Labor Day has come and gone which means summer is just about done. This means that most of the city’s museums are taking their splashy blockbuster exhibitions down and preparing new, perhaps more serious shows for the fall and winter.
With that in mind I was wondering what else might be happening in town, especially now that the San Diego Contemporary Art Fair has wrapped up, although you can still find some exhibitions up in some of the participating “Art Labs” around town.
It occurred to me that taking a class might be worthwhile, to mix things up, expand my horizons and learn about an art form that might be flying under the radar. One Google click led to another and before I knew it I found myself at the Art Classes and Workshops page for the Art Department on Ray Street in North Park.
In particular, I found myself inspired by the bookmaking class and workshop beginning this week and next. I am inclined to sign up for one or both and you might consider this too if you are an artist of any kind or a writer, poet etc. In this day and age of digital photographs and online image sharing the idea of making a book and giving thought to its tactile properties sounds kind of refreshing to me. With the holidays right around the corner a handmade book could also equal a unique gift.
The one day class takes place on Friday, Sept. 9 and the 6 week workshop begins on Sept. 19. Go to sdad-sdai.org/ for registration and details.
It’s a music thing
The 4th annual San Diego Music Thing returns to North Park on Sept. 9-10. Hosted at the historic Lafayette Hotel, this annual music industry conference will feature over 70 music industry speakers, plus over 150 up and coming local, regional and national performers.
The music shows will take place in venues from the heart of North Park (U-31, Bar Pink), along El Cajon Blvd. (Bar Eleven, Soda Bar) and into Middletown (The Casbah). There are 15 stages in all for the event, which will feature the likes of Dale Earnhardt Jr., The Silent Comedy, Linda Perry’s Deep Dark Robot, Steve Poltz, Little Hurricane and many, many more.
Remembering 9/11
As of press time, details were still falling into place but actor David S. Cohen, who every year performs Walt Whitman’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d for one person and every person lost to HIV/AIDS will be doing a special performance of that work in the context of a ten years later event marking the end of the first decade following the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington at the 10th Avenue Theatre, 930 10th Avenue (between E and Broadway). The entire day may be filled with performances and responses to 9/11 and will include periods of an open mike. The evening performance, honoring the local organization Voices of Women for having created an organization that does great good for the world in response to an event that has done it great harm, will begin at 7 p.m. and will include Cohen’s Lilacs reading, dedicated to the wife of Anthony Perkins, Berry Berenson. She was flying to Los Angeles to mourn, with their sons, her husband’s death from AIDS, nine years and a day before, when the plane she’d boarded in Boston, American Airlines Flight 11, was rerouted by Mohammed Atta, history and fate into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
