Artist Alley

Kenneth Capps

A Good Week at OMA

“Where Bold Meets Beauty”

Our Oceanside Museum of Art is the wellspring of cultural consciousness for we who live here and for visitors from far and wide. This wondrous place which was first designed by the famed architect Irving Gill has been enlarged and enhanced for a greater Community inclusion both in Oceanside and in the greater sphere of influence of OMA. We have our dynamic Director Daniel Foster to thank for this new cultural force and the programming of these energizing and engaging Events. 

As part of a capacity audience, this past Wednesday, listening to an informative lecture given by Ann Hoehn about two Women Artists Georgia O’Keeffe, and Camille Claudel, I marveled at the incredible distance we, as a Community, have traveled in the past 20 years. From a City with pizza parlors, barbershops, and girlie shows to a thriving and shinning place of new Hotels, Restaurants of great food and our beautiful Art Museum which continues to inspire the rest of our City to innovative and economically productive paths of growth. This vibe of the new echoes the energy of the young of our City.

Yesterday at the Consortium meeting, new pathways incorporating the arts into economic partnerships are becoming defined and are inspiring folks eager to be involved in a leadership role in the creation of the Art Walk in our Downtown area and beyond. When the Community becomes a force with passion is when startling and creative events happen. Such will be our Art Walk First Friday projected for August 2014.

It was pure serendipity that when I went downstairs that I happened to tag along with Julia Fister our Director of Education. She was introducing her docents to Kenneth Capps who was giving the docents an inside tour of his sculpture installation and his history in the arts. 

He is a tall man of quiet beauty in stature and in manner. His explanations were imparted to the docents with the sincerity of an artist who is in touch with his own history of truth. His sculpture is sublime in the purity of line and negative space. A simple curve becomes a crescent of longing for another way of seeing. The mass of pure steel is a form of thought brought into being in a solid and truthful way. Thus his history becomes a visual and visceral form of contemplation.

I had a chance to chat with Kenneth for sometime afterward. We did share our common delights in the wonders of the architecture of Irving Gill. His gave me his impressions of how Oceanside has changed in such a short time. We discussed and how this incredible evolution is thrusting our City on the North Coast into becoming a Cultural attraction for visitors from all over the world, and our many diverse communities here in San Diego County.  Kenneth did give me a word for half of our new identity. He said,

The Original Oceanside City Hall
designed by Irving Gill

“I have always considered Oceanside to be a Bold City, one with great potential for change in a new direction”.

I enthusiastically agree. Oceanside is:  “Where Bold Meets Beauty”.  

The Expansion of OMA with elements of Gill.