San Diego, CA
Get lost in a ‘nurturing visual space’ of nature-based artwork
Becoming an artist really wasn’t the plan. Jennifer Anne Bennett was 18 and jumping off the cliffs in Hawaii when she saw a woman painting the landscape and flowers around them.
“I recall my amazement that this was something one could do on an afternoon on an island, just for the pleasure of it,” she says, setting it aside in her mind for at least a year until taking classes at Grossmont College in the early 1990s.
That’s when she took her first art class while working on a cross-cultural studies degree, later studying art at San Diego State University and earning her bachelor’s degree in 1998. After working in an art store, a gallery and as a security guard at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, she went to graduate school and got a teaching assistantship. Teaching also wasn’t something she’d previously considered, but it didn’t take long to find that she loved it.
“Teaching and making art are a perfect pairing, and a lifelong learner, I appreciate the opportunity to serve my students and the campus community,” she says, working as a professor of art at Grossmont College, where she’s been teaching since 2006. “After 25 years of teaching, I am excited to focus more on sharing my artwork with the larger San Diego community.”
Her abstract landscape paintings are currently on display, alongside works by Los Angeles-based artist Jeanne Dunn, in “Into the Woods: Resplendent” at the San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery through April 24. (Both artists will be part of an artist talk from 5 to 7 p.m. April 22 at the gallery.) Bennett has 28 pieces created between 2022 and earlier this year in this exhibition, ranging from smaller works on panels and larger works on canvas. An artist and educator, Bennett, 50, lives in San Diego’s Redwood Village neighborhood with her husband, artist John Brinton Hogan. She took some time to talk about her creative process, her relationship to nature, and some of her favorite local places to spend time outdoors.
Q: Can you talk a bit about your creative process for the works you created that people will see in this show? What were you thinking about as you went through concept to execution?
A: The works in this show were inspired by trips to Palm Springs and Mt. San Jacinto, Anza Borrego Desert and Indiana. My creative process is to recall how I felt in these places, the feelings and emotions I experienced there, the colors, temperatures and quality of light. Finally, if I work from images I took of the places, I work from poor-quality images so that I cannot get too precious or specific about details in the photographs.
I try not to think about it too much or I just won’t get to the painting part. Getting started is tough enough, so I mainly think about setting myself up for success to find time to get into the studio. Since I work full time, I need to carve out studio time over school breaks, on holidays and on the weekends.
Q: What did you want to say about nature and the idea of its splendor through the pieces you’ve chosen to include in this exhibition?
A: Painting these special places allows me to revisit and reimagine my time there. I can reconnect to my past visit and share that with the viewer while working in the studio, like visiting an old friend, but discovering something new as the conversation takes a surprising path as the artworks unfold with color and mark-making. The abstract landscapes invite the viewer to enter their world of light and space while the organic contour lines sing like notes across sheet music.
What I love about San Diego’s Redwood Village …
I love that Redwood Village and Rolando Park Community Councils collaborate on community cleanups. We also host our monthly meetings together. Go team!
Q: You were born in Hawaii and grew up in Lemon Grove? How would you describe your own relationship to nature? What you recall of your introduction to it, the impact it’s had on you in your life, when/how/in what ways it began to show up in and influence your artwork?
A: Growing up in the ‘70s, nature was the playground. We ran wild in the canyons, built things, drew in the dirt, made designs with rocks, costumes out of seaweed. I love the ocean, the pulse of the water and the sparkle of the sand. I think it found its way into my work without me giving it much thought.
Q: You’ve said that you “want to create a nurturing visual space where we can enter, explore, daydream, rendezvous with a lover or friend, enjoy music, or encounter the unexpected.” Why is it important to you to create that kind of nurturing quality in your work?
A: Perhaps that is why I turn to art, to find a sense of place that can bring one a moment of peace and beauty in a world where there is so much pain and anxiety. Moments in the safe space that is the world of this exhibition at the Mesa College gallery should come as valued and supported by those who visit.
Q: In the time that you’ve been teaching art, are there lessons or new perspectives that your students have taught you over the years?
A: I learn so much from my students! I love teaching, and I’ve learned that everyone learns differently. Never assume; repeat, ask them questions, be patient and laugh. I need to remember to apply those to my life and work!
Q: What inspires you in your artwork, in the creative process?
A: The quieting of the mind, getting in the zone, the meditative quality of making artwork.
Q: Do you have favorite local spots that you like to visit when you want to be in nature?
A: Anza Borrego Desert, Mission Trails Park, Coronado Beach, Chollas Lake. I am drawn to native plants and wildlife, as well as other local residents.
Q: What’s been challenging about your work as an artist?
A: Making time to get into the studio.
Q: What’s been rewarding about this work?
A: Bringing people joy when they see the work in person.
Q: What has this work taught you about yourself?
A: It has taught me that I like to work both large and small, and I want to work even larger!
Q: What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
A: To focus on what you can control.
Q: What is one thing people would be surprised to find out about you?
A: I did not do art as a child.
Q: Please describe your ideal San Diego weekend.
A: Mat pilates in the park, go for a green juice, walk or hike, then out for some pho. The next day, work in the garden with my husband, play with our cats, read and paint. I’m a homebody!
Originally Published:
The Jewish community in Southern California is sharing their fears and hopes following the weekend’s strikes on Iran and retaliatory attacks on Israel, U.S. military bases and other targets in the Middle East.
The exchange of missiles in the Middle East is having a devasting effect on Iran’s defense capability, but retaliatory strikes in the region are taking a toll.
“Weapons of enormous capacity that are targeting civilian areas,” said Elan Carr, CEO of Los Angeles-based Israeli American Council.
Carr says toppling the Iranian regime, taking out its nuclear capabilities and freeing the Iranian people from this oppressive rule should have been done decades ago.
“This is about seeing the most evil regime, the world chief state sponsored terrorism to no longer have the ability to do what it’s been doing,” Carr said.
Sara Brown, regional director of the American Jewish Committee, said the U.S. and Israel are concentrating strikes on Iran’s missile sites and military industrial complex. Iran’s retaliatory strikes are focused on many civilian targets.
“We are hearing from our partners from around the region, who are terrified,” Brown said. “Across the Middle East right now, I think there is a tremendous amount of fear, but also hope and also resolve.”
AJC is the advocacy arm for Jewish people globally. Many members and partner groups are in harm’s way. Brown says the risk is great, but the potential reward is world changing.
“That Iranian people will get to choose leadership for themselves, that we will finally see a pathway forward for peace across the Middle East,” Brown said.
If wars of the past hadn’t produced lasting peace, then why now? Carr says Iran’s nuclear capabilities are destroyed and Iran’s military and proxies are weakened after Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas ambush.
“No more terrorist network throughout the Middle East. Think of what that could mean. Think of the normalization we could see,” Carr said.
President Donald Trump expects fighting to last several weeks. Some critics are concerned about a drawn-out conflict that could spread.
Carr is not convinced.
“Who is going to enter a war against the U.S. and Israel? Russia is plenty busy. China has no interest in jeopardizing itself this way,” Carr said.
Besides the six Americans killed as of Monday night, government officials say 11 people were killed in retaliatory strikes in Israel.
San Diego — Before we see elephants at Elephant Valley in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, we come face to face with destruction, only the wreckage is beautiful. A long, winding path takes guests around and under felled trees. Aged gray tree hunks form arches, for instance, over bridges that tower over clay-colored paths with hoof prints.
The design is meant to reorient us, to take us on a trail walked not by humans but traversed and carved by elephants, a creature still misunderstood, vilified and hunted for its cataclysmic-like ability to reshape land, and sometimes communities.
“It starts,” says Kristi Burtis, vice president of wildlife care for the Safari Park, “by telling the story that elephants are ecosystem engineers.”
Elephant Valley will open March 5 as the newest experience at the Escondido park, its aim to bring guests closer than ever to the zoo’s eight elephants, which range in age from 7 to 36, while more heavily focusing on conservation. The centerpiece of the 13-acre-plus parkland is a curved bridge overlooking a savanna, allowing elephants to walk under guests. But there are also nooks such as a cave that, while not previewed at a recent media event, will allow visitors to view elephants on their level.
In a shift from, say, the Safari Park’s popular tram tour, there are no fences and visible enclosures. Captive elephants remain a sometimes controversial topic, and the zoo’s herd is a mix of rescues and births, but the goal was to create a space where humans are at once removed and don’t impede on the relative free-roaming ability of the animals by keeping guests largely elevated. As an example of just how close people can get to the herd, there was a moment of levity at the event when one of the elephants began flinging what was believed to be a mixture of dirt and feces up onto the bridge.
“Our guests are going to be able to see the hairs on an elephant,” Burtis says. “They can see their eyes. They can see the eyelashes. They can see how muscular their trunks are. It’s really going to be a different experience.”
Elephant Valley, complete with a multistory lodge with open-air restaurants and bars, boasts a natural design that isn’t influenced by the elephant’s African home so much as it is in conversation with it. The goal isn’t to displace us, but to import communal artistry — Kenyan wood and beadwork can be found in the pathways, resting spaces and more — as a show of admiration rather than imitation.
“We’re not going to pretend that we’re taking people to Africa,” says Fri Forjindam, now a creative executive with Universal’s theme parks but previously a lead designer on Elephant Valley via her role as a chief development officer at Mycotoo, a Pasadena-based experiential design firm.
“That is a slippery slope of theming that can go wrong really fast,” she adds. “How do we recognize where we are right now, which is near San Diego? How do we populate this plane with plants that are indigenous to the region? The story of coexistence is important. We’re not extracting from Africa, we’re learning. We’re not extracting from elephants, we’re sharing information.”
But designing a space that is elephant-first yet also built for humans presented multiple challenges, especially when the collaborating teams were aiming to construct multiple narratives around the animals. Since meetings about Elephant Valley began around 2019, the staff worked to touch on themes related to migration and conservation. And there was also a desire to personalize the elephants.
“Where can we also highlight each of the elephants by name, so they aren’t just this huge herd of random gray creatures?” Forjindam says. “You see that in the lodge.”
That lodge, the Mkutano House — a phrase that means “gathering” in Swahili — should provide opportunities for guests to linger, although zoo representatives say reservations are recommended for those who wish to dine in the space (there will also be a walk-up, to-go window). Menus have yet to be released, but the ground floor of the structure, boasting hut-like roofing designed to blend into the environment, features close views of the elephant grazing pool as well as an indoor space with a centerpiece tree beneath constellation-like lighting to mimic sunrises and sunsets.
Throughout there are animal wood carvings and beadwork, the latter often hung from sculptures made of tree branches. The ceiling, outfitted with colorful, cloth tapestries designed to move with the wind, aims to create less friction between indoor and outdoor environments.
There are, of course, research and educational goals of the space as well. The Safari Park works, for instance, with the Northern Rangelands Trust and Loisaba Conservancy in Kenya, with an emphasis on studying human-elephant conflict and finding no-kill resolutions. Nonprofits and conservation groups estimate that there are today around 415,000 elephants in Africa, and the African savanna elephant is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Studies of the zoo’s young elephants is shared with the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in the hopes of delivering care to elephant youth to prevent orphanage. Additionally, the Safari Park has done extensive examination into the endotheliotropic herpes virus. “The data that we collect from elephants here, you can’t simply get from elephants in the wild,” Burtis says.
One of the two entrances to Elephant Valley is outfitted with bee boxes; bees are known to be a natural elephant deterrent and can help in preventing the animals from disrupting crops or communities. To encourage more natural behavior, the plane is outfitted with timed feeders in an attempt to encourage movement throughout the acreage and establish a level of real-life unpredictability in hunting for resources. Water areas have been redesigned with ramps and steps to make it easier for the elephants to navigate.
With Elephant Valley, Forjindam says the goal was to allow visitors to “observe safely in luxury — whatever that is — but not from a position of power, more as a cohabitor of the Earth, with as much natural elements as possible. It’s not to impose dominance. Ultimately, it needed to feel natural. It couldn’t feel like a man-made structure, which is an antiquated approach to any sort of safari experience where animals are the product, a prize. In this experience, this is the elephant’s home.”
And the resulting feel of Elephant Valley is that we, the paying customers, are simply their house guests.
A man in the Mission Bay Park community of San Diego was fatally struck Sunday morning by a hit-and run vehicle, authorities said.
The victim was also struck by a second vehicle and that motorist stayed at the scene to cooperate with officers, the San Diego Police Department reported.
The initial crash occurred at about 2:20 a.m. Sunday in the area of West Mission Bay and Sea World drives.
The pedestrian was in the southbound lanes of the 2000 block of West Mission Bay Drive when he was struck by a silver vehicle also in the southbound lanes. That vehicle fled the scene, continuing southbound, police said.
A 28-year-old man driving his vehicle southbound ran over the downed pedestrian.
“That driver remained at the scene and is not DUI,” according to a police statement. “The pedestrian was pronounced deceased at the scene.”
Anyone with information regarding the initial crash was urged to call Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.
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