San Diego weekend arts events: 'Spring Tide,' 'Here There Are Blueberries,' lots of dance and more - KPBS

Addy Lyon: 'Do You Think Too Much Too?' pop-up exhibition

Visual art

In a one-evening-only pop-up event, The Hill Street Country Club will show works by artist Addy Lyon, including a 6 p.m. screening of her short film.

Lyon's work is informed by her own experiences with mental health, and she uses her art as both a tool of healing and a way to normalize the societal conversations around mental health. Lyon also uses sustainable art practices in her art, including the use of recycled canvases and other materials, including donated paint.

Details: 4-8 p.m. on Saturday, July 30, 2022. The Hill Street Country Club, 530 S. Coast Hwy., Oceanside. Free.

Read the whole round up by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS

5 works of art to see in San Diego in February - KPBS

Celesté (Andrés) Hernández: 'My Faith Won't Move Mountains But My Longing Builds Bridges Across the Mexican Border To Be By Your Side'

On view at The Hill Street Country Club through Feb. 28, 2022

Tijuana-based artist and writer Celesté Hernández opened a solo show, "Crying on the Blue Line Trolley" at The Hill Street Country Club (HSCC) in January, her first solo exhibition. It's multidisciplinary, though at the center of the show are oversized prints of analog photographs taken from her route back and forth across the US-Mexico border, mostly on the trolley. In this way, it's hard to pick just one work — each seems like a pause, a breath taken, on a journey.

Hernández's work is intensely vulnerable and specific, though in these pictures of bridges, overpasses, trolley seats and landscapes she manages to offer her deeply personal story in a universal form.

This work, "My Faith Won't Move Mountains But My Longing Builds Bridges Across The Mexican Border To Be By Your Side" packs so much into one relatively sparse scene, washed in an analog softness: a border dividing two partners, and a suggestion of the agony of separation and a long and volatile history at the border.

An artist talk with Hernández along with regional poet and professor Karla Cordero will take place Saturday, Jan. 29 at 1 p.m. (RSVP for the talk here).

HSCC is showing the exhibition by appointment only, Friday through Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. 530 S. Coast Hwy., Oceanside. [Exhibition details]

Read the whole round up by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS

San Diego Weekend Arts Events: 'Crying on the Blue Line Trolley,' soundON Festival, Mission Trails, Preston Swirnoff and more

This weekend in the arts: a solo show by Celesté Hernández at Hill Street Country Club, the 14th annual soundON new music festival, 'Nature's Abundance' at Mission Trails, 'Stained Glass Enters the Stream' at Swish, a new Hershey Felder film and Le Salon de Musiques.

'Crying on the Blue Line Trolley'

Visual Art, Poetry

Mexican artist and writer Celesté Hernández will kick off the year for Oceanside art space The Hill Street Country Club. I recently featured Hernández's graphic novel, "we used to move through the city like doves in the wind," which was about the COVID-related border closure. This exhibition, Hernández's first show of photography, is almost like a follow up: What happens when the border technically reopens, but landscapes, natural and architectural, stand between the artist and her love?

This artist is referred to by another name in the original publishing of this article, our posts reflect her current wishes.

Read the full round up by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS.

Celesté Hernández: A love and a border interrupted by COVID

The graphic novel, "we used to move through the city like doves in the wind" is about a couple separated by the COVID border closure. The Tijuana-based artist will open a solo exhibition at The Hill Street Country Club in early 2022.

The first two pages of writer, poet and artist Celesté Hernández's recent graphic novel, "we used to move through the city like doves in the wind," feature the familiar loops of barbed wire along a fence with the words "March 2020. Tijuana, B.C."

We know where this is going: the pandemic. On March 20, 2020, the U.S.-Mexico border closed due to COVID-19 and would remain closed until earlier this month.

The book is about Hernández's own experience with her partner, both stuck on opposite sides of the border: Hernández in Tijuana, and her partner Neville in San Diego. More than a pandemic story, it's a love story, about devotion as much as it is loneliness and separation, as well as the inequality of the border closure.

"During the first three months, we had no idea U.S. citizens were allowed to cross," Hernández said from her house in Tijuana last week.

"How do you explain to someone, well the border is closed but also some people are affected by it — a lot of people are affected by it — but a lot of other people in Tijuana are not," Hernández said. "But for people like me who have Mexican citizenship and have friends or family over there or even like myself, a partner over there, it was really devastating."

This artist was credited under a different name at the original date of publishing, our posts reflect her current wishes.

Read the full articl by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS.

5 Works Of Art To See In San Diego In September

New works of art to catch this month in San Diego by Christina Kim, El Anatsui, Ivonne Garcia, Chitra Gopalakrishnan with The House of Resilience, and youth at MOPA.

Chitra Gopalakrishnan: 'We Are All Made Of Starstuff'

On view concurrently in the windows of You Belong Here and The Hill Street Country Club, Sept. 8-12, 2021

Part of the second annual San Diego Design Week, Chitra Gopalakrishnan has designed an AR exhibition that can safely be viewed from the sidewalk. Gopalakrishnan interviewed trans women from The House of Resilience, an organization that focuses on housing insecurity and equity for San Diego and Tijuana LGBTQ+ communities, particularly trans women.

Gopalakrishnan recorded the women as she asked them a series of questions — including "what would you tell your 10-year-old self?" A QR code posted in the gallery windows at both You Belong Here and The HIll Street Country Club will trigger an bright augmented reality animation to appear before a viewer, in an empty frame mounted in the window.

"I'm using AR to allow viewers to suspend their disbelief (literally as they look at animations that do not exist in front of them except via their mobile devices), but also metaphorically to suspend disbelief and accept that trans lives matter and are very real," Gopalakrishnan explained over email.

Risograph posters will also be available as part of the installation. The exhibition is named after this first piece — a Carl Sagan quote, "We Are All Made Of Starstuff." This piece has Paris DaSilva speaking.

Details: Event information. On view outside You Belong Here (3619 El Cajon Blvd., City Heights) and The Hill Street Country Club (530 S. Coast Hwy, Oceanside). Free.

Read the whole round up by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS

San Diego Weekend Arts Events: Not Our First Goat Rodeo, TwainFest, Miguel Montaño, U-T Festival Of Books And The Rosin Box

Javier Arreguin Villegas + Miguel Montaño

Visual Art

"Lupita Crossing the Border / Homeland Security Angels" by Javier Arreguin Villegas is on view at The Hill Street Country Club through Aug. 20, 2021.

Javier Arreguin Villegas' exhibition "Anticuado" will close with a reception at The Hill Street Country Club on Saturday, but Villegas is sharing the stage with his mentor, Miguel Montaño, with a pop-up exhibition of Montaño's works, "Mirada Incidental."

Montaño lives in Ciudad Azteca, Mexico, and uses collage, found objects and sculpture to explore consumer capitalism and its role, particularly in his own city. Villegas' work showcases powerful stories of fatherhood, identity and immigration. His xylographic woodcuts are powerful and vivid.

Read the whole round up by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS.

Oceanside nonprofit seeks to increase diversity and inclusion in arts community - San Diego Union Tribune

Oceanside, CA – July 08: Delana Delgado at the Hill Street Country Club Gallery in Oceanside, CA. (Brittany Cruz-Fejeran / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Delana Delgado is an assistant curator with the Hill Street Country Club, a nonprofit working to create a more inclusive and diverse arts culture and community in northern San Diego County

For Delana Delgado, it started with a class assignment. In her museum studies class, she was assigned to interview a museum professional and chose one of the co-founders of the Hill Street Country Club, a nonprofit organization working to create a more inclusive and diverse arts culture and community in northern San Diego County.

“I just thought about how that is where I imagined myself one day, learning from an independent curator or gallery/museum director of color, who was passionate about an anti-institutional art world,” Delgado says. “(We had) a conversation on decolonization, institutional racism and making arts accessible, and I loved every second of it because conversations about this are my thing.”

Read the whole article by Lisa Deaderick for the San Diego Union Tribune

The American artist: Chitra Gopalakrishnan: Art in ‘service of something’ - San Diego Union Tribune

Painter Chitra Gopalakrishnan explores the joys and isolation of American motherhood

Chitra Gopalakrishnan at her show at the Hill Street Country Club on Thursday, May 27, 2021 in Oceanside, CA. . (K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

It’s all-too-easy to look at the work of Chitra Gopalakrishnan and think it’s simply a bold, declarative celebration of femininity and motherhood. A vibrant mix of surrealism, portraiture and figurative styles, paintings such as “Army of One,” “The Mothers” and “Prickly Pear Cactus” work in themes of feminine resilience and strength.

Dig a little deeper, however, and the work of Gopalakrishnan, with its anthropomorphism and spiked armor imagery, reveals itself to also be working in threads of isolationism, protectionism and even the traumas that women often face.

Read the full article by Seth Combs for the San Diego Union Tribune

San Diego Weekend Arts Events: Art That Reframes American Independence

For the July 4th weekend, a mini art tour of exhibitions by Javier Arreguin Villegas, Kim Sweeney, Andrew Alcasid, and the group show 'And We Will Sing In The Tall Grass Again'

For the 4th of July weekend, we brought in cultural strategist and arts professional Andrea "Angie" Chandler to help us put together a mini, local art tour. Four exhibitions of visual art each suggest a wider view of who we consider American and what it means to have a connection with the land.

The picks feature new works on view now by Javier Arreguin Villegas, Kim Sweeney, Andrew Alcasid, and the group exhibition "And We Will Sing In The Tall Grass Again."

Javier Arreguin Villegas: 'Anticuado'

Visual Art

Javier Arreguin Villegas' "Protegiendo La Infancia (2021), a xylography relief print, is on view at the Hill Street Country Club now through Aug. 20, 2021.

"We're looking — with this exhibit and a few others — at the many ways that Americans from different backgrounds connect to the actual physical land here and what that complicated feeling is like," Chandler said.

"And that feeling really comes across in Javier's work. He's using organic materials like wood and very normal objects to tell these stories about how he's exploring masculinity, how he's connecting to the women in his life, and he's using colors and lines that would look really simple on a fast glance. But as you look into the story he's telling, you're really, really taken in by the work."

The exhibition is on view at The Hill Street Country Club, featuring a variety of new works, much of it created this year. Arreguin Villegas works with woodcut prints, textiles and other mixed media formats to create bold images that dig into his identity and relationships.

"It's pretty gorgeous to see in person. And his relationship to America and its values is really tested as an artist creating work. It's very 2021, very much the experience we're all having," Chandler said.

Details: On view now through Aug. 20, 2021 by appointment, Tuesdays through Saturdays. 530 S Coast Hwy, Oceanside. Free.

Read the whole round up by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS.

Meet Hill Street Country Club and Club Boutika: Oceanside gallery and new art collective host inaugural High Tea event for the community and the culture - San Diego Union Tribune

Hill Street Country Club and Club Boutika collective make it a family affair

The forces behind the High Tea event (clockwise from bottom): Delana Delgado, Dinah Poellnitz, Alofa Gould, Astrid Gonzalez and Desiree Poellnitz. Photo courtesy of Alejandro Arreguin Villegas

Alofa Gould walks in and almost immediately bursts into tears.

Gould is an artist and musician who also happens to be in the service industry. Working on Father’s Day after a global pandemic has been a bit much. Just as quick as the U.S. celebrated “essential workers” during the pandemic, many of those same workers are on the frontline again, this time having to deal with crowded restaurants filled with often anxious and sometimes abusive customers.

But just as soon as Gould walks into Hill Street Country Club (HSCC), she is surrounded by her colleagues and friends, who offer her words of encouragement and hugs. She is in a safe space.

Read the whole article by Seth Combs for the San Diego Union Tribune

San Diego Weekend Arts Events: 'Say It Loud,' Wagner New Play Festival, Young Choreographers And Mainly Mozart

Our weekend arts picks include the launch of a theater-centric Juneteenth festival, brand new plays you can listen to on Spotify, outdoor dance from emerging choreographers and Mozart under the stars.

Ticket Tip: 'High Tea'

The Hill Street Country Club and Club Boutika's "High Tea" music and arts festival and fundraiser is scheduled for the afternoon of July 11 at Oceanside's Goat Hill Park, and tickets go on sale this Friday. Thee Sacred Souls will headline, with performances by Chulita Vinyl Club, The Renters, Irenie West, T. Rexico and H/If. There'll be public speakers, installation art, picnic-style vegan soul food and high tea. The concept is inspired by 19th century Black tea rooms.

Closing Soon

3B Collective's show at Best Practice closes this Saturday. You have just over a week (is "two more Saturdays" the grown-up version of "two more sleeps"?) to check out these exhibitions: Chitra Gopalakrishnan at Hill Street Country Club (read the feature here), Ghidorah Lives at Good Faith Gallery (read the feature here) and Peter Halasz at Quint ONE.

Read the whole round up by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS.

Art Exhibition Shares Portraits, Stories of the Unsheltered In Oceanside - KPBS

This week, nonprofit art space The Hill Street Country Club opened an exhibition of portrait photography of unsheltered individuals plus onsite programming, panels and events dedicated to homelessness.

"Stories from the Street" is a new exhibition of photography and stories featuring individuals experiencing homelessness in Oceanside. Thirty portraits will be on display through Apr. 20.

"Stories from the Street" features work by photographer Jordan Elijah Verdin, and is curated by Oscarin Ortega. The portraits are of unsheltered individuals, each living within a one-mile radius of HSCC in Oceanside.

Homelessness in Oceanside is at the center of a debate in recent weeks. On April 7, the Oceanside City Council declared camping in public spaces illegal, and increased spending towards finding alternate housing — namely vouchers for motel rooms. As of Tuesday, the Oceanside Police Department moved the people from a nearby encampment to a motel.

Read the whole article by Julia Dixon Evans and Tania Thorne for KPBS

San Diego Weekend Arts Events: Tijera Williams, Anna Zinova, SDMA+ And Red Fish Blue Fish - KPBS

This weekend in the arts: Hill Street Country Club, Red Brontosaurus Records, a world premiere concert, experimental percussion and a globe-trotting dance film

Tijera Williams' photo collage, "Danye Jones," is on view at Hill Street Country Club beginning Feb. 20, 2021.

Tijera Williams: 'Exodus from Iniquity'

Visual Art, Photography

You can always count on The Hill Street Country Club to introduce you to new artists and powerfully evocative works. Tijera Williams has a solo show there opening this weekend. Williams’ work layers photography and collage, bringing historical components into her pieces, and her work is hyper personal — she places Black bodies into scenes and histories we’ve seen before. You can check out these works by appointment in the Oceanside art space, or you can tune in for the virtual opening reception and artist talk on Saturday at 5 p.m. The discussion will feature Williams in conversation with Hill Street's Dinah Poellnitz and Robyne Robinson.

Details: On view Saturday through April 10, 2021 (virtual opening reception Saturday at 5 p.m. via Zoom). 530 S. Coast Hwy, Oceanside. Free.

Read the whole round up by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS

San Diego Weekend Arts Events: Monumental History, Waves Of Feminism, Remedio Casero And Site-Specific Circus

Our weekend picks for art and culture feature new offerings from OnStage Playhouse, the Women's Museum, Hill Street Country Club, San Diego Circus Center, regional Black artists and more.

'Remedio Casero' Opening Reception

Photography

The newest exhibition at Hill Street Country Club is a group photography show curated by Alejandro Arreguín Villegas and organized by Delana Delgado. "Remedio Casero," or "holistic remedies," draws on the use of the photographic art form to understand and elevate an individual as a whole. It features work from ten regional artists of color, including Lissa Corona, Beto Soto, Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez, Juan Charlie Beaz and more. The exhibition will be open to in-person viewing by appointment only, and the opening reception this Saturday will be entirely virtual, featuring a tour of the works and artist talks.

Details: Saturday at 5 p.m. Virtual. Free, but registration is required.

Read the full round up by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS.

'If People Are Coming Here, They Trust Me': Hill Street Country Club On Pause - KPBS

Several weeks ago, the Oceanside art space, gallery and community hub Hill Street Country Club closed, again, for in-person appointments and programs.

Oceanside art space Hill Street Country Club viewed from the street in an undated photo during the current Juan Beaz exhibition.

"It's been almost three weeks since we decided to close," HSCC cofounder Dinah Poellnitz said. "It was right after Thanksgiving."

Art spaces that also serve as education resources or as retailers are not clearly grouped into the "museums" category in the California State county risk level tiers, and many local art spaces have remained open for individual (or single-household group) appointments for viewings or sales. Under the new stay-at-home order, museums are not permitted to be open. Retail must be metered at 20 percent capacity, and libraries follow retail guidelines.

Read the whole article by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS

'Normalize Radical': Photographer Johnny Nguyen's Retrospective Show - KPBS

Oceanside's Hill Street Country Club art space opens a new show this weekend, a retrospective of photographer Johnny Nguyen's work. The exhibition, "Normalize Radical," chronicles the decade Nguyen spent photographing street activism and counterculture movements in San Diego, beginning with the Occupy movement and leading right up until this summer's protests against police brutality and racial injustice.

A photograph taken during the La Mesa protest on May 30, 2020 is part of Nguyen's show at Hill Street Country Club.

Years ago, when he was laid off from an engineering job, he enrolled in classes at Palomar College and worked on the campus newspaper. For a while, Nguyen thought he may go into journalism, but he ultimately didn't see a future there, and turned back to engineering — his day job now is a civil engineer — and he returned to shooting pictures just for himself.

"A lot of my work is that — activism, protest work," Nguyen said. "I've shot for the school newspaper, so my work started off as photojournalism — taking a photo for the paper, working with the writer to make sure I get the right picture to represent their story," he said.

Read the full article by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS

Art Is Just A Language': Dinah Poellnitz On Black Art And Protesting - KPBS

Hill Street Country Club founder Dinah Poellnitz is finding art and hope in the ways local artists are taking their art off the canvas and into protests

Hill Street Country Club cofounder Dinah Poellnitz in an undated photo.

Dinah Poellnitz opened the Oceanside art space Hill Street Country Club eight years ago, with a mission of sharing the “personal, communal and universal” through art. Hill Street has become a bastion for art and building community and equity for black artists, Latinx artists and people of color, working class artists and the DIY arts movement.

This current moment, the Black Lives Matter upheaval layered atop a pandemic, has hit hard.

"If art is personal, communal, universal, what are my experiences right now? I'm a black woman, I am a single mom, I live in a multigenerational home," Poellnitz said. Avoiding COVID-19 exposure is critical for her right now. No collaborating or opening the gallery, but also no marching or protesting in crowds.

Read the whole article by Julia Dixon Evans for KPBS