A beautiful day in San Diego.

I went down to Little Italy this weekend for San Diego’s annual ArtWalk. It’s always a good excuse to stop by Mona Lisa for a sandwich, and this weekend I felt like a good walk, too.

ArtWalk seemed a lot bigger this year: more streets filled with paintings, photographs, and other art. It is still relatively traditional compared to events such as the downtown LA Brewery ArtWalk but there was a lot of very good art there this year. I was pleasantly surprised; ever since they switched from the more spread-out version where each building sponsored artists it has seemed smaller and less interesting to me. This is the first year since then that it has really got me excited about what I saw enough to write about it.

And besides, you can’t get fried oreos at the Brewery.

This is by no means exhaustive, but some of the people who I remember (that is, whose business cards include web sites so that I can go jog my memory) are Julia Gray. She mentioned her fascination with carnivorous plants (and noticed my corpse flower t-shirt). Besides painting flowers that eat things, she also does some beautiful paintings of the San Diego area and very strange paintings of creatures in our gardens.

Kelly Paige Standard has some evocative paintings, although the ones I enjoyed most were the somewhat surreal ones.

Chris Draper of Sacrifice Studios appears to specialize in crosses and biblical work made from metal. Some of his color work is incredible, but the reason I remember him is a life-sized burnished fireman that is just beautiful. You can see it in his on-line gallery.

Oil painting of a beautiful day in San Diego by Jerry Stratton... and GIMP.

Bonnie Beery does some amazing semi-abstract color work. Go to her web site and look for “soul seeker” and “sunset sail”.

Deborah Valiquet-Myers is doing some really wild work with layered shapes and textures. Take a look at the new work on her web site to see what I mean.

Carolyn Counnas has fascinating paintings and monoprints with bold colors and semi-abstract images and shapes.

Lest I ignore other forms of art, Jo Ann Ginepra and Rob Gilmore each brought photographs with a painting-like quality; their booths were catching a lot of attention when I came by. Mark Radley had nature close-ups that also drew eyeballs.

Also, this artist wasn’t there, but since I don’t talk about paintings much on Mimsy I’m going to do it now. Go visit C. J. Moloney’s web site for some really great (and colorful) paintings. I first saw them as backgrounds on CJ’s computer! By far the best wallpaper at the University, that’s for sure.