Sitôt

by Kevin Freitas and David Fobes


If San Diego’s beginnings can be traced back to Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo and the 16th century, can we as easily trace its art history? It would seem like a daunting task for anyone. It is likely though; that this has already been accomplished and archived for the remotely curious to peruse. One such example exists to my knowledge; it is the history of the San Diego Art Guild. Founded in 1915 by a group of artists, it has over the decades, evolved into the San Diego Visual Artists Guild. While the Guild takes a specific view of itself and history, Re-collections: Art in San Diego since 1980 is then, a modest attempt to categorize that history into a broader re-collection of the past 30 years of San Diego’s contemporary art world and artists. Grammatically speaking of course, it is the subject of our interest and a noun — person, place, or thing — brought together in an informal yet personal biography of those individuals who have participated in, contributed to, and shaped San Diego’s rich artistic life. Why is this important?

The short answer is that I’m simply unfamiliar with the city’s cultural history. Over the last five years, I’ve met quite a number of artists and art activists who have relayed this history back to me in bits and pieces. They all speak of a “Golden Era” during the 1980’s when San Diego was a much more dominant figure in the cultural scene than it appears to be today. My specific interest in contemporary art, its artists, and its practices, has given me the desire to document this particular moment in time. Parallel stories encompassing many diverse voices can help shape a broader and stronger artistic community.

The long answer is David Fobes. David is an accomplished artist, furniture designer, and currently a lecturer at the School of Art, Design and Art History at SDSU and has been for the last 15 years. He has also been witness to San Diego’s past artistic heritage since the early 1980’s not only as a musician and visual artist, but as a shaper of its destiny through a variety of gallery design projects and the building and design of the now defunct JAVA coffee house with collector and arts advocate Doug Simay. David is a key element and piece to the puzzle we would both like to put back together. In a recent conversation, I expressed my interest in having him help me to accomplish this task. I’m grateful he has accepted.

photo: Lynn Murphy

Survey


But there’s another reason for establishing this history. You often hear people refer to San Diego as a transient city. A place to go to school and the beach but not for establishing roots; you can’t really call it a brain drain but it seems people have a tendency to move on after their University studies. Does or has the art community now or in the past, suffered this same drain? For the moment it is hearsay, it is a well known fact that many career artists including Robert Irwin, John Baldessari , Eleanor Antin, the late Allan Kaprow and Manny Farber, have made their reputations elsewhere, but have chosen to live and work in San Diego.

However, like most art communities San Diego seems to be at a crossroads, trying to define itself as either individual entities working within the same conglomerate or as a group of artists with a common goal or style. Is there a San Diego style or movement of art, probably not? But as the city of San Diego grows and the art world never sleeps, it could mean that the city’s cultural identity is never more important than right now and if not clearly established, could be left behind. Defining one’s character is never easy, it can be made easier I believe, if you know where you’ve started from. It is from this premise; beyond it being a wonderful story to tell and a very important one that David and I ask you to be part of enabling all of us to learn something about ourselves, as well as a means to moving forward.

We ask then and strongly encourage you to send us any images or written texts about past San Diego art events that you may want to share. These might include announcements, photos from openings, band shots, anything that would help visually document the Arts History in San Diego. We also kindly ask that you fill out the survey here and send the link on to someone else you might know. As the documents and images are accumulated, they will be published online successively in a series of chapters, this will allow others to add to or compliment that subject’s particular moment in San Diego’s visual arts history. If we receive the responses we are anticipating, a subsequent publishing of the survey results, texts, and documents could be envisioned. Won’t you please help us keep San Diego’s cultural history alive and available to everyone?

Sincerely,

Kevin Freitas
David Fobes
Re-collections: Art in San Diego since 1980

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by Kevin Freitas


I spent a few hours the other day with Jay Johnson, a sculptor and respected artist here in San Diego, reminiscing about his humble beginnings, the Pawn Shop Gallery, the punk scene, and the myraid of friends and encounters Johnson made in the early 80's downtown - one of which was Harold Gee.



photo: Harold Gee

Johnson who was on the verge of ending his Californian surf and ceramic-clay throwing days and looking for a change, found himself downtown on occaison just as the seedy underground life of peep shows, dive bars, clubs, and winos were about to experience a new wave of artistic and musical punk rock birthing, unlike anything San Diego has seen since. Johnson met Harold Gee in one of these start-up clubs, called the Skeleton Club, its short-lived existence (until the city apparently shut it down) was began by Laura Frazier and Tim Mayes of now Casbah fame.



"Xterminators, Fall 1979" (at the original Skeleton Club located in the basement of the Keating Building - photo: Harold Gee

According to Johnson, Gee was somewhat of a raconteur, an extremely creative character, writer, male-stripper, and photographer, he was (from what I could tell from Johnson's description) the Weegee (without the blood and gore) of the San Diego music scene in the 1980's. And like Weegee with camera in hand, Gee also had a prescient knack of showing up where the action was, his antennae alert to the next band playing in some yet undiscovered underground club. He was the company you wanted to keep and someone you inevitably ran into anyway - wherever you went. A bit of a huckster in the most charming way, he was always coming up with new projects and/or publications to sell just to get by. Gee eventually left San Diego after learning how to design and make jewelry, he currently lives in New Orleans.

I've included a link to Gee's Flickr photostream that covers in photos, the underground scene in San Diego between the years of 1981 and 1986. I've also included a link to an extensive in-depth website and blog that also covers San Diego's musical scene during this time period and will help put a story behind the many faces in Gee's photos.

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by Doug Simay



Doug Simay - portrait by Stuart Burton

Six years ago, I retired from the practice of medicine. For 23 years I was a family practitioner in La Jolla. In addition, in the first 13 years of my medical career I practiced emergency medicine at Paradise Valley Hospital in a high trauma, high acuity setting.

I started collecting art in 1978. My interest has always been in art of this region, meaning San Diego, Orange, and Los Angeles counties. Almost all the works I have collected I bought in the year of their production. I also have a personal relationship with most of the artists who are in my collection. Finally, I have very close relationships with
most of the art dealers in Southern California. I have a 30 year history of being very active in the contemporary art scene of Southern California.

My collection currently numbers around 500 pieces of art. Again, this collection is very strictly a Southern California regional collection. I collect painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and photographic monographs. I have a very significant and comprehensive modernist and contemporary art library.

Many works in the collection have traveled worldwide and have been exhibited extensively both publicly and privately. As one of San Diego’s more recognized collectors of contemporary art, I have been asked to speak publicly over the years about the specifics of this collection. In addition, I have been interviewed about the process of collecting art and the way in which relationships with artists, dealers and collectors are built over the years.

Concurrently with practicing medicine and being a very active art collector, I have developed and managed endeavors in downtown San Diego with the primary goal of fostering the visual arts in San Diego. From 1982 until 2009, I had a physical presence at the corner of 9th and G Streets downtown.

For the initial three or four years I developed a shared gallery space with the art dealer Mark Quint (now of La Jolla). That was followed for 10 years by Java Coffeehouse Gallery at the southwest corner of 9th and G streets. At Java we introduced European-style café society to San Diego. Java is considered a progenitor of the contemporary coffeehouse scene in San Diego. Through Java I also introduced at least 45 artists to
the San Diego arts community.

After Java, I converted that space into a 4000 square foot contemporary art gallery called Simayspace. For five years, I regularly presented three simultaneous solo exhibitions, predominately showing Southern California contemporary artists, architects, and designers.

In 1999 along with two other partners, we moved across G Street to the northwest corner where we established and developed the Art Academy of San Diego. The Academy is an avocational art school where our faculty teach hands-on art making in painting, drawing, sculpture, stained glass and printmaking. In the center of the Academy was Simayspace Gallery which I curated and managed with the sole purpose of presenting contemporary visual art exhibitions by Southern California regional artists. These exhibitions have been met with significant critical response and appreciation.

On January 1st of this year, I retired fully from all professional activities. I travel extensively and look at more art than any other person I have ever met. It would be fair to say that, for me, every day is an art day.

Professional Exhibition History

1999 – 2009
Simayspace Gallery
Art Academy of San Diego
Arts College International
840 G Street
San Diego, CA 92101

1993 – 1998
Simayspace Gallery and Design
835 G Street
San Diego, CA 92101

1988 – 1994
ABC Art Books and Catalogues
835 G Street
San Diego, CA 92101

1985 – 1993
Java Coffeehouse and Gallery
837 G Street
San Diego, CA 92101

1982 - 1985
Simay/Quint Projects
664 9th Avenue
San Diego, CA 92101

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Hook'em Cow
Robert Matheny

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by David Fobes


Intro

The 1980’s in San Diego, especially in the arts, and specifically downtown, was an exciting, vibrant and expanding community culture. I lived and worked at 5th and Island, next to the Nan King Café, for several years, and observed the gas lamp redevelopment from a front row seat.

David Fobes

Chapter 1: Arriving in Oz

I grew up in the Inland Empire of Southern California, (San Bernardino, Colton, Riverside, Yucaipa, Mentone, and Redlands). In the 1960’s, this was the tailpipe of Los Angeles. Onshore breezes in the summer blew smog, fog, haze, particulates, dirt and smudge into the basin that was the Empire, and just stopped there. Our eyes teared. We sneezed, hacked, coughed and choked on the foul air. Weeks would go by, you could not see for a block.

It was HOT. Summers baked well into the upper 90’s and 100’s. My twin brother Clark and I worked around the yard and a small old orange grove my parents owned during summers off from school. We worked clearing brush, trimming trees, hauling yard waste to the dump. It was expected of us.

It was no wonder that as teenagers we would jump in some beat pick up, Rambler or Volkswagen pool our change and buy a tanks worth of gas to take us to the beach. Our destination was Corona de Mar, the closest and most direct route to sun, sand and sea. Even though none of us could surf, we wore our hair like surfers, dressed like surfers, talked like surfers and listened to the beach boys.

Everyone talked about moving to the beach in general, and San Diego in particular. Older kids graduated and went off to San Diego State University (Party dude!). It seems like every kid in my High School had plans to move to San Diego as soon as they graduated, got pregnant, or dropped out. The allure and mystique of San Diego remained just that for me, until a family trip to San Diego to visit an old Navy chum of my Dad’s. Turns out the navy buddy had two very cute teenage daughters and my twin brother and I were smitten.

The navy family lived close to the First Street pedestrian bridge, and the girls took us there to show off how they could get the thing swinging back and forth (cool). That trip did it for me. I was convinced that one day I would return, the navy daughter would be my bride, and we would live in a house I would design on a canyon, near the bridge. I was 16.

Five years later, I did return to San Diego, not for a woman, but for a passion. I had enrolled at San Diego State University to study “Environmental Design” in the school of Art and Design. I had been studying Architecture, Art and Music at local community colleges in San Bernardino and Yucaipa. I had also begun playing music in the dark bars and venues of San Bernardino, learning to play by ear and live by the seat of my pants. My relationship with my father had a hit a low and I was ready to get out of Dodge and make the journey to OZ.

I came to San Diego with all my belongings packed into my 1966 Volkswagen bug. Art supplies, a small mechanics tool kit, saxophone, jeans, shorts, corduroy jacket, Amplifier and tuner, about 50 jazz lps and a small pot plant, these were my worldly possessions. It was 1974.

Eugene Ray*, southern architect, story teller, architectural historian, environmental activist and visionary artist had come to San Diego State University to start a new program in environmental design in the School of Art in 1971. My attraction to the school’s program was its broad interpretation of Architecture. More art than engineering, more voodoo than theory, experimental, and just plain weird, I was in heaven.

Gene encouraged new ways of thinking about space, especially in his classes “Synergetics” (creating environments with light and sound) and “Environmental Prototypes”. Gene also introduced us to “mail art” and post card art. His mentoring, vision and genius, continues to influence not only my design process, but also my teaching process.

I met artist Mario Lara* in those first few weeks of new classes in the darkened rooms, illuminated by Gene Ray’s fantastic paintings, that glowed under black light. Mario and I became great friends and eventually worked together to help build Gene Rays “Silver Ship” on Nautilus Avenue in La Jolla, CA. We spent almost two years building that house from the ground up, hand digging the footings on the steep slope, to preserve as much of the native landscape as possible. The learning about building, the physical strain of moving materials, the satisfying exhaustion at the end of a productive day, were lessons not learned in the classroom and lessons never forgotten.

Although I graduated from SDSU with a BA in Art in 1978, the finishing of Gene’s home the next year was a more fitting graduation. I was at the end of an educational journey, unemployed, broke and happy, now a resident of San Diego.



Silver Ship
1699 Nautilus Ave, La Jolla Ca.
Eugene Ray, Architect
Construction: 1978-1980

* Gene retired from SDSU in the mid 1990’s.
* Mario is currently a professor of Art at San Diego Mesa College.

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