Missing for a year-and-a-half, a 500-pound statue of a beloved Dr. Seuss character, the Lorax, was found in a canyon off of Country Club Drive in La Jolla last week. The statue was taken in a reported prank from the estate of Audrey Geisel, whose late husband Theodor Seuss Geisel invented the character and hundreds more in his books for children.
The prank reminded the statue’s sculptor, Theodor Geisel’s stepdaughter Lark Grey Diamond-Cates, of another Seussian character. As she told U-T San Diego:
You can’t be stealing the Lorax. It’s a little Grinch-y to be doing that.
You’re reading the Culture Report, Voice of San Diego’s weekly roundup of culture and arts news from around San Diego County.
Local Roots
• CityBeat highlights tensions felt by a few representatives of the young contingent of local arts leaders toward the old guard in San Diego. Don’t miss the interesting conversation happening in the comments, too.
• A familiar face: UC San Diego visual arts grad Brian Zimmerman takes his signature offbeat approach to furniture and sculpture to a new 16-foot piece installed in Las Vegas. (Las Vegas Weekly)
• Students accepted to the graduate program in theater at the University of San Diego have a practical place to practice their skills: Onstage at The Old Globe. (U-T)
• Beloved San Diego icon James Hubbell’s globe-spanning “Pacific Rim Park” project just added a new park in Taiwan, its seventh park in a series in countries that border the Pacific Ocean. (ArtDaily.org)
• Noted illustrator and painter Kadir Nelson, who lives in San Diego, designed the artwork for the rapper Drake’s new album. (Globe and Mail)
• A foundation which salutes African-American jazz musicians named local saxophonist Daniel Jackson a living legend. It’s not the only recent attention for Jackson, a lot of which honors his work as a “legend” over his “lifetime.” The 76-year-old laughed about the implications of that kind of language in a chat with KPBS:
Yeah, you start worrying. … How old am I anyway and is this what it takes?
• Acclaimed photographer Helen Montgomery-Drysdale died in June at 83, leaving thousands of photographs and negatives in her home in Del Mar that her longtime partner and friends are now sorting. (U-T)
• Sculptor Matt Devine learned to weld when he worked as a 19-year-old on sets at the La Jolla Playhouse. ArtPulseTV featured Devine’s work in a recent episode.
Happening Here
• If you live in Escondido, Oceanside or Carlsbad and never had kids or are an empty-nester, check out the other criteria for an upcoming production at the La Jolla Playhouse — you might fit into the cast for a play called “100% San Diego,” in which the cast will mirror San Diego’s demographics.
• See photos of the Buddhist Temple of San Diego’s Bon Odori, a festival held to honor the spirits of one’s ancestors. (Los Angeles Japanese Daily News)
• A national sand-sculpting challenge happens this weekend in downtown San Diego at the B Street pier. (U-T)
• Ready to enter the market for stand-up paddleboards? CityBeat rounds up the places to buy one.
• Eater lists a dozen of the most widely anticipated restaurant openings coming to San Diego.
• A reporter steps inside open dancer auditions for this fall’s installment of “Trolley Dances” and finds “wild leaps and flips, screams and shouts” and a man peeling off his shirt “to reveal sculpted muscles.” (ArtPulse)
(Want to recommend this culture newsletter to someone? Share this sign-up link.)
Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit that depends on you, our readers. Please donateto keep the service strong. Click here to find out more about our supporters and how we operate independently.