San Diego Weekend Arts Events: SDMA+, Swish Projects, ‘Taxilandia’ And ‘From Ashes’
Speaker 1: 00:00 Spoken word poetry and great music at the inauguration this week have put art front and center in our thoughts for a few days. Now, luckily we have some recommendations on how you can surround yourself with culture. This weekend in San Diego, there's work from a contemporary Icelandic composer, immersive visual art neighborhood, site-specific theatrical salons, and more journey me as KPBS arts editor and producer Julia Dickson Evans with all the details and welcomed Julia. Hi Maureen. Thanks for having me now, first up is tonight's pairing of music and art from San Diego museum of art and art of a lunch. Speaker 2: 00:41 Yeah, so this is one of their SDMA plus offerings where the museum pairs with local performing arts organizations. So dancers, musicians, poets, you name it, and generally lets them pick a work of art on the museum's walls or from the permanent collection. And then they pair it with their performance during the pandemic. They've been these short videos and this one was actually filmed in the museum. So I'm looking forward to feeling like I'm back inside, sort of. And for this one, the art is contemporary Spanish artists on a date, all VR whose photo realistic drawings are really incredible and unsettling kind of plays into that uncanny Valley reflex, but they're absolutely beautiful, fine artworks. She was recently featured in the ax line lecture this fall with the museum of contemporary arts, San Diego and SDMA, and then art of Ayllon at classical chamber performance group. They have picked work by contemporary Icelandic composer on a [inaudible] here, who is the composer in residence at the Iceland symphony, but she studied at UC San Diego. She's quite young and prolific and creates these beautiful pastoral pieces. The work they'll play spectra and it's for violin, Viola and cello. It's a lush and haunting piece and kind of breathes its way through tension and sparseness. And to me it feels pretty remarkable that it's just three instruments and I'm excited to see how it plays with the visual art Speaker 1: 02:34 [inaudible] lawn musicians, performing spectra with Anna or bolster tier part of the SDMA plus identities performance. It streams on YouTube tonight at seven. Let's talk a little bit about the LA Jolla playhouses new offerings in their digital without walls series. What can we find this weekend? Speaker 2: 02:54 Well, if I play us actually has a few new programs that are multi-phase with these plans for later phases of the project, kind of up in the air until we can gather again, one project that caught my eye is called taxa Landia. It's billed as a site-specific play within a tour of a city. So taxa Landia was developed by a Brooklyn based artist, Modesto, Flaco Jimenez, and it's a way to delve into themes of gentrification and neighborhood and what it means to really belong to a place. And the first phase of this one is a series of virtual salons with local artists and they'll show us around their neighborhood. This is a theater project, but it sort of feels like it's just as much about photography and storytelling to first step is actor and playwright, joy, Yvonne Jones, who will share the Carlsbad and Oceanside area with us on Saturday afternoon. And as an aside, Jones has new original work that will premiere in the old Globes powers, new voices festival as part of the San Diego black artists collective later that night. So you can make a whole day of it. Speaker 1: 03:59 And the LA Jolla Playhouse is taxa Landia salon with joy, Yvonne Jones live streams Saturday at 1:00 PM and the old Globes and evening with the San Diego black artists collective event takes place at 7:00 PM. Both are free to the public and in the visual world, a mal Janae opens a new show at switch projects. Tell us about that. Speaker 2: 04:23 Yeah. So ML Janae is an emerging San Diego artists and she's known for these paintings. She does on mirrors on the actual glass. It's kind of on the nose in terms of self-reflection that her work is hyper-focused on the human body zoomed in on like the corner of something or the length of a limb. But this next show called like, honey, it departs from her mirror farm. She had been gathering textiles for awhile to work with. And the exhibition is these suspended, sheer cloths with the bodies printed on, and it's really immersive. You'll walk through and you can see through these bodies. So swish projects is open for a private viewing appointments and they use an online reservation system to book a spot. And it's also right on El Cajon Boulevard. So if you're not quite ready to go inside and immerse yourself in it, you can take a peak from the sidewalk. Speaker 1: 05:14 Good idea. A Mel Janae is like honey, open Saturday at swish projects in North park and thumbprint gallery has a group exhibition on the walls. Now what can we find in from ashes? Speaker 2: 05:27 Yeah. So thumb print is a dependable spot to discover new artists because they're pretty regular group shows are always really interesting and well stacked and from ashes is their first of the year and the exhibitions focused on beginnings and restarts. I can relate to that. And this one features work from eight different artists. And just based on the closeups they've posted on social media, I'm pretty curious to see an oil Diptyque by Micah, Mariah, and there's some really lush work by Jessica Justice and then Palo Gaspers portraiture as well. They're up and for viewings on Saturday afternoons or by appointment and masks are required Speaker 1: 06:07 From ashes is on view at thumb print gallery in LA Jolla. Now through February 6th, for more arts events, you can check out the KPBS arts calendar or sign up for the weekly KPBS arts newsletter@kpbs.org slash arts. I've been speaking with KPBS arts editor and producer Julia Dixon Evans. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Speaker 2: 06:29 Thank you, Maureen. Have a good weekend.
