San Diego weekend arts events: 'For Dear Life,' Samara Joy and Design Week

Top picks | Live music picks | More art and culture weekend events

Top picks

'For Dear Life: Art, Medicine and Disability'

Visual art | This first-of-its-kind survey of American art that deals with disability, illness and impairment spans the 1960s through the onset of the COVID-19. The exhibit includes works by Park McArthur, Simone Leigh, Yvonne Rainer (including performance art videos), Howardena Pindell, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Niki de Saint Phalle and dozens more. It's not only a striking collection of significant works of art — it's also an approachable look at the historical and sociological trajectory of disability in America.

To learn more, check out my feature on curator Jill Dawsey here:

Arts & Culture

Art, disability and learning to hold on

Julia Dixon Evans

Listen • 19:58

The exhibit opening coincides with MCASD's free third Thursday, and will be open until 8 p.m. with free admission all day — and at 5 p.m. there's a public tour and a dual film screening.

Courtesy of the artist

Samara Joy

Music, Jazz | Three-time Grammy winner Samara Joy recently announced a forthcoming album, "Portrait," and dropped the first single, an enchanting, rhythmic arrangement of "You Stepped Out of A Dream."

The young singer will bring her mesmerizing talent (and TikTok fame) to town to lead up to the new release. Her performances and recordings feature not just reimagined jazz standards, but a particular focus on off-the-beaten-path numbers, or crafting new lyrics for instrumental pieces.

In this excellent interview on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, you can hear Joy discussing everything from her musical influences like Sarah Vaughan to her grandparents' gospel choir — plus a handful of performances.

World Design Experience: San Diego Design Week

Design, Fashion, Music, Food | While San Diego's annual fall Design Week is always a significant gathering of all things design, this year it's a global event. One of the anchor points of our binational region's World Design Capital designation, the week of programming is intended to reflect and celebrate the importance of design in ideas of belonging — particularly in the border region.

Courtesy of the artist

Design Week features close to 100 programs, panels, tours, exhibitions, performances, culinary events, workshops, film screenings and lectures, spotlighting architecture, visual art and design, gaming, food and drink, animation, industrial design, landscape design, user experience and interface design — to name a few. Events are held across San Diego and Tijuana.

Don't miss the Port of Entry Live event with our KPBS Port of Entry crew and artist and graphic novelist Charles Glaubitz and actor and filmmaker Giancarlo Ruiz. The discussion, which will take place here in our newly renovated KPBS studios, is from 2-5:30 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 22, and costs $10.

Another event on my radar is the Klaman Africa Vibe Festival, themed around the origins of textile art in Africa, with a fashion show, arts and crafts for kids, plus an evening event with music from the Gene Perry Afro Salsa Jazz Duo and the Afro Rumba Caribbean Jazz Quintet. It takes place Sept. 21 at UC San Diego Park & Market. $10-$60.

Courtesy of The Hill Street Country Club

Vanessa Rishel: 'Safe Haven, Dark Corners'

Visual art | Vanessa Rishel's solo exhibit opens this weekend at The Hill Street Country Club in Oceanside. Rishel's style is really captivating: hitting somewhere between fine art's pleasant softness and the quirk and disruption of the anime characters and cherub statues and trinkets she uses has her inspiration — and the grayscale colors.

Courtesy of Project [BLANK].

Salty Series: 'Wave + Energy'

Music, Visual art | This month's installment of Project [BLANK]'s experimental performance takeover of Bread and Salt features sound artists and musicians paired with projected video and visual art, or artists creating both sound and visuals. The idea is to create an immersive, sensory experience but also to reframe what each piece — or art form — might mean on its own. Performers and artists include Joe Cantrell, Armando de la Torre, Matty Terrones, Victor Castañeda, Michell Lou and Michael Trigillio.

'Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors'

Theater | Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen's spin (with many artistic liberties) on Bram Stoker's "Dracula" comes to spine-tingling life on the Old Globe's stage this weekend, following the adventures of Jean Van Helsing and Count Dracula with plenty of comedy. This is the creative team that has brought us "Ebenezer Scrooge's BIG San Diego Christmas Show" as well as "Crime and Punishment, A Comedy."

Courtesy of the artist

Nathalie Miebach: 'Restless Waters' and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: 'Remote Pulse'

Visual art | Nathalie Miebach's stunning woven assemblage-style installation, "Restless Waters" opens at Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego's Central location this weekend. Also opening is Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's "Remote Pulse," which is a collaboration with Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT), where visitors in both locations can interact — transcending space and borders — using pulse-sensing stations.

The exhibitions will be the centerpiece of their monthly C You Saturday celebration, with food, music, artmaking and artist talks. From 4-6 p.m., families can make their own Miebach-inspired works of art. Miebach will be on-hand to tour and answer questions at 5 p.m., and DJ Ohmega Watts will provide music.

Adams Avenue Street Fair

Music | Seventy-five musical acts descend upon Normal Heights this weekend for the free, two-day Adams Avenue Street Fair. There'll be seven stages peppered along Adams Ave., but also hundreds of vendors and carnival-type rides, food and beer gardens.

You can find a list of all the bands and set times divided by stage here.

My recommendations: Singer-songwriter Shelbi Bennett (The Havnauts, The Midnight Pine) is doing a solo set with a full band at 7:15 p.m. on Saturday at the Lestat's Indie Stage. And on Sunday, don't miss local pop and R&B star Kahlil Nash at 2:30, also on the Lestat's Indie Stage.

Courtesy of Harrison Family Trust

'Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work'

Visual art | In addition to MCASD's "For Dear Life," another exhibition project from the Getty's PST: ART initiative will open up this weekend — in multiple locations throughout the county. Ecological, conceptual artists Helen and Newton Harrison are the subjects of this multi-site exhibit, spotlighting 20 projects spanning five decades beginning in the 1960s.

Opening receptions are staggered across three sites this weekend. At La Jolla Historical Society, their portion of the exhibit opens with a reception from 5-7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 19. At California Center for the Arts, Escondido, the reception for their exhibition is from 6-8 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 20 (coinciding with their free Música en la Plaza event). Finally, from 12-2 p.m. on Saturday, the exhibit at the San Diego Central Library art gallery will open.

More arts and culture events this weekend