What art do you see in the cracks in the sidewalk? We want to see your ideas for illustrating the city’s infrastructure issues. We’ve been collecting photographs from all over the city for our blog, The Stumblr, and now we’re hoping to showcase a range of artistic interpretations of them. There’s a financial prize, too! Just submit by July 8.
We’re not necessarily talking about sidewalk chalk, though that may be a good medium for your idea, as one reader suggests:
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/twocitygirl/status/342880494381309952″]
You’re reading the Culture Report, our weekly compilation of the region’s arts and culture news.
Happening Here
• Artists are planning to protest major cuts to the Unified Port of San Diego’s art budget at a meeting Tuesday afternoon. David White, chairman of the district’s Public Art Committee wrote a letter to rally support, asserting that the proposed cuts are “a clear indicator that the commissioners prefer that San Diego remain a provincial backwater, culturally.” (Art Produce)
• What if the city levied a tax to support arts and culture? The new head of the city’s Commission for Arts and Culture, Denise Montgomery, mentioned the idea and more in our Q&A. She takes her new post on Wednesday. What do you think? Meet us in The Plaza to talk about it.
• An event later this month at the New Children’s Museum and the park across the street will celebrate creativity. (U-T)
• The first leg of the Carlsbad Music Festival, an annual showcase of interesting, boundary-pushing music, is a free evening event coming up next week.
• Do drones get dizzy? Unmanned flying machines bearing video cameras were on campus at UC San Diego filming a documentary about Do Ho Suh’s disorienting artwork, “Fallen Star,” which is a house cantilevered off the edge of a campus building. (U-T)
• Mayor Bob Filner gave pop artist Peter Max a key to the city this weekend. (CBS 8)
• Students can find extra information and interactive content by aiming a tablet at a new exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art. It’s a Qualcomm initiative to bring “augmented reality” to Balboa Park, the U-T reports.
• A sculpture near the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego stopped Fox 5 in its tracks.
• One of the artists commissioned to make work for the new Central Library, Donald Lipski, was in town last week to install his project — a wall of the library’s auditorium encrusted with books. We sent photographer Sam Hodgson to see how the project was coming along. He named the piece “Hiding My Candy,” after one of the books on the wall, KPBS reported. The U-T’s James Chute was especially interested in a titillating title hidden among the rest.
Local Roots
• A local cupcake baker moonlights as a breaker. He heads to an international breakdance competition in Finland later this month. (U-T)
• The former chief of a failed local ensemble, Orchestra Nova, writes to the New York Times to contend that classical music is dying. But an industry booster quibbles with her conclusion in a letter back:
Beverly Lambert writes from the perspective of a chief executive of an orchestra that did indeed fail, the Orchestra Nova San Diego. But her orchestra failed in a city where another orchestra, the San Diego Symphony, thrives, setting records for ticket sales after more than a decade of balanced and growing budgets.
• Chunky Sanchez, a fixture in San Diego music for decades, was named one of nine fellows in a National Endowment for the Arts program to honor folk and cultural art. He goes to Washington, D.C., in the fall to receive the honor. “I’ve never been to Washington, D.C. I’ve only seen it on TV,” he tells the U-T.
• I especially enjoyed the sets of an old-timey newsroom at “His Girl Friday,” La Jolla Playhouse’s current production, when I saw the play with a group of new VOSD members last week. Learn more about the behind-the-scenes decisions that went into the production in KPBS’s peek.
• CityBeat talks to the artist behind a new mural in Golden Hill.
• How do you know when you’re really relaxed? That’s the focus of a UC San Diego researcher, Ramesh Rao. KPBS’s Angela Carone strapped on one of Rao’s devices and followed him to a yoga class to find out how he tracks his bliss.
(Want to recommend this culture newsletter to someone? Share this sign-up link.)
Or follow Behind the Scene on Facebook.
Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit that depends on you, our readers. Please donate to keep the service strong. Click here to find out more about our supporters and how we operate independently.