amy Smith contributed to this Arts Report.

Please contact Kelly Bennett directly at kelly.bennett@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.325.0531 and follow her on Twitter: @kellyrbennett.