linda fetch

Balboa Park is a very beautiful place in San Diego, full of museums, trees, cool old buildings from the 1930s and beyond, and the San Diego Zoo. In other words, a major destination for a billion tourists per year. None the less, it still has its attractions for the local, not the least of which is the world’s largest model railroad museum. How could you come to San Diego and miss THAT attraction??

But the point of yesterday’s visit was the Spanish Village art center. This is a courtyard about 120 x 60 yards in size surrounded by around three dozen little studios and galleries. All kinds of crafts and fine arts are represented: painters, sculptors, jewelers, potters, hot glass artists, and so on.

The quality of the work varies somewhat, but it’s all pretty good. Inevitably, there’s a certain amount of “crowd-pleasers” (i.e., drawings of cute cats and decorative stuff) but if you really poke around you can find some more adventurous work.

The colony is a non-profit which was started by the city in the 1930s to promote art. Members are selected by a jury process a couple times a year and pay a low membership fee, but are expected to be working at the studios in the little compound every weekend and three other days per week. It seems, thought, that it would be hard to concentrate on your work and be a salesperson at the same time.