San Diego weekend arts events: An 'urban art takeover,' Kate Bush theatrics and 'Interlaced'

Baby Bushka's Final Show

Music, Theater | San Diego's "Kate Bush experience of your dreams," aka Baby Bushka, performs their final show in San Diego. Don't call it a cover band — this is a theatrical production, with multi-part harmonies, a narrative arc, costumes and sets, delivered beautifully by a group of eight talented women musicians from San Diego.

Arts & Culture

A 7-year Kate Bush experiment comes to a close

Julia Dixon Evans

Listen • 17:00

"A lot of Kate's music are stories and narratives — especially her early work. And she sort of puts herself in the shoes of different human experiences. So you have songs coming from the perspective of a soldier or a ghost or a housewife or father or mother," said founder and bandleader Natasha Kozaily. "So as we started diving into the music, and because she's so theatrical and her music videos are like that and even her stage performance is — it just made sense that you couldn't just go on stage and play the music. It had to be visual. It had to have that dance in it."

The band has reached their final curtain call, and will embark upon one more tour after this last show in San Diego.

"Every show we've done feels like it could be the last. Because it's such a miracle to put the show together. Eight women. It's a huge two-act musical. It's expensive. Going on tour. And we all have other jobs and other projects that we're doing. So this is just a piece of our lives — I mean, a big important piece, but that's it," Kozaily said. "It's one thing to sort of just deny that and continue and then one day wake up and be like, oh that was the last show, I guess. I wish I had known."

Read more from my interview with Kozaily in our KPBS Fall Arts Guide here.

Courtesy of Animal Cracker Conspiracy

ENVZN24 Urban Art Takeover

Dance, Theater, Visual art, Poetry, Storytelling, Fashion, Music, Food | One hundred artists from close to 20 arts organizations will perform and participate in this year's ENVZN Urban Art Takeover, which presents immersive art experiences and presentations of dance, theater, music, visual art, poetry, storytelling, film, fashion, puppetry, circus and more — all on one day.

Jim Carmody

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The Rosin Box Project

Some participating organizations and artists are: The Rosin Box Project, Sisu Dance Company, Voices of Our City Choir, Fern Street Circus, Animal Cracker Conspiracy, Outside the Lens, San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery, John Mirelles, Xoque, Poets Underground, So Say We All, Fashion Week San Diego, Malashock Dance Company, Drumatix and more.

Courtesy of the artist

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The Hill Street Country Club

Christian Garcia Olivo: 'Interlaced'

Visual art | I love the way San Diego-based artist Christian Garcia-Olivo uses "paint skins" as material in his sculptures, and he has a new exhibit at Liberty Station's Gallery 201 curated by The Hill Street Country Club and Dinah Poellnitz. Poellnitz is currently the inaugural curator-in-residence at Arts District Liberty Station.

In this exhibition, "interlace" indicates the complex and delicate interaction and cause-and-effect that exists between identity and culture — and a disruption of the boundaries surrounding identity. In one work, Garcia-Olivo has woven what appears to be drizzled and dried strands of paint, forming a striking acrylic textile. .

Courtesy of CCAE Theatricals

'Jersey Boys'

Theater, Music | CCAE Theatricals will present the touring production of "Jersey Boys." It's been 20 years since this Grammy- and Tony-winning musical got its start at the La Jolla Playhouse. The show, a jukebox-style musical, revolves around the story and music of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, with plenty of their famous tunes peppering the action, like "Sherry," "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and "Big Girls Don't Cry." The theater recently extended the run through early October.

Philipp Scholz Ritterman

Roman de Salvo: 'O Petravia'

Former local sculptor and installation artist Roman de Salvo will hold a solo exhibition at Two Rooms gallery in La Jolla. Part of the exhibit is a salvaged 2019 mural "McCairn," which was installed on a La Jolla billboard as part of the Murals of La Jolla program — when this mural was recently taken down, de Salvo said it spurred a reflection on and a deeper exploration of his process.

Arts & Culture

5 art exhibits to see in San Diego this fall

Julia Dixon Evans

The show will feature photography from a shoot on the actual Bird Rock formation off the coast of La Jolla; several ceramic sculptures, and what de Salvo referred to as "60 of the smallest sculptures of my career" — tiny abstract birds made from beach pebbles.

De Salvo's work is marked by curiosity toward nature and human impact, and his astonishing ability to capture and shape artworks that are as much a sculpture as they are something else, whether it's a cairn, a billboard or a giant drinking fountain. There's a thoughtfulness, a drive for unique preservation and a deep sense of wonder in his art.

Sam Zauscher

Haydn Voyages: Music at the Maritime

Music, Classical | Local chamber ensemble The Hausmann Quartet is back on deck (pun intended) at the Maritime Museum's Berkeley ship for their Haydn Voyages concert series. They will continue to chip away at Haydn's works, mixed with his colleagues (this concert features Johannes Brahms) and a contemporary composer. This performance will open with Reena Esmail's 2023 composition "This Is It."

The piece is an enchanting set of short movements inspired by a book on meditation by John Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are." In the program notes, Esmail writes, "He speaks of how we are always encouraged to look forward, to think into the future — but what if this is it? What if we sat with each moment, savoring it as if it was that special, unique, pinnacle moment?"

Ron Kerner

'Blue Gold: The Art and Science of Indigo'

Visual art | This exhibit at the Mingei is part of the Getty's PST: ART initiative. This exhibit centers on the striking deep-blue dye created by the indigo plant, bringing together the botany, chemistry, history, labor and craft of its use with the artforms that use the plant and dye. Co-curators Emily Hanna and Guusje Sanders worked with guest co-curator Barbara Hanson Forsyth on the exhibit, which includes more than 180 works of art involving indigo, including several commissions from contemporary artists like Christina Kim and Porfirio Gutiérrez.

Best Practice: 'INSITE_LAB'

Visual art | Longstanding regional art collective INSITE will unveil a new installation about their newest initiative, the INSITE Lab, which is intended to be a "roving platform" on both sides of the border for artists to exchange ideas, research, discourse and processes and to allow that exchange in settings beyond academia. In this installation at Best Practice (inside Bread and Salt), artists Jair Arias, Roxana Alvarado, MR Barnadas, Héctor Bázaca, Gosia Herc, Aleya Lanteigne, Adrián Pereda Vidal, Talia Pérez-Gilbert and Josh Tonies will show works.

While you're at the opening reception this Saturday, check in on Quint ONE's newly installed 1981 work by Kim MacConnel, "Kudos," as well as Hugo Crosthwaite's phenomenal exhibit, "Tijuacolor" in the main gallery.

More arts and culture weekend events:

San Diego's best arts and culture this fall

This fall, discover our picks for the best art and culture in San Diego, including visual art, theater, dance, music and literature — and even some picks for kids.

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