Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Art, a Third Place

Where ICE is not Welcome

There is a place in my City of Oceanside, which is my Third Place. A small bakery in East O'side that is the center of friendship, good food, art and comfort in this time of dissonance gestating in our World at large. 

As long as there has been art, there have been places like this, cafes, coffee houses, and pubs, places where gatherings of friends, strangers, and the proprietors who welcome all with warm cheer and a smile of engagement. For the past couple of years with the pandemic, I have forgone these simple pleasures of Community.

About eight years ago, I started a program for the local artists to display art in the Bakery. ARTWALLS has kept the promise of bringing artists and community together. Engaging in topics that bridge the right and left of both worlds, we consider the art world and our political world. 

Fine Art of the Museum world has always dictated of what is considered to be great art, and popular art has always been the art of the People. Toulouse Le trek's   art of consequence grew from these places of Community. Things Change. Art changes, political discourse changes, change is constant and sometimes it changes for the worse. We are experiencing the demolition of many elements of our Community. The National Endowment for the Arts, the proposed elimination of Public Press, food programs that feed our children, educational programs to be cut along with health and healing services that make our Community a Democracy.

Today, I, decided that the need for connection should be answered. As I waited for my food, the owner of the bakery's wife and children stopped by my outdoor table. Lively, the little boys taking me back to my own days of delightful laughter with little ones energizing my life force. Speaking with the Father, we considered the problems of ICE and restaurants. He said that he had not yet had any ICE visits, but at some of the homes east of his place, Ice was knocking on doors and causing fear.

Patrick Brown  ArtWalls O'side

No matter where I have lived, there always have been these small places of Community. From Eureka California, to Lido Isle in Newport Beach, to Oceanside CA, these places of coffee, art, and community have given me a human connection of warmth and belonging. The Third place for our Human species will be within the refuge of Community.

ICE can be kept at bay if we care...Enough 

                                                                     

Picasso's Guernica

Historically, Art has contained messages concerning, Political, Religious, Environmental, Race,War and dealing with many rights of the marginalized peoples of our Country and beyond. Picasso's Guernica was one such work. While this post is certainly not of Picasso's caliber, I have taken my plea of our current status concerning my political angst in a very simple and easy way to tell a story of what it means to me about America's Values...

Make America True Again Make America Friendly Again Make America Green Again Make America Legal Again Make America Smart Again Make America Readers Again Make America Responsible Again Make America Voters Again Make America Savers Again Make America Thinkers Again Make America Generous Again Make America Protectors Again Make America Honorable Again Make America Respectful Again  Make America Truthful Again...

I believe that more words are needed to be mentioned. The words that are important for leadership. Leaders for America should be of the highest, brightest and most qualified with backgrounds in education and experience pertaining to position.

Make America's Leaders Truthful Again, Make America's Leaders Honest Again Make America's Leaders Constitutional Again Make Americas Leaders Work Together Again Make America's Leaders Accountable Again, Make America's Leaders Civil Again Make America's Leaders Honorable Again Make America's Leaders Scientifically Qualified Again Make America's Leaders Have Term Limits

 

Last Night after the opening at the Techne Art Center, I dreamed the dream of wondrous art in Oceanside. The melding of the Artists from New York and San Diego county had the effect on this viewer of being in a New York gallery in Chelsea NY. Teleportation was experienced in East Oceanside CA on a Saturday night and I was in overdrive viewing art from new artists giving us works of rare beauty and intellectual excitement.

Ben Godward

Today, I am in a state of afterglow feeling that somehow, I took with me elements of art given with such great heart from the Teche Gallery, Art that stays in my minds eye and sings in my heart.

A long time in coming, Oceanside, a town that was called by the local newspaper as a vast cultural wasteland has transformed. We now have an Art Center with an important gallery and proposed residency studios for artists coming this year.

I spoke with two of the Artists of their art and how the making of their work imbued me with wonder and the correlation to my own background of sculpture and painting. The two processes often overlap in unconscious and inexplicable ways.

Ben Godward spoke with me the trials and tribulations of resin sculpture. The making of molds and the toxicity of the media its self. Pouring liquid resin is an effort which combines the artself with the dexterity of learned muscle memory. When successful, a thing of incomparable beauty will emerge. The concave structure of the giant transparent rainbow colors are mesmerizing and the work draws you in with a gentle vibration of color music. The shadows are infinite and give the work a feeling of a dream...

Mathew Bacher   is a painter's painter. His brush strokes of elegant fury give way to images of imaginations of which, “I have been here before”. I stood here for a long time, recognizing my own past experiences which of course are far different that his art works, but have an otherness basis coming from the silver strands of our collective efforts to do the stuff we call art. 

 One of the paintings give hint to his background in sculpture, the pouring of the liquid bronze. However, this painting gives the pour of angst of time, a white hot stream of imagination and strength desiring and overcoming new competition of mankind...

Mathew Bacher

Techne Art Center

T:   917-972-1752

Hours:

Thursday 1-6pm

Friday 1-6pm

Saturday 1-6pm

​

 1609 Ord Way

Oceanside, CA 92056

"You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength"

Marcus Aurelius

 Eureka CA...my place for being

Intermission

Last week, my journey from the madness of our daily life, created by our Nation's new course of leaving a two hundred and fifty years of Democracy and Constitutional rule, I found a few moments of reflective interaction, an intermission if you will, with the artists now on exhibition at the Oceanside Museum of Art.

The Starlings

Matt Devine's sculpture captures the inner wanderings of his emotional ties to his environment of Oregon's unspoiled nature and the beauty of just being. His work, an abstraction of the flora and fauna on his walks are translated into steel and aluminum. The overlay of layers of the long and beautiful strands of steel bring rhythmic dancing shadows enchanting to the viewer. As I moved around the sculptures, the enchantment caused a Mind Meld that caught me in an endless embrace. “The Starlings”, flying across the vast end of the gallery, soared with a wonder of flight and lightness of the birds and belied the heaviness of steel.

A path in Matt's world "Walk with Me"  

There was a video entitled, Walk with Me. I sat on the designated bench and watched with remembrance of when I lived in Eureka CA. Often, I walked paths in the Great Sequoia Forrest and felt a great solace of peace. The Music of Nature is our greatest treasure, and Matt has given us a look of his paths translated into permanent works of Art.

Mary Jhun

The other artist that was deeply relevant for me is Mary Jhun. Her paintings of the mind numbing experience of wearing a C-pap for sleep apnea. The paintings haunted me with memories of my husband wearing this machine to keep him breathing through the night. He hated it, and called it Damascus...

Mary Jhun however, painted this machine which took away her dreams in surreal elements of color and exquisite detail of her mind intertwined with the parts of the machine. I was stunned by the recognition of what my husband had tried to tell me about his experience with this machine, but his telling was told in terms of computerize...Her journey of living with this device became the vehicle of her finding dream painting. The images are profoundly beautiful and giving this viewer a greater understanding of how machines can not only be life saving but, a telling of stories to the public of how one person's experience brings the realization of a new and wondrous path to create art.

     

Eva Struble  Bird of Passage  oil on canvas 2024

IMPACT

It was in 1997, when the City's downtown became the home of the Oceanside Museum of Art. In the years which followed many changes came to a City which had been known as a military town featuring pizza parlors and girly shows. As the years passed, changes came as awareness that a new vibe of artistic aesthetics could enhance the economic benefits with a infusion of tourists who sought entertainment other than the beach scene. The impact of OMA was the catalyst which brought new development and opportunity to our City on the Hill. In the past 10 years the downtown has become a destination for international travelers and a regional gastronomical Jewell...

East O' has not been so fortunate until now. Sometimes one person can have the impact on an area or reputation of an area. We have had the great good fortune to have Charles Thomas's Techne Art Center located in the eastern part of our City. The impact of this gallery's concentric circles of influence has spread far and wide to the south, and to the far north.

The newest exhibition, “Primal Instincts” has offerings of artists from New York and our expanded regional areas of San Diego and Orange counties, and beyond. The open studio, in the gallery, of Charles Thomas beckons you to come in, and you realize the wondrous talents of his art, and his ability to bring together other artists and curate their works with a museum presence. As I gaze at his large canvasses, I am entranced with the movement and color of artistic brilliance...I can see his passion for the Sea in his works...

I was enchanted by another Artist, Hanna Pierce. Her ceramic sculptures are a statement of our world as women. I identified with so many of her works, and will go back again and again to see and ponder the ramifications of her world and mine. Small and so carefully constructed, I know the effort and mindful intensity of personal making for this hands on creative work. Time stops and you are one with the clay. Her story becomes the story of the work and by viewing, our story as women.

Hanna Pierce

The Paintings of Eva Struble are a world of movement and a dance of shapes and mindful images. You are stopped in your tracks and gaze with the feeling of remembrance. We, today are impacted by so many devolving dilemmas of our environments, changing the way we live and remembering what it was like in our lives and our personal histories. Changes which impact our lives for the good, and recently for not.

Eva Struble

 

Hope is the driver of artistic endeavor. We do what we do, and hope that our stories will help the world look upon what is good, and that we hope to make a difference in our human existence. This is the take away for this exhibition and the impact on your mind will reverberate again and again...in concentric circles...

Once again, Jack Henry's light filled sculptures are on view to make my heart longing to add to my own collection...

Jack Henry resin, steel, 14x4x6  

 Techne Update: 

Lucy Boyd-Willson

Techne

"a state involving true reason concerned with production". Aristotle

The Techne Art Center partnering with the Artists Alliance of the Oceanside Museum presents the Exhibition; Flora and Fauna, a celebration of environmental inspiration. Each artist has a unique and personal inspiration with and of techne. Charles Thomas has curated this offering of our regional San Diego artists with sensitivity and a gifted brilliance for understanding of the art works of each artist listed:

Hongzing Ye

Erick Perez, Jennifer Steffey, Oriana Poindexter, Sylvia Fernandez, Reginald Green, Stephen Harlow, Christine McKee, Annalise Neil, Nanette Newbry, Briana Miyoko Stanley, Rhonda Anderson, Lucy Boyd-Wilson, Micki Brown, Lisa Croner, Ellen Dieter, Gail Wagner, Hongxing Ye, Brenda Hope Zappitell, Robin Raznick, True Ryndes, Safa Salman, Scott Bruckner, Vicky DeLong, Megan DeRoma, and Susan Osborn. The show continues until October 12^th.

The Gallery becomes a surreal garden of delights. However, I will write about one artist and let the reader explore the images of the other artists. I was enchanted by the work of Lucy Boyd-Wilson.

An artist who as a child, Lucy was at home in her wooded environment and loved with the small creatures who hid in the brambles. The imagery on the wall screen, brings to the viewer her companionship with nature infused with musical sounds. As the images swirl and transform before your eyes, you emotionally walk into these wondrous places of plants, trees, and forms of her imagination. The room becomes a glowing world reflected from these evolving and compelling stories. The Lilly Pond story blended into the Root Rise story and so on.     I had the feeling of becoming nature and blending into a different place of existence. I lingered long in this room of other-worldlyness, and wondered the many what ifs, this kind of experience could have on human lives, if everyone could have this respite from the madding crowd of present day life...

Many kudos to Charles Thomas for bringing together the Artists Alliance of OMA, and for giving North County, the Techne Art Center, a place which shines with excellence and joy.

 

Simone Biles

Laser beams and Balance Beams

Artistry of Light and Simone Perfection

Last Tuesday I went to the new Frontwave Area and experienced Perfection. Simone Biles the greatest gymnast of all time performed on the Balance Beam with hot tempo-ed music and colored laser beams flashing and pulsing with rhythm. This was not the Olympics. The background sets, were overlay-ed with the images of what Simone was preforming on the beam, onto the giant screen in real time. Gold Over America Tour was here in Oceanside CA, our beautiful City by the Sea. 

What is Art? Most will immediately think of the visual arts or the performing Arts. For me, the art of human achievement in any endeavor to the highest level can be thought of as Art. The athletes who preform at the extreme levels can be seen better in slow motion and the lines of their bodies are beautiful and amazing. Who can forget Michael Jordan with his jump shots in slow motion. We see the lines of his grace and ability combined into an aerial dance. Simone does this we think routinely. Not so. Perfection comes only with unrelenting determination and physical programming of her mind melding with her mussel structure.

“To be an elite athlete is one level. To step up to Simone’s level involves an absolute keen understanding of her body and the input signals that come to it. Biles stands out from other gymnasts both in terms of how she senses her body in space and how she hones her muscle memory, as well as her having one of the most phenomenal bases of strength and conditioning that I’ve ever seen in an athlete”. Gina Pongetti, a former gymnast and physical therapist.

To see her in person, Simone this amazing artist of physical art is a once in a lifetime experience. The other athletes in the program of dance combined with their special events were dazzling and unforgettable. All together, Oceanside has a new place for the Arts, both the art of the visual, and the Art of the exceptional and wondrous sports world.

It is my hope that this new venue will be the home of not only sporting and concert events, but in the future will be the home of a Visual Arts Festival. The Grounds are constructed in layers of special set apart areas which would be conducive to setting up Artist displays. Oceanside Master Plan for the Arts.

 

Rachmaninoff, The Tsar

and the Steinway

There are times that I go astray from Oceanside to become enchanted by an extraordinary event. Such was the night of August 27, 2024. The Balboa Theater in San Diego presented a Musical Story told and preformed by Hershey Felder.

Walking into the great auditorium of the Balboa Theater, there is was. The Steinway centered on the stage waiting. Light was dim, and gloriously moody. The setting of a garden, dreamlike in shades of blues and greens. The House in the background was Rachmaninoff's in Beverly Hills California. The mood is set. It is one of my greatest loves, this music of Rachmaninoff.

Childhood memories came flooding back as I strove to master the Prelude in C♯ Minor. As a teenager, the music filled the missing places in my life as I imagine that composing this had a profound catharsis on Rachmaninoff when he was only 19 years old.

Background. This work was one of the first the 19 year old Rachmaninoff composed as a "Free Artist", after he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory on 29 May 1892. He performed this new work for the first time at one of the concerts of the Moscow Electrical Exhibition on 26 September 1892.*

Just before the Play began, a smokey fog enveloped the stage. Adding to the mystery of what was about to happen, the air of expectation was felt by us all. Then, Hershey Felder strode into this mysterious garden and his voice rang out. Still we were, breathless in our convocation of expectation. Seated on a garden bench, Rachmaninoff told his story. One of the heartbreak of His Russia, and the longing of his life's purpose to tell the story of the Bells of Russia.

Enter the dream, the Tsar, in the person of Jonathan Silverstri. Magnificent in his royal uniform, he confronted Rachmaninoff in his ranting about his music and the misfortunes of his music not being played in Russia. The interaction between the two men was fractious at times, but in the end, each was responsive to the other and the understanding of needs of each other.

The Steinway is the third party to this historical play. The sorrow deep tones of bass , the mid-range tones is the modulating armature, and the ethereal high strings singing the songs of life, The Steinway is the glue, that holds the entire proceedings together...for me, I was left without words for the rest of the play. Somehow, the music of Rachmaninoff starts in the mid-range of my physical self, and electrical sparks works their way up to my brain in recognition. I am his. My hands can no longer play his music, but my heart will play along side of any performer. The Steinway gives its song to us, and it is the crucible of the parts and the many facets of the Play...

A Wondrous night, full or the greatest of music, a glorious setting for performance, giving us a historical imagining, and the compounded sense of a communal blending of people coming together for an event which had the effect of, out of many we were one, for one magical moment in time...

* Wiki

 

Ukraine comes to Oceanside

Art becomes Peace

Angelina Usanova

Angelina Usanova is Miss Eco International 2024. Yesterday, a beautiful messenger radiating Peace, from Ukraine, came to Oceanside to learn what is happening at our Park of El Corazon. A committee is in the planning stage of creating a small sensory art garden. We shared our goal of honoring the Luiseno Indian tribe which is native to our region. A Gathering of the Elders. A Peaceful place to contemplate nature and the heritage of our North County.

Peace art garden artist vision

A tall lovely woman, she spoke about her becoming Miss Eco International. Her goals are to bring to all of humanity Peace, and love for our Planet's gifts to us. Treasures of our environment are everywhere for us to enjoy or destroy. “We are the keepers of these many wonders of the Planet Earth”.

As a child, her parents enrolled Angelina in Peace School No. 211, associated with UNESCO. ‘European Schools for “The Living Planet’ project in 2012, when she was 15 years old. Organized by the World Wildlife Fund and the Erste Foundation, this initiative aimed to inspire youth to advocate for nature and develop solutions to environmental issues. As a leader of the Ukrainian team for this project, Angelina represented her country in Romania alongside other European school teams. Their project, focused on cleaning the Dnipro River, earned victory for Ukraine”.

Angelina is a musican and composer, writer of books, and creator of muical videos. You can read her life story at this url site.

As we walked outside to the designated area for the Art and Peace sculpture garden, she spoke of her Ukraine and her people who are so under siege with ongoing war. She spoke about going back and helping to rebuild her country and fill it with love and peace. My takeaway was two statements she said, “Peace starts with the Heart”and “Peace should be made to be profitable”.

The Eco movement is all about the green industries which are now profitable and providing good jobs. I am hopeful that this beautiful woman can sow the seeds of Peace and that people in other lands which she visits will in turn nurture these gardens of peace and someday our world will know we can live more productively with Mother Earth as our world goal.

Angelina with  Mayor Esther C.Sanchez and City Manager, Jonathan Borrego

Angelina's trip is Sponsored by the UNESCO  Center for Peace and Muramid/Art Miles a UNESCO project for Peace.

 

MARE AMICUS

SEA FRIEND

"Pep Talk"   Artist and Daughter

Light, Joy, and Sea Music. 

These words are my impressions of the Art Works of  Micaiah Hardison.                                

For the past two years my visits to the  Harbor in Oceanside have been limited and I have missed the gentle sea songs of the water softly slapping the sides of the anchored boats, the harbor seals greeting visitors both of the sea and our human selves.

The casualness of being and time ignored. Something magical happens when the redness of the sun begins to sink softly with the wispy fog softening the world. This world is so different from the crashing waves of our blue Pacific surf with it's hypnotic wave songs of horizons.

It is here at the Oceanside Harbor that  Micaiah Hardison makes his magic. The love for the Sea is there with each brush stroke. Energy, catching the light, details so pure that you are captive with the wish of going into the work. The small studies are a miracle of detail, energy and color. The moment of the call of the Now,the dashing brush stroks embedded with the love of the sea. These initial works are little gems of sea songs. The larger finished paintings  give the viewer the sense of wanting to stop for a while to sit and be a part of this world , that of Micaiah, and to thank him for sharing The gift of His Sea Friend...

The Gallery is located at the Oceanside Harbor 1850 Harbor Drive N. Oceanside CA 92054. 760.707.8263. email: artist@micaiah.net.   ..

To find an artist who is in sync with the Sea as I need to be, is so rare. He states that the Sea is his refuge, and I have had that wondrous gift from the Sea for a lifetime of more than 80 years...

I must go down to the seas again”... for some of us, the Sea captures us deep within our soul, and we are forever bound by its songs...

 

ArtQuake

AfterShock

Is it possible that a splendid Industrial Park in East Oceanside could be a new hive for working Artists? Space for studios is available for local artists. 

This past weekend the TECHNE GalleryTECHNEGallery had an open session with three artists sharing their process of Art Making. This welcome of artist interchange of ideas, struggles and evolution were energizing to the many artists in attendance. Brands of paint, canvas constructions, masking for form and space were all on the program of sharing. 

AI was one of the topics which concern all of us who pride ourselves for being the hand making our stuff. Appropriating the algorithms of the tech world is for me, selling out my truth of being in creating Art. There is solace that being a sculptor, it would be very hard for AI to “learn” on my work as the different sides are not symmetric...Paintings on the web are fair game for AI learning. Artists of all genres are fighting the problems of copyright and AI, but it seems that the war is a losing one.

The Three Artists who shared their work process with us were: Jon Elliot, Dave Kinsey, and Allison Renshaw.

Allison Renshaw

Allison Renshaw is a woman who is a force of nature in creating exuberant collage art works . She sees the possibilities in every direction she physically inhabits. A surfer, she is a fearless contender of nature, creating her own waves on canvas. The works draw you in close for finding and exploring the wonders of minutia, and then standing back to gaze on a complex large work incorporating her own painting which binds it all together in an intellectual landscape of color and movement. She creates collage canvases which becomes Masterworks of this genre. Living on the North Coast, the energy of the Sea is present in her work.

Dave Kinsey

Dave Kinsey creates three dimensions on a flat surface. The shapes and textures of the ground and projected sculpted wood cuts are masterful in that repeats of the design/art give a certain rhythm to the work. The works exhibited in this show are painted black excepted for one which had an under painting of red. The effect was a richer patina which had a glowing effect for the viewer. One of the problems with the black format is that it very hard to photograph. I have enhanced the image with Photoshop and you will find a wondrous enchantment of what ifs in the wandering of the eye. The forms are a story waiting for the viewer to discover.

Jon Elliot

Jon Elliot gives his works space and form on canvas. The background of the forms is soft and otherworldly. The forms are sculptural and have a musical quality which binds the composition together. The viewer is arrested and has a recognition of a time unknown. The color pallet of his works are cohesive and uplifting in a way that you want to go “there” in these art works. He is comfortable with these hues of blues, greens, violets, white and black, giving the paintings a timeless quality. He flirts with the idea of oranges and warm colors, but He said that it seems not to be his truth at this time. This resonated with me as I have always used the primaries in my work, and now trying to use the cool colors is having a frustration of missing the energy of the warm hues. The impact of Jon's work on the viewer is one of wanting to sit, watch, and wonder...

The Day was bright and sunny, the art space engaging and wonderfully full of light. The Company was rewarding and friendships were made. And, a new sculpture from this exhibition will find a place in my home...

Jack Henry 
sculpture of light and dark 
my happy aftershock...RJ