Floral displays and images of butterflies and summer fun — all of them tied to the artists’ experiences living on both sides of the San Diego/Mexico border — await visitors to Liberty Station’s Arts District the rest of the year.
The two newest artists ing the district’s “Installations at the Station” roster are Kaori Fukuyama and Paola Villaseñor.
Also, the Arts District Collaboration Program will be ed by the Ana Galena Floral Studio and Mi Gallery Tu Gallery, which will present a multifaceted exhibition, “Blossoming Borders,” in October.
Both programs aim to foster a blend of artistic and cultural experiences while providing an engaging visit for the public, according to Liberty Station officials.
Installations at the Station features works by artists from the San Diego/Baja region. The program is overseen by the Art in Public Places Committee of the NTC Foundation, which operates the Arts District at Liberty Station, the former Naval Training Center in Point Loma.
“The new projects by Fukuyama and Villaseñor will bring even more vibrancy and life to the barracks and walkways by capturing some of the breathtaking natural wonders throughout San Diego in their works,” said Lisa Johnson, president and chief executive of the NTC Foundation.
Kaori Fukuyama
Fukuyama, who is originally from Kumamoto, Japan, is known for her paintings, drawings, sculptures and site-specific public installations.
Fukuyama’s project for Liberty Station is a sculpture called “Monarch Way Station.” It’s designed to depict monarch butterflies on their long seasonal migration as they spend winters in Mexico and Southern California and the warmer months in the northern United States and Canada.
Since the monarch is the only butterfly to make this two-way migration, Fukuyama chose it as a symbol of the relationship between San Diego and Mexico and a transformational journey toward a better future.
The artwork also includes a planting area, educational signs in both English and Spanish, a native seed library and solar-powered lighting.
Fukuyama currently is finalizing the design and working with the fabricator with plans to complete the work by October.
“The main visual aspect is a freestanding metal sculpture based on the wing pattern of monarchs,” Fukuyama said. The 5-foot-tall, 10-foot-wide piece will be made of sheet metal, with cutouts made to mimic butterfly wings.
“The cutouts will have inserts of acrylic coated in dichroic film,” she said. “I took artistic liberty on the color, as I wanted the sculpture to be more colorful than just orange and black.”
Depending on the light, colorful shadows will be cast on the ground.
The surrounding native plant garden will include milkweed, the only food source for monarch caterpillars.
Fukuyama hopes the artwork will attract butterflies as well as humans. “I’m hoping the monarchs will interact with the sculpture by forming chrysalises on it,” she said.
Fukuyama’s art will be near Barracks 2, close to the large tree that doubles as Liberty Station’s Christmas tree during the holidays.
Though Fukuyama has a background in landscape architecture, “this project is my first attempt at dealing with living beings — plants and monarchs — and there are a lot of unknowns,” she said.
Creating public engagement after the piece is completed will be fun for her, she said, and she hopes guests will learn more about monarch butterflies and contribute to efforts for their conservation.
“I am excited to bring this to reality and hope the monarchs will be happy in their new home,” Fukuyama said.
Paola Villaseñor (Panca)
Villaseñor, also known as Panca, was born in the United States to Mexican parents and emigrated to Tijuana in 2004. The first-generation illustrator, painter, muralist and installation artist says she draws inspiration from real life, raw emotion, isolation and nostalgia.
At Liberty Station, Villaseñor will paint a large wraparound mural depicting a quintessential San Diego summer day, with seascapes, sunshine and the mountainous desert landscape.
“It has a lot to do with my experience growing up in San Diego,” she said. “It’s going to be a very bright collection of very dear images.”
The mural will be next to The Lot in what Villaseñor describes as “a very unique space.”
“Now that my mural is going to be part of this, I don’t take it lightly,” she said.
Her new piece draws heavily on her childhood experiences traveling back and forth across the border.
“We grew up in South Bay/Chula Vista,” she said. “Later, my parents moved to the Eastlake/Bonita area and my dad worked in Coronado. So our parents traveled all over.”
As a child, she went to museums and surf camps and enjoyed all the beach life had to offer. But regular trips to Mexico City for holidays and family events were an equally important part of her childhood, she said.
“It’s those little moments when the adults let you be there with them but you are in your own little world,” she said. “I would draw on a notebook and had a lot of sketchbooks.”
She credits her parents for exposing her to many different experiences as a child and believes “it all settled into my subconscious at a very young age,” leaving her with a love of painting and color.
“I first learned Spanish at home, then learned English at school. I think my drawing was an in-between language — a way to communicate thoughts I didn’t know how to say,” Villaseñor said.
“My mural is going to be pretty bright and fun and have a very welcoming and happy vibe,” she said. “It’s very in-your-face, and for some people it might be too much.”
‘Blossoming Borders’
The Arts District Collaborative Program began six years ago to provide events meant to promote a sense of community and address societal issues and propose change in a creative way, according to the NTC Foundation.
“Seeing different Arts District tenants work together to create an artistic experience for the community is a beautiful reminder as to why we started the Collaborative Program in the first place,” Johnson said. “We can’t wait to see them shine.”
The Ana Galena Floral Studio and Mi Gallery Tu Gallery hope to accomplish the program’s goals at their “Blossoming Borders” event in October.
“I am originally from Tijuana, and life around the border has been a part of my existence always,” said Galena, owner of the floral studio bearing her name.
“On both sides of the border, we influence each other, from art to infrastructure to everything,” she said.
Galena said the Collaborative Program “really connected to my heart.”
“I worked for a really long time to include floral design as a form of self-expression, not just as a gift you give to someone else or a decoration,” she said. “Floral arrangement is a form of art where you can use flowers to portray your emotions.”
For “Blossoming Borders,” professional artists from San Diego and Tijuana will create a series of paintings that professional floral designers will interpret into flower arrangements.
“They have been in the area for at least 15 years, so they have a sense of what life on the border is about,” Galena said.
“Since the flowers won’t last that long, we will have professional photographers take pictures of the floral arrangements and we will have those displayed beside the art,” Galena said.
Professional writers — one from San Diego and one from Tijuana — will each compose a piece on how where they live affects their lives.
The event’s opening celebration will take place Saturday, Oct. 12, at the Liberty Station Command Center, featuring live music, free workshops beginning at noon and a reception at 2 p.m. The exhibit will be open to the public all month.
“We will have a workshop where we teach students how to do a painting conveying an emotion and then how to use the painting to make a floral arrangement,” Galena said.
The emotions will be based on the public’s responses to questions posed in May about their thoughts and emotions about living in the border region.
“It’s going to be really beautiful and very colorful,” Galena said.
Workshop s will begin in August. For more information, follow Liberty Station on Instagram.
“We want to bring an experience about what it feels like to be in an area of the world that we feel is truly unique,” Galena said.
At the end of the day, she said, the event is an opportunity for people “to experience the contrast and the fusion of two worlds in a way they haven’t thought about before.”
“For people to experience the ‘wow’ factor in what they see would be success,” she said.
For more information about Liberty Station and the NTC Foundation, visit libertystation.com and ntcfoundation.org.
Elling writes for the U-T Community Press.
