Pop Art and a Mall Library...

Our Saturday came in three parts. After Scripps and lunch at a sidewalk café, we visited La Jolla's Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego which invites all people to "experience our world, our region, and ourselves through the prism of contemporary art."




With this exhibit closing the next day, we were excited to see A Decade of Pop Prints and Multiples, 1962–1972: The Frank Mitzel Collection which marked the public debut of Southern California-based collector Frank Mitzel’s gift of more than sixty Pop Art prints to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Assembled by Mitzel over the course of three decades, this vibrant collection offers an impressive and valuable survey of Pop’s growth across the United States, England, and Europe during an era of rapid transformation.
"Although it was never a monolithic or unifying movement, Pop Art emerged in London and New York in the mid- to late 1950s in response to the simultaneous exuberance and unease of the postwar period. Pop artists soon embraced printmaking as a democratic medium, one that enabled them to reach broad audiences—and thus was truly popular—while courting associations with the commercial culture that inspired their work. Rejecting the overblown heroism of the previous generation’s gestural abstraction, such artists turned to advertising and mass media, embracing bright hues, flat graphics, and rapid legibility."

Of course there would be Warhols! In 1962, Andy Warhol painted his first Campbell's Soup Cans by hand, but it was his adoption of screen-printing that year that aligned his techniques with his imagery, mirroring both mass production and habits of consumption. Soon, Warhol's studio, which he called The Factory, had produced soup cans in a range of colors and substrates, including shopping bags produced for the artist's 1966 exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Made for Warhol's 1964 exhibition at Castelli Gallery in New York, Flowers, too, shows Warhol as canny merchandiser and expert image proliferator.


"In the late-1950s, Roy Lichtenstein's borrowings from pop culture, including imagery cadged from Disney and contemporary comic books, effectively announced a move away from abstraction and a return to figuration in the form of commercial objects and imagery. Lichtenstein's 1967 print signals his turn from Pop-art enfant terrible to art historically savvy, neoclassicist savant. Using his trademark benday dots, Lichtenstein depicts the fluted shafts and curled volutes of an Ionic column, while also evoking the carved-up spaces and rays of Analytic Cubism, bringing opposing aesthetic ideals into deceptively neat Pop alignment." Did you see that, too? Hahaha.



This huge work, by Lucia Koch, was one of my favorites. "Once a small bag of pasta, Rustichella's pseudo-architectural interior alludes to the remnants of these once occupied spaces which now lay empty, as bygone remains of a consumerist culture. Upsetting the expected hierarchy of scales between these modest objects and the size of the artwork, Lucia Koch momentarily disassociates the photographs from their immediate references, transforming them into views of invented rooms. Using carefully placed cut outs to allow for the intrusion of ambient light, Koch's photographs evoke a certain moment in time, challenging our usual ways of relating to space." The viewer is literally looking into an empty bag of pasta. For me, it's almost a depiction of a hunger or a longing. I don't usually see, or agree with, the description that accompanies a piece of art. Consumerist culture or someone who really loves pasta... who's to decide?!
This one just made me smile. "Between 1966 and 1968, John Baldessari worked exclusively on text paintings, including this satirical piece. With this early inquiry into Conceptual Art, the artist hired a sign painter to produce Terms Most Useful in Describing Creative Works of Art, thus removing evidence of the artist's hand and playfully distancing himself from the act of creation. Poking fun at tropes of art criticism and interpretation, Baldessari's sardonic approach emphasizes the semantics of words by isolating them from grammatical context." This was a fun way to end our first visit to this vast, diverse art museum.
Last stop was the Mall in Escondido. When we first moved to Temecula in 1993, this was our closest shopping area (until our Mall arrived in 2000). When the kiddos were little we trekked the 37 miles for mommy playdates. Currently, we came here because it is the temporary home for the Escondido Public Library
for approximately one year while repairs and upgrades are done to the Main Library in downtown. This I had to see!
The Library has taken over four different store fronts. My first stop was at the Friends of the Library Bookstore. When Steve saw me divert here, he left in search of a coffee. Moments later I received a text which stated, "They have a bar in the middle of the mall. I'm having a beer!" I knew my time was now my own.

The Main Library is housed in the defunct Abercrombie & Fitch store.
I was so enamored, I had to get a library card.
What child wouldn't want to hang out in this library space? An entire store just for kiddos. Wow.
And just when I thought the Library in a Mall couldn't get any more magical, I discovered this event space where a sold out flowering arranging class was happening.
What a perfect spot in which to end our fantastic day!

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Scripps Institution of Oceanography Tour

We have been trying for years to join one of the free historical tours offered by Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "Led by knowledgeable volunteer guides, these one-hour tours are held on the second and fourth Saturday of each month and showcase the most notable features of our beautiful campus, including the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier."

There is so much history here. I'll try to keep it short. The story began 135 years ago with a zoologist looking for a location on the California coast to establish a marine biology station and a local philanthropist with the drive to help him realize his vision. So cool.
William Ritter joined the faculty of the University of California Berkeley in 1891. Fascinated by the vast unknowns of the oceans, he immediately set out to find a place where he could easily collect marine life specimens while leading summer classes.  He finally settled on San Diego. He would write to the San Diego Chamber of Commerce at one point that “there can be no doubt that a laboratory capable of great things (for biological science) might be built at San Diego.” An enthusiastic group of townspeople had been determined to make Ritter’s decision an easy one. In 1903, they formed the Marine Biological Association of San Diego and named Ritter the scientific director. The association raised money for the construction of a small laboratory at La Jolla Cove and by 1907, La Jolla became the permanent location of the new biological station.
As much as Ritter, the philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps and her brother, the newspaper magnate E.W. Scripps, were architects of the fledgling institution. She secured the 170-acre parcel on which Scripps Oceanography now stands, funded the construction of its first laboratory, its iconic pier, and Ritter’s residence, and bankrolled its early operating expenses.
The history is just so incredible that I can only share with you the stuff that actually made me quite emotional! Scripps Oceanography’s connection with the U.S. military began shortly after the first world war and its status as the first oceanographic center in the United States positioned it to take on a leadership role in the prelude to World War II. Scripps became a hub of the University of California Division of War Research in 1941. That center’s primary tasks focused on predicting surf and swells and giving U.S. submarines the advantage in undersea warfare.

How incredible is this? It was in the early years of the war that then Director Harald Sverdrup and student Walter Munk devised the first surf forecasts. The two would go on to teach prediction methods to military meteorologists, who used it to time Allied landings on beaches in North Africa and Europe, most notably the D-Day landing in Normandy.

The war years saw Scripps Oceanography produce another first: an oceanography textbook. The Oceans which contained information of such strategic value that the U.S. government restricted its distribution until after the war was over.
The George H. Scripps Memorial Marine Biological Laboratory, known as the Old Scripps Building, is a historic research facility on the campus. Built in 1909-10, it is the oldest oceanographic research building in continuous use in the United States and the historic center of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It is architecturally significant as a work of Modernist architect Irving J. Gill and for its early use of reinforced concrete. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1982 and now houses Scripps administrative offices.



George Henry Scripps (1839-1900)



History abounds! Steve stands before Ritter Hall (1931) which is home to the Charles David Keeling Lab. It was here that measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide, known as the "Keeling Curve," were developed, providing early evidence of global warming.

We had admired the Director’s House when we were wandering on our own. How wonderful to actually be able to tour the indoors. Completed in 1913, it was built for first director William E. Ritter, and served as a home for early directors and scientists before housing offices for the California Sea Grant Program and now serving as a university engagement space.
The house is often associated with the influence of Julia Morgan’s blueprints and was built during the founding era of the biological station (renamed Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1925), a period characterized by "high thinking and modest living". Notable residents and guests included Arctic explorer Harald Sverdrup and ichthyologist Carl Hubbs, who once famously counted whales from the roof. Guests included Charles Lindbergh, local benefactors, and prominent scientists. We were walking in the footsteps of greats.

We excitedly ended our tour on the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier, an icon and a vital research facility. Spanning 1,084 feet in length, the pier was designed to provide a seawater system for laboratory experiments and the public aquarium, and it became an essential platform for daily oceanographic monitoring, including water sampling and salinity measurements. In addition, it serves as a launching pad for small boat and scientific diving operations.
Due to the sensitive nature of ongoing research, access to the pier is generally restricted to authorized personnel. This walking tour is the only way to get on the pier. Boy did we feel special.



The pelicans were out on patrol today. The brown pelican is a major conservation success story, having recovered from near extinction due to DDT pesticide contamination and habitat loss. Listed as endangered in 1970, the species rebounded significantly and was officially removed from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife in 2009. Yahoo!

Present-day research at Scripps Oceanography investigates nearly every facet of the natural world from volcanoes to microbial aerosols in the sky. How comforting to know that it is here helping to save the planet. I had to share the apt sentiment seen on someone's desk... "Very little is needed to make a happy life!" So true.

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