Twenty-eight Quotes from Twenty-eight Years
2008
“In a city where even the most seasoned choreographer scrambles to find a venue, Sushi’s New Wave Showcase is a valuable opportunity. The Showcase, which started in 2003, commissions and premieres new works by emerging San Diego and Tijuana artists. The works presented last weekend were imaginative and boldly original. That youthful untarnished sense of freedom was a pervasive theme throughout the program, and it was refreshing.”
-Kris Eitland, sandiego.com
2007
“Edginess is back with the re-emergence of downtown San Diegos Sushi Performance & Visual Art… its new/old home will be in the Icon Complex, which is the site of its former residence, the old East Village ReinCarnation building… Icon has made available an approximately 5,000-square-foot, first floor area for the group, and founder Lynn Schuette will serve as interim executive director… always, the unusual is usual with Sushi.”
- Darlene G. Davies, Ranch & Coast Magazine
2006
“Sushi Performance & Visual Art has endeavored to satisfy [the hunger for something different] for 26 years, introducing San Diego to such performance-art mavericks as David Cale, Rachel Rosenthal, Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller… In its quarter-century in San Diego, Sushi comes closest to being an accessible underground entity, one with a devoted base of support and traditional-media coverage.”
- David L. Coddon, San Diego Union-Tribune
2005
“Sushi Performance & Visual Art has become synonymous with an adventurous urban art experience and has been likened to what one would find in San Francisco or New York. The work is fresh, just outside of the mainstream, and pretty much guaranteed to broaden your perspectives, aesthetics, and circle of friends.”
- sdBUZZ.com
2004
“The venerable downtown organization, founded by Lynn Schuette in 1980 and long a national force for progressive art and performance will move out of its space in the ReinCarnation Building near Petco Park after the coming weekends program title “The Last Dance.”
- Anne Marie Welsh, San Diego Union-Tribune
2003
“Sushi Performance & Visual Art has become synonymous with an adventurous urban art experience and has been likened to what one would find in San Francisco or New York. The work is fresh, just outside of the mainstream, and pretty much guaranteed to broaden your perspectives, aesthetics, and circle of friends. Sushi audience members and performers are within hands reach of each other, creating an atmosphere that is charged with intimacy and energy.”
- Project New Village
2002
“In a time when the power of theatre is largely deployed, and accepted as mainstream commercial entertainment, its a joy to see an artist who can, as she puts it, chop my own wood and carry my own water.” (Rhodessa Jones in “Hot Flashes, Power Surges and Private Summers”)
- Jennifer de Poyen, San Diego Union-Tribune
2001
“Sushi has been an advanced organization any big city would be proud to call it’s own.
It was enlivening downtown during all the years there was no one there. Support it. Cherish what it means to the city’s cultural life.”
-San Diego Union Tribune
2000
“No art scene can survive long without spaces that emphasize young and emerging artist… Thankfully, the exhibition program at Sushi Performance and Visual Art endures;
its been a platform for little-seen artists since the 1980s.”
- Robert Pincus, San Diego Union Tribune
1999
“No local institution has enriched San Diego culture more than Sushi Performance & Visual Art. For many, Sushi has helped expand and redefine what art can be. Since 1980, Sushi has provided a venue for performance artists — it introduced the genre to San Diego!”
- KPBS On Air Magazine
1998
“when Sushi Performance & Visual Art opened “Black Choreographers Moving” at
the Lyceum in Horton Plaza — the enthusiastic audience was rewarded with a powerful program that touched on matters of ethnicity, along with a panoply of other equally powerful issues.
- Jennifer de Poyen, San Diego Union-Tribune
1997
“Sushi, to savvy San Diegans, has long meant more than a fish delicacy. The name also represents a performance venue that for nearly two decades has enriched our area with cutting-edge productions and artists that we likely wouldnt have seen otherwise. The company has changed locations and leaders, but its commitment to quality presentations remains a constant.”
-Don Braunagel, San Diego Magazine
1996
“Says Pam Hamilton, senior vice president of the Centre City Development Corp: Were looking at that Sushi Space as a community facility — one of the things envisioned in the Centre City East plan is cultural and community facilities — Sushis need for space and the citys desire for a revitalized downtown have made them good bedfellows.”
- Anne Marie Welsh, San Diego Union-Tribune
1995
“The work at Sushi often left me crashed upon the shores of my own bigotry and ignorance, and I am a better and bigger person for those painful and confusing encounters. I can hardly imagine a more satisfying and important role in the culture
than the gift Lynn Schuette brought to San Diego in changing peoples lives.”
- Charles Wilmoth, Uptown Newsmagazine
1994
“Before Culture Clash” and Whoopi Goldberg and Eric Bogosian played theatres and television, Sushi presented them. Before Guillermo Gomez-Pena became a MacArthur Foundation genius, Sushi made him an artist-in-residence. Before choreographers Bebe Miller and Joe Goode wowed New York, Sushi presented them.”
- Anne Marie Welsh, San Diego Union-Tribune
1993
“No producing organization in San Diego is more intrepid than Sushi. Period. No one else even comes close.”
- Jeff Smith, San Diego Reader
1992
“Over the years, this small space has established a name for itself by bringing provocative performance, dance, and visual arts to San Diego. Sushi Gallery fills an important gap for San Diego audiences. Without it, many of us might not have the opportunity to experience the nationally-acclaimed artists who visit its stage.”
- Carol Davis, San Diego Jewish Times
1991
“What Schuette and Sushi do, in fact, may be less known than the work of, say, New Yorks The Kitchen or PS 122, but its just as vital to the field. Karen Finleys “We Keep Our Victims Ready” the solo that was buffeted by right-wing attacks during the NEA wars and just weeks ago played at UCLAs Wadsworth Theatre & premiered at Sushi in 1989″
- Jan Breslauer, LA Weekly
1990
“[Sushi] grew steadily, developing into a crucial component in this citys artistic life. All the while, Sushi has allowed an impressively bewildering variety of artists – of every race, creed, color, sexual orientation, and creative impulse – the chance to present their works in San Diego.”
- Michael Phillips, San Diego Union
1989
“Sushi begins its tenth season this fall, a happy birthday for an organization grown from near invisibility to one of the Citys most respected and – irreplaceable – arts institutions…
From the beginning, Schuettes programs have painted a picture of this countrys cultural democracy by featuring works by Latino, African-American, Chicano, Asian, gay, feminist, homeless, and even white male artists. All this long before the city bureaucracy jumped on the multicultural bandwagon.”
- Anne Marie Welsh, San Diego Union
1988
“What do you do for an encore after a musical extravaganza with dancing bulldozers, honking auto horns, and a potpourri of plugged-in household appliances? No problem for the adventurous Sushi Gallery. This little pocket of cutting-edge performance art… has been a haven for experimentation in the arts for years. Local critics laud Sushis innovative programming, and prominent artists around the country are spreading the word.”
- Eileen Sondak, Los Angeles Times
1987
“The most thrilling of these text/performance pieces came from (David) Schein and (Guillermo) Gomez-Pena, whose “Border-X-Fronters” is a dramatic poem in which personal, political and artistic concerns intersect and the work itself delineates a borderless region, a “juxtoland” where the richness and diversity of cultures is celebrated rather than feared.”
- Anne Marie Welsh, San Diego Union
1986
” Sushi showcases national and international acts, as well as established and emerging local artists… Experimental performance are risky, but the local media have praised Schuette for bringing in evocative, challenging performers and for choosing a good balance of material.”
- Brad Graves, San Diego Metropolitan Magazine
1985
“Lynn Schuette, depending on your point of view, is a world-class snake oil huckster or an impresario of rare talent and vision. Either way she has accomplished the impossible:
developing an audience in San Diego for some of the most avant-garde performers in the nation.”
-Hilliard Harper, Los Angeles Times
1984
“Theres a new tradition afoot in the land, an expansion of traditional notions of the art to include everything from the monumental operatic ventures of Robert Wilson and the thematically organized multi-media concerts of Laurie Anderson to the simple one-on-one experience of Whoopi Goldberg… Its happening in Paris and New York, in Brussels, Amsterdam, and Berlin; its been showing up lately at scattered performance spaces in Los Angeles and at the Sushi Gallery in San Diego.”
- Robert Hurwitt, California Magazine
1983
“The formula for enjoying Sushi, Inc., a unique downtown art space, is simple: expect the unexpected. Over the past three years, Sushi has become a staple in the art community. It has been home to everybody from sculptors to stand-up comediennes.”
- Kathryn Phillips, San Diego Union
1982
“The value of a place like SUSHI and its role in the art community should not be underestimated. San Diego has been put on the map performancewise and a communication has been established with other cities.”
- Isabelle Wasserman, San Diego Union
1981
“Lynn Schuette: She leases out (for receptions, workshops, rehearsals) her studio at 852 Eighth Street downtown, which she calls Sushi. There shes also presented more than forty public events – mostly performance art – in the last year, including Philip Galas, the Raw Fish Performance Collective, and Paul McCarthy.”
-San Diegos Movers & Shakers, The Reader
