Regretfully, THE COLLECTOR has had to postpone its premiere until Fall, 2011. Please check here, or at the site of Animal Cracker Conspiracy for more information or updates.

(Arguably) New Work

by Bob Matheny

For more than five decades Bob Matheny has been known as an influential artist and teacher working in San Diego. In that time he has created a wide-ranging body of work that is propositional in nature; viewers encounter comical, if somewhat puzzling artworks designed to advance ideas for their consideration. Sushi Performance and Visual Art has the opportunity to exhibit a series of photographs recently created by Matheny which feature as its subject matter the artist’s own sculpture, this time recast in seemingly conventional still life portraits.

Bob Matheny’s work defies easy categorization. He works across conventional media – painting, sculpture, photography, video and performance. He often creates work for highly unconventional settings – the air, the state of Utah, a single viewer. And he typically avoids signing his work, often attributing it to various personae or simply signing it “anonymous.”

In Arguably New Work Matheny challenges the permanence of meaning in an artwork by using his own sculpture and painting, which he has been creating since 1963, as raw material for still life photographs. In so doing, Matheny not only proposes that an artwork’s meaning changes over time, but he offers the public a glimpse of a highly productive octogenarian who prefers to make art without producing more objects.

Bio
Bob Matheny (b. 1929, Santa Ana, CA) earned his bachelors and masters degrees from Long Beach State College (now Cal State Long Beach). In 1961 he joined the faculty at Southwestern College as the first full-time instructor in the Art Department. At Southwestern he founded the art gallery, protested against the war in Vietnam, and battled administration about issues of censorship and academic freedom. All the while, Bob Matheny maintained an active art practice. His work spans all media, and included many forms which challenge a conventional art viewing context.

This exhibit is curated by Brian Goeltzenleuchter

Join us Saturday, April 30 from 2 – 5 pm as we celebrate this stunning work with a reception for the artist.

The gallery is open during every performance event, and Wednesday’s – Friday’s 2-6pm. Please feel free to call ahead of time.

GOTHIC CATHEDRAL

A sculptural installation by Cheryl Nickel

Cheryl Nickel is an artist with a Master’s Degree in landscape architecture from Cornell University.  She has exhibited installation and sculptural work in various media at Cornell University Art Galleries. Johnson Art Museum, Ithaca, New York,  Loma Linda University, Riverside, CA. Group shows  include: Grove Gallery UCSD ,Palomar College. Mira Mesa College, and  Escondido Center for the Arts.

Public projects/ Environmental works include: environmental sculptures for the Ithaca Arts Festival; design/build arts and landscape projects in parks and schools in 5 states, including Hoover High School, San DIego.  Awards have included four New York State Council on the Arts Grants for art,  design and planning; Cornell Council for the Creative and Performing Arts; San Diego State Foundation/ Price Charities, and Lowe’s Community Grant.

Current work includes a major environmental piece under construction, “Path of the Just” at La Sierra University in Riverside, CA.. that honors world leaders including Desond Tutu and Mother Theresa. She is a member of Allied Craftsmen, a Board Member of Synergy Arts Foundation, and co-founder of space4art.

Join us Friday, March 4 from 6 – 9 pm as we celebrate this stunning work with a reception for the artist.

The popular Los Angeles-based reading series, Vermin on the Mount returns to San Diego for one night only. Enjoy a night of irreverent readings at Sushi Performance & Visual Art in the heart of the East Village on Saturday, February 19 at 8pm.

Vermin on the Mount, now in its seventh year, features an eclectic mix of fiction, nonfiction, taunts and lies from award-winning literary artists from New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Diego. Renowned San Diego artist Perry Vasquez created the poster for the show.

Last summer Jim Ruland, the curator and host of Vermin on the Mount, brought the series to Sushi. “The gallery filled up in five minutes flat. We had to move the show into the performance to accommodate the crowd. The San Diego literary scene is starving for events like this.”

Vermin the Mount is the antidote to boring bookstore readings and stuffy academic appearances. Authors sell their books and magazines in a festive environment. Beer and wine will be available for purchase. Everyone has a chance to win fabulous prizes in the free Vermin raffle. Best of all, Vermin on the Mount is free and open to the public!

Vermin on the Mount gets its name from the Mountain Bar in L.A.’s Chinatown where the series has been held since the summer of 2004. Photos, performer bios, and show posters can be found at the vermin.blogs.com

Tickets

Free | Books by the Authors and Drinks available for purchase.

Performers

New York writer Mike Faloon celebrates his new collection of stories and essays, The Hanging Gardens of Split Rock. Mike is the publisher of the music zine Go Metric and the baseball zine Zisk.

Heather Fowler’s debut collection of thematically linked short stories, Suspended Heart, was published by Aqueous Books in January of 2011. She lives in San Diego.

Tammy Greenwood is the author of numerous novels, including Two Rivers, The Hungry Season, and This Glittering World, which was just released by Kensington Books in January 2011.
Ikoi Hiroe was born in the land of tentacles and temples with a gypsy childhood scampering all over red, white and blue. She has performed with San Diego performing arts collective So Say We All.

David Philip Mullins’s debut collection of stories, Greetings from Below, is the recipient of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction from Sarabande Books. David grew up in Las Vegas, received his MFA at Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and teaches writing at Creighton University in Nebraska.

Todd Taylor has been publishing Razorcake Fanzine the nation’s only non-profit independent music zine, since 2001. He is also the author of the novel Shirley Wins and Born to Rock: Heavy Drinkers and Thinkers, a collection of interviews. Todd lives in Los Angeles.

Perry Vasquez is a San Diego artist and educator whose paintings, performances, and prints have been shown at numerous museums, galleries and art spaces, including the New Children’s Museum in San Diego, San Diego Museum of Art, and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. He teaches at Southwestern College.

San Diego native Bonnie ZoBell’s short stories have received numerous accolades and awards. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and is the Creative Writing Coordinator at San Diego Mesa College.

Jim Ruland is the organizer and host of Vermin on the Mount. He writes book reviews for the Los Angeles Times and pop culture stories for San Diego CityBeat. He is the author of the short story collection Big Lonesome and the recipient of a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Tickets now on sale.  Click here for more information!

In partnership with ArtPower! and the University of California San Diego Department of Theatre and Dance, Sushi creates our own Wonderland dance experience in the west coast’s new international festival of contemporary dance.

This three-day interchange of choreographic creation sparks a new future for dance in San Diego. International, national and local artists will present a thrilling range of movement and performance at venues downtown and on campus giving audiences the ability to experience the wonderland of dance.

This year’s festival participants include the award-winning ensembles Kate Weare Company, Monica Bill Barnes and Company, Chunky Move, and Lux Boreal Danza Contemporánia.

In addition to performances, Wonderland presents artist-to-artist exchange, site-specific creations, community classes, interactive movement play and fantastic parties for all. For a schedule of events, ticket prices, and more, visit wonderlanddance.org.

Tickets

Purchase tickets now.

May and June is a multi-disciplinary, multi-genre performance piece by Rachael Lincoln and Leslie Seiters that evokes the moments when movement becomes language, objects become characters and everyday logic becomes suspended.

Developed by Rachael Lincoln and Leslie Seiters and collaborators, videographer/photographer RJ Muna and sound designer Margaret Noble, this multi-media time-lapse performance spans decades of May and June’s lives, remaining theatrically in the world of magical realism. Shot with fixed camera positions from identical frontal and bird’s eye views, the entire set appears to tilt 90 degrees creating visual disorientation and a skewed sense of gravity.