'Standing' in the Stuart Collection: Kiki Smith's Statue at UCSD

Kiki Smith’s fascination with the body and skin as both protective yet fragile began in the 1970’s. Her emphasis on the human body and its functions defied traditional distinctions between public and private subject matter. When she began her Stuart Collection project, her ideas evolved in relation to the site between the Medical Teaching Facility and the Basic Sciences Building on the UCSD campus in La Jolla.

Smith decided to put a body on top of a classic pedestal to show the importance of the human body but later evolved into putting a body on a cast of a tree trunk. A dead eucalyptus tree was located on campus and removed to be cast in concrete. The many insect paths under the bark of the tree immediately interested Smith and were included on the final product.

The figure for "The Standing" was cast from a live model and calls forth thoughts of human strength and fatality, and both the power and limits of medicine. The figure produces a feeling of serenity. The calming sound of the water and hummingbirds that drink out of the hands creates a quiet intimacy. The arms reach downward towards the earth in a Madonna-like pose. Water flows from her hands into the rocks that line the bottom of the tree trunk. The starfish-like pins on her chest, which make up the astrological sign for Virgo plays on the word virgin, to emphasize the Madonna-like pose. The tree trunk itself, filled with the paths of insects, which could have caused its demise, creates an image of life and death.

After seeing "The Standing," stop by Thumbprint Gallery, on Kline Street in La Jolla, to learn more about contemporary and urban art!

Source: http://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/artists/smith-k.shtml

The Dean of San Diego Painters Leaves Impact on La Jolla

Rocky Arroyo, Charles Fries

All artists need some kind of mentor or instructor. Some San Diego artists were lucky enough to have the tutelage of painter Charles Arthur Fries in the 1890s. Charles Fries's involvement in the San Diego and La Jolla art community was enormous. So much so that he was given the nickname the “Dean of San Diego Painters.”

Charles Arthur Fries was born in Hillsboro, Ohio in 1854. He studied art under Charles T. Webber at the McMicken School of Design. Fries worked at the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette as a staff photographer and illustrator before heading off to Paris and London to witness the impressionist movement. After his return to the United States, Fries began making lithographs for various publishing magazines in Cincinnati.

In 1896 Fries moved his family to San Diego. They lived for several months at the San Juan Capistrano Mission. During that time, Fries’s daughter fell ill, inspiring his moving painting: Too Late. The painting portrays a mourning mother holding her deceased daughter as the doctor stands in the doorway. The painting became a poster ad in countless pharmacies nationwide. Fries's daughter recovered.

Fries became increasingly involved in the artistic community in San Diego and La Jolla. He became a member of the San Diego Art Guild, the Art Association in Laguna Beach, the California Art Club, and the San Diego Contemporary Artists. Charles helped found the La Jolla Art Association and the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego. He taught and painted in Yosemite, Death Valley, Baja California, and San Diego.

Thanks to the hard work of artists like Charles Arthur Fries, the La Jolla artistic community was given a strong foundation. Today the community of La Jolla continues to encourage the creativity and innovation of local artists. To see what is fresh in the LaJolla art world stop by Thumbprint Gallery on Kline Street. The gallery exhibits works from local artists in the genre of urban and lowbrow art.

Source: http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/v54-4/pdf/v54-4Stern.pdf

http://www.sandiegohistory.org/online_resources/fries.html

La Jolla Flora Part of Larger Botanical Collection

Matilija Poppies -Albert Valentien

All art is interconnected. The study and practice of sculpture can improve ones ability to paint, while painting can improve ones photography. It is not unusual for an artist to employ their talent over a spectrum of media. Albert R. Valentien was an established pottery painter before he found a passion for painting flora in La Jolla. His most extensive collection of paintings is in the San Diego Natural History Museum.

Valentien was born in Cincinnati, in 1862, and began his art education at School of Design at the University of Cincinnati. His favorite study was pottery decoration and he became so proficient that by 1881 he was hired as the chief decorator at Rookwood Pottery. He remained the chief decorator for over twenty years. Albert and his wife, Anne, went to Paris for a while so Anne could study sculpture from Rodin. Albert submitted some of his work to the Universal Exposition of 1900 and won the Gold Medal for his pottery decoration.

In the spring of 1903, the Valentiens traveled to San Diego to visit family. They fell in love with the beauty of La Jolla and San Diego and decided to stay. Albert discovered a passion for painting flowers and produced 130 paintings of the local plants. These paintings are now a part of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Not long after, Ellen Browning Scripps, La Jolla resident and philanthropist, commissioned Albert to paint the entirety of the California flora. The commission took nearly ten years to complete and required that the couple travel all around the state collecting specimens. In all, Albert Valentien painted 1,200 pieces. The collection was donated to the San Diego Natural History Museum.  

The collection is one of the largest by any one artist on a single subject. Valentien truly captured the beauty of the local natural flora. For more information on local art in La Jolla, visit Thumbprint Gallery on Kline Street. The gallery is open Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 12-4pm. 

Source: http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/v54-4/pdf/v54-4Stern.pdf

http://botanicalillustration.blogspot.com/2009/11/california-legacy-of-albert-r-valentien.html

Foreign Artists Find Home in La Jolla

Monterey Coat, Franz Anton Bischoff

It does not take more than a few minutes to take in the view of the California coast to comprehend why so many artists paint there. The rocky shoreline of La Jolla combined with the special light quality that only Southern California has creates a kind of aesthetic magic that is almost irresistible. With this in mind, it is perfectly understandable why artists like Alfred Mitchell and Franz Anton Bischoff traveled so far from home to settle in sunny California!

Franz Anton Bischoff was born in Austria in 1864. He was trained as a fine porcelain painter before coming to the United States in 1885. Over the next twenty years, Bischoff established himself as the foremost china painter in America. In the 1920’s Bischoff moved to Southern California where he took up landscape painting. He traveled the coast, painting La Jolla, San Diego, Laguna, Monterey, and parts of Palm Springs.

Alfred Mitchell began his artistic career in 1913 at the San Diego Academy of Art under Maurice Braun. Two years later, Mitchell won the silver medal at the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. After studying more in his hometown of Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Alfred traveled across Europe in 1921. Mitchell returned to San Diego and took an active role in the local art community. In 1929, Mitchell became a founding member of the Associated Artists of San Diego. He also was an important figure in the early years of the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego and the La Jolla Art Association. 

This pattern of artists finding a new home in San Diego and La Jolla continues to this day. The beauty of the area is one draw, certainly, but the thriving local art community contributes as well. To learn more about local art in La Jolla and the Southern California area, visit Thumbprint Gallery on Kline Street in La Jolla. The gallery exhibits works by lowbrow and urban artists and is open Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 12pm to 4pm.

Source: http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/v54-4/pdf/v54-4Stern.pdf

http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/2001-3/mitchell.htm

http://www.franzbischoff.com/

ANOTHER Artwork at La Jolla's UCSD

Price Center East. 'Another' on the left wall.

Barbara Kruger is everything that might be thought of when the subject of “crossover” artists is brought up.  Besides being a world-class photographer, she has been a critic, curator, writer and designer.  She was also a teacher at UCSD in La Jolla before joining the faculty at UCLA.

Krugers’s best-known work is the overlying of captions onto photographs.  Many of these works are very quirky and deal with feminist ideas.  One of her works she is well known for is “I SHOP THEREFORE I AM” which is a take on Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.”  

On the large interior wall of Price Center East, Kruger’s ‘Another’ dominated. A massive double image of clocks which contains the following phrases: ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER NIGHT, ANOTHER IDEA, ANOTHER DREAM, ANOTHER SONG, ANOTHER FEAR, ANOTHER JOB, ANOTHER EXAM, ANOTHER SMILE, ANOTHER BOOK, ANOTHER SWEATER, ANOTHER CAR, ANOTHER LOVE, ANOTHER LIFE. The words, which sporadically cover the clocks, suggest the moments that can happen at any time of the day or night. There are also two LED displays that show news stories to further suggest how our lives are culturally infected, constructed, and contained.

The clocks on the wall are extended to the floor by the use of terrazzo rectangles placed throughout the area. These colored blocks contain quotes from well-respected figures in the worlds of both the arts and sciences. The expansiveness of the wall and floor anchor the area with powerful images and, with the texts, create a space of visual pleasure, comfort, and relevancy.

Barbara Kruger is an internationally respected artist. She had an exhibition at the LA Museum of Contemporary Art in 2000, the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla in 2005, received the Leone d'Oro for lifetime achievement at the 2005 Venice Biennale, and has done installations around the world.  She taught at UCSD for five years before joining the faculty at UCLA.

For more information on contemporary art in La Jolla, visit ThumbprintGallery on Kline Street. The gallery is open Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 12-4pm.

Source: http://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/artists/kruger.shtml

La Jolla's Angel: Ellen Browning Scripps

Ellen Browning Scripps

San Diego has been home to many famous and influential people. As fortune would have it, several of these people decided to share their wealth with the population, enabling the surrounding communities to grow and flourish into cultural centers. La Jolla has had the extreme luck of being the beneficiary of philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps. Along with other gifts, Ellen Scripps donated the first public park near La Jolla Cove and the Torrey Pines State Park.

Ellen Browning Scripps was born on October 18, 1836, in Cleveland, Ohio, to newspaper tycoon Edward Willis Scripps. Ellen was the only one of her family to attend college. She was not given any money towards her education, and paid for it by becoming a teacher. In 1856 she was admitted to the Female Collegiate Department at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Diplomas were not given to women, but in 1870, when the college became co-ed, Ellen was awarded a Doctorate of Letters from Knot College.

She moved to La Jolla in 1897 after having a house built on the coast. When Ellen’s father died, she inherited a large amount of wealth. Ellen decided to hold the money “in trust” for humanity. Much money from her father’s will was given to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Ellen donated to the Scripps Memorial Hospital, the Scripps Research Clinic, and founded Scripps Hospital and Scripps Metabolic Clinic. She also gave generously to Scripps Cottage at San Diego State University, the Bishop’s School, and founded the La Jolla Public Library.

Ellen Browning Scripps commissioned 1,200 watercolor paintings of California flora by artist Albert R. Valentien, which she donated to the San Diego Museum of Natural History after her death.  Her own home was designed by Irving Gill in 1915, became what is now the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art.

The legacy of Ellen Browning Scripps allowed to the community of La Jolla to become a cultural and artistic hub. To learn more about the continuing artistic tradition of local artists, visit Thumbprint Gallery on Kline Street in La Jolla. The gallery is open Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 12pm to 4pm.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Browning_Scripps

http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/v54-4/pdf/v54-4Stern.pdf

Red Shoe by Elizabeth Murray

The Stuart Collection took a bold move by asking New York based artist Elizabeth Murray to construct her first freestanding sculpture. Murray, who was mainly known for painting at the time, was slowing moving away from traditional painting on canvas toward something that became increasingly three dimensional. She soon jumped at the chance of constructing her first sculpture in a grove of eucalyptus trees near the theater and drama department on UCSD, campus in La Jolla.

Murray’s work is characterized by the use of everyday objects such as shoes, cups, and saucers but adding a twist to show movement. Murray would construct what would come to be known as the Red Shoe in 1996, in her New York studio. The work was to challenge the boundaries of traditional painting. Robert Storr, Dean of the Yale University School of Art, stated, "Reason presides over universities; it remains for artists to give substance to those areas of consciousness that reason has not and perhaps cannot articulate." The Red Shoe brought life to the formerly forgotten and dull corner of campus by adding a touch of color and motion. The artwork invokes a fairly-tale like narrative and brings about a childlike feeling of whimsy. The playfulness and mischief is exactly what Elizabeth Murray aimed to bring to mind.

Murray lived in New York until her untimely death in 2007. She was a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1999, and in 2005 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, created a major exhibition of her work. The Red Shoe can still be found on the UCSD campus in La Jolla off of Torrey Pines Road.
 
After visiting the statue, drop by Thumbprint Gallery, on Kline Street, to see more contemporary art. The gallery is open Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 12-4pm.

Source: http://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/artists/murray.shtml