|
Take a look out your window. What do you see? Hmmm, oh yeah, the sun IS OUT, it’s bakin’! Clear skies, dreamy,
stucco pastel walls, palm trees, outdoor malls and strip malls. Flocking seagulls, crashing waves and all of the beautiful
people. Oh wait, sloooow down man, I know dude, I’m getting somewhere, I have a point!
Amidst our airbrushed desert-village-wasteland, home of the brave and the finely tuned universities exists, small broken cells
of artists and art-like places. Sanctuary to these creative, cultural desperadoes lies in the geriatric guilds, bureaucratically
impaired institutions, hoarding non-profits, desperately utilitarian galleries and the decorated café…All of which are
struggling to stay alive. There are very few contemporary galleries or non-profits in San Diego. Funding for the arts is
limited and patronage is exclusive. The galleries are reserved for the local MASTERS and the forever-emerging artist’s
from-other-cities. Venues for not so new genres such as installation, video, and performance art is almost non-existent.
Only at the University of San Diego (UCSD), the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in downtown San Diego and La Jolla, and
the Escondido Center for the Arts can you consistently find this type of work.
UCSD and MOCA both fail miserably with public/community relations. They appear to be more concerned with corporate relations
and elitist/bourgeois membership. How often are you invited to or are aware of their events? It takes a holiday parade and
the one free admission Sunday of the month to lure in public viewers. I used to bartend special events for some of MOCA’s
high society CLIENTELE. You know! The aristocrats, few in numbers but MAKE THINGS POSSIBLE!
The Escondido Center for the Arts has apparently fired most of its curative staff and is most likely going down. In the realm
of the traditional, dance and theatre is fluid and in abundance. Public Art in San Diego is…well, there’s Chicano
Park, bright/tacky painted power boxes and mosaics, paintings and sculptures decorating certain public buildings. Much of
the work I’ve seen is cliché, plastic, and overly sentimental. I blame the environment; the artists are just trying
to compliment the city and the issues that surround them. Maybe the artists are under paid, under funded, or they are making
a commentary on conservative San Diego.
It would seem that the safe place for contemporary art & artists is in the Universities. Here, it seems, art serves to function
as the means to an end.
|
