San Diego Culturecast

Voice of San Diego
San Diego Culturecast

Culturecast is Voice of San Diego's podcast about arts and culture in the San Diego region. In the first season, host Kinsee Morlan will zero in on Barrio Logan and the tension between the locally driven DIY arts renaissance and the new wave of outside developers setting up shop in the neighborhood.

  1. NASA Designer Makes One Giant Leap to Full-Time Artist

    10/24/2017

    NASA Designer Makes One Giant Leap to Full-Time Artist

    Melissa Walter had a job at NASA. She did graphic design, illustration and social media, mostly for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. She loved the job, but she also started obsessing over the fine art she was making at home in her spare time. At the end of 2015, she decided to take the leap: She quit her full-time job so she could become a full-time artist. "I was sort of having more confidence in what I was doing, and more excitement, and that's all I could think about," Walter said. "I realized, OK, this is it. This is what I should be spending my time on." In a new episode of Culturecast, Voice of San Diego's podcast about arts and culture, I talk to Walter about her transition to full-time artist, and the science-based art that's been fueling her success. Many artists who quit their day jobs flounder, at least in the beginning. But Walter has quickly flourished, scoring group and solo shows, plus residencies that have allowed her to explore large-scale installation work. She's also the subject of a new documentary by The Artist Odyssey, a San Diego production company that produces short films about artists for its subscribers. The interest in Walter's art stems, in part, from her perfectionism. She's a bit obsessive-compulsive, which means she's able to intensely focus on her work and use time-consuming processes – like using thousands of tiny dots to create a shading effect – that result in attractive, detailed geometric images. People also appreciate her exploration of astrophysics and astronomical objects. Because of Walter's background in science-based illustrations and graphic design, she's got a knack for turning complicated ideas into intriguing and meticulous minimalist drawings, sculptures and installations. But even those who glaze over the dark matter, gravitational waves and other complicated concepts at the center of her art can still enjoy the clean images she creates. "You don't have to know any of this to look at my work or appreciate it," she said. "I like the idea that people can connect to my work visually, and then if they take the time to learn about it more in depth, then maybe they'll be more curious or inspired." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    18 min
  2. Revisiting Balboa Park's 'Fruit Loop'

    03/07/2017

    Revisiting Balboa Park's 'Fruit Loop'

    On a recent Friday night, a few dozen people gathered at Marston Point, a parking lot and lookout perched at the southwestern end of Balboa Park. It was a particularly cold night, so some folks huddled around a portable fire pit gripping hot cider, others jumped in and out of about 15 parked cars spread across the lot. Inside each car, audio stories played on repeat. Each was a memory of Balboa Park's gay cruising culture. Things have calmed down considerably in recent years, but Marston Point and the road leading to it were once an epicenter of gay culture in San Diego. Especially in the '50s and '60s, gay people pushed underground by the reigning mores of the time used the secluded area as a meeting place. Some folks, gay men mostly, used the dark pocket of the park to meet for anonymous sex. A few still do. The area eventually earned itself a nickname: The Fruit Loop. And especially after the sun went down, the illicit activity cranked up. Things got so wild, city officials permanently closed the nearby public bathroom, and the two-way street leading to the Marston Point parking lot was made one-way to cut down on opportunities for drive-by eye contact. The stories playing in the cars that cold Friday night were collected by artist Kate Clark and Lambda Archives, a nonprofit that collects and preserves the history of the local LGBT community. The event was part of the offbeat programming Clark produces through her public art series called Parkeology. Clark embeds in urban parks and unearths long-buried stories, forgotten sites and other stuff kept out of public view. For the last two years, she’s been entrenched in Balboa Park. In this episode of Culturecast, Voice of San Diego's podcast covering local arts and culture, I crawl in and out of the cars parked at Marston Point and take listeners along for a ride through the diverse stories Clark collected about The Fruit Loop and the gay culture that flourished in Balboa Park. "You could think of that era of cruising as a negative but the fact of the matter is, people were coming here because it was a time when being gay was illegal," Clark said. "I think this history is actually really important because it speaks a lot about an era and the way people socialized and connected." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    13 min
4.8
out of 5
17 Ratings

About

Culturecast is Voice of San Diego's podcast about arts and culture in the San Diego region. In the first season, host Kinsee Morlan will zero in on Barrio Logan and the tension between the locally driven DIY arts renaissance and the new wave of outside developers setting up shop in the neighborhood.

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