The new San Diego Central Library

copyright: John Durant

All nine floors of the new Central Library have art on the walls, and occasionally on the floor. Commissioned works, large and small, have been smoothly integrated into its interior. Architect Rob Quigley has designed a public destination that is decisively hospitable to art.

The Art Gallery resides on the ninth floor. The inaugural show is Renewed: A Short Story About the San Diego Public Library’s Visual Arts Program (through March 29) and it was organized by Kathryn Kanjo, Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. The show pays tribute to this program, established by librarian and former art critic Mark-Elliott Lugo in 1997 and developed by him with great success through 2012, when he retired.

The gallery is handsome and well suited to the small and medium scale works on view. Kanjo has included some of San Diego’s better-known artists, eight in all. Gail Roberts’ seductive paintings depict magnified versions of bird nests superimposed on pages from classic literary texts that speak of feathered creatures. Photography is particularly strong: Philipp Scholz Rittermann’s tightly composed landscapes and Suda House’s sensuous compositions featuring fabric both make beautiful use of line and form. A pair of Jeff Irwin’s masterful sculptures in glazed earthenware depicts animal heads in the manner of grotesque hunters’ trophies.

Unfortunately, though, Kanjo’s concept for the show feels like a half-hearted tribute to Lugo’s program. The only connection between what he achieved and what she chose is this: the exhibited artists also appeared in one or another of Lugo’s exhibitions at the Pacific Beach branch. Surely some of the history of what he exhibited, during his 15-year run, could have been integrated into the works selected.

The gallery and the spaces outside its doors are united by the presence of Kenneth Capps’ sculptures. There is a judicious sampling of them: slender vertical works in his zinc on steel Prism series are one of the highlights, alternating closed and open space with grace and elegance. It was Lugo’s desire to exhibit Capps’ work when the library opened, a wish that was wisely fulfilled.

Lugo had accumulated some 150 works that are now part of the Civic Art Collection. Many examples, supplemented by other gifts to the collection, can be found on every floor. Dana Springs, longtime public art program manager of the city’s Commission for Arts and Culture as well as it current interim executive director, worked with consultant Christine Jones—and together they created a deft installation of them throughout the library.

The eclectic mix is accessible, but a few works will stretch some visitors’ assumptions about art. Lugo championed one of San Diego’s homegrown conceptual artists, the late Russell Baldwin—some acquired were examples; others were gifted from a collection. There are 13 Baldwins in all, at various locales. At their best, they are beautiful objects that double as little philosophical essays about art and life. The installation of a pair of them, near the elevator bay on the second floor, is particularly inspired.

The central elevator bay is sure to attract attention for another reason: the immensely gifted brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre have created a large-scale permanent work, Corpus Callosum, which mostly resides within it. They funnel their virtuosic cut- and blown-glass techniques into the creation of grotesque, cartoonish figures that populate intricate hallucinatory dioramas.

The de la Torre brothers, who split their time between San Diego and Ensenada, aren’t the only widely recognized locals with a major commission in the Central Library. There is also Roy McMakin’s Recreations of Furniture Found Discarded in Alleys and on Curbs While Driving Around San Diego Several Bright Summer Afternoons with David.  Take the artist at his word(s). These objects, in a festive blue located on the eighth floor, are only the latest of his brilliant “recycling” projects.

Two more excellent public commissions underscore the success of art within the Central Library. New York-based Donald Lipski, widely known for public commissions, made 2,000 books into a cross between a sculptural relief and a found form mural. Hiding My Candy is in the library’s auditorium and it has a serendipitous function—as a sound dampener. Seattle artist Gary Hill, justly celebrated for his visually arresting video installations with highly philosophical scripts, has created a multi-screen mediation on mortality that bears repeated viewing.

A bit of advice for the dedicated art seeker: travel to all corners of some floors. It is part of the charm of this exemplary new civic space that art sometimes appears where you don’t expect to find it.

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Sandra Dijkstra

Sandra Dijkstra

My mom always thought I “read too much.” Ironic, coming from a reading teacher, but her chief concern was that I be attractive and find a good mate. Still, all that early reading, from Nancy Drew to Jane Eyre, clearly made a difference, as my love for books grew from a guilty pleasure to a thriving livelihood.

Indeed, if there were another strong influence on me (besides my mother), it would have to be the location in which I found myself. Mine is very much a San Diego story, in that so many San Diegans and local institutions, private and public, seem to have brought me where I am today. Hillary Clinton famously said “It takes a village,” and, in my case, it took our city—and our coast!

Perhaps it all started when my lengthy graduate work at UCSD was wearing thin. I decided to please my mother and got my first real teaching job at Mesa College in the French Department. Soon thereafter, SDSU’s Women’s Studies Program, where I’d begun teaching as an adjunct, decided not to hire me as an assistant professor when an opening arose. That led me to approach the newly established San Diego office of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, which also declined to hire me for an opening as associate editor. And then, when UCSD’s student newspaper outed me as a progressive professor, and no one from the Literature Department came to my defense (except for my husband, a colleague), I realized that I should go into full-time agenting.

Many of my initial successes with authors came directly from my San Diego connections and the community. For example, Lillian Faderman’s Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present, which is still in print, was my first sale to a New York publisher (William Morrow). It was a book and a relationship birthed by UCSD Interlibrary Loan staffer Fran Newman, who urged me to meet Lillian when she heard I was starting a women writers’ group. Today, Lillian Faderman is the award-winning “Queen of Lesbian and Gay Studies,” currently writing a book on gay rights, the civil rights issue of our time, for Simon & Schuster—her biggest book yet.

Another San Diego connection resulted in Dessa Rose, originally a novella by Sherley Anne Williams, first published in Black-Eyed Susans. In 1984, I suggested to Sherley Anne, then a UCSD literature professor, that she consider expanding it into a novel. Now a classic in African-American Studies across the country, it also became a Lincoln Center play, though Sherley Anne never lived to see that, sadly.

And from North County, Janell Cannon’s Stellaluna came in as a manuscript with images, both created by Janell, which the then-local publisher (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) said needed to be radically changed. Not having children and not being a reader of kids’ books, I felt they were wrong, but needed experts on my side. So, I went to the great bookseller Susan Malk (who now runs the Scripps Aquarium bookstore). Her White Rabbit bookstore on Girard in La Jolla boasted several excellent staff readers, all of whom proclaimed that our version would be “a Caldecott Award winner,” whereas the publisher’s preferred, bland version would be rejected by their store. The rest is history. The author’s draft of Stellaluna became one of the biggest-selling childrens’ books of that year, is now a classic, and led to a stellar book-writing and illustrating career for Janell Cannon.

The new Central Library

The new San Diego Central Library, designed by Rob Quigley

I also benefitted (as have many local authors) from the support of San Diego’s terrific independent booksellers, some of whom are sadly missed today. Family-owned Warwick’s in La Jolla strides on valiantly, the torch long ago passed from Barbara Christman to Adrian Newell. To this day Warwick’s is a must-stop for nationally touring authors. The much-missed Milane Christiansen created The Book Works, which became action central for political authors like Paul Krugman and literary stars like Chitra Divakaruni. Carole Carden, whose Del Mar-based Esmeralda was a gem (she now runs Solo in Solana Beach, which features design and architecture books, among many other wonderful things). From Coronado, Barbara Chambers carries on the great bookseller tradition at Bay Books, which she learned from Shirley Muller, while MaryElizabeth Hart’s Mysterious Galaxy does so well that she’s founded a sister store in Redondo Beach. And of course, the treasured D.G. Wills thrives still in La Jolla. I’m grateful for the many San Diego readers who still understand how important it is to support this family of booksellers, especially in the age of Amazon.

Of course, over the years, we fought our share of battles. The most notorious was the writing community’s threat to appear in the Copley lobby, Fahrenheit 451-style, carrying a coffin filled with the books of authors who wouldn’t get reviewed if the San Diego Union-Tribune shut down its Book Review. We won that one, at least for a few years. Book Review editors, especially Arthur Salm and Bob Pincus, and then Jim Chute, gave coverage to important authors’ books and visits. Today, we treasure John Wilkens and Peter Rowe at the U-T, though book coverage has shrunk to just one page. Looking back, both my agency and my authors would have had a tougher time without the support of book reviewers and feature writers like Ed Hutshing and Noel Osment. (Noel profiled Amy Tan for the U-T, to the great chagrin of Amy’s then-publisher, Putnam, which wanted to give the Los Angeles Times priority.)

Though not a local herself, Amy Tan has plenty of San Diego in her story, too. Just a few years into agenting (in 1989), I took to New York a proposal for a novel entitled The Joy Luck Club. Overnight, it became a bestseller. On the day of her paperback auction [when publishing houses try to outbid each other for the rights to the paperback edition of a bestselling book], Amy came to Del Mar so we could be together during the exciting process. Eight houses were participating (before today’s consolidation in publishing, which became “the Big Six,” and then “the Big Five” with the merging of Random House and Penguin), each wanting the privilege of acquiring it. As we sat on the deck of Il Fornaio that day 24 years ago, looking out at the Pacific, we couldn’t know that Amy would be making publishing and literary history—not only on that deal, but because the book itself would sell into so many countries (35!), and become a world classic.

Indeed, we are a family—we San Diego friends of the book—and, looking back, I have no regrets, only thanks, to each and every good and generous teacher, librarian, bookselling professional, author (and even my strong contrarian mother, and wonderful husband, author Bram Dijkstra), who supported my transition from reader, to teacher, to agent, having found lots of joy and luck here in San Diego.

As the new San Diego Central Library opens its doors, I’m reminded of how important libraries are to writers. Here’s Amy Tan, as a child, writing about “What the Library Means to Me”:

I love school because the many things I learn seem to turn on a light in the little room in my mind. I can see a lot of things I have never seen before. I can read many interesting books by myself now. I love to read. My father takes me to the library every two weeks, and I check five or six books out at a time. These books seem to open many windows in my little room. I can see many wonderful things outside. I always look forward to go to the library.

The new San Diego Central Library opens September 28. Amy Tan’s new novel, The Valley of Amazement,  will be released in November, and she’ll be appearing at Warwick’s in La Jolla on December 9.

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