{"id":453325,"date":"2026-09-04T12:52:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T12:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/453325\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T12:52:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T12:52:42","slug":"31-people-shaping-san-diegos-creative-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/453325\/","title":{"rendered":"31 People Shaping San Diego\u2019s Creative Scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Diego is full of people who deserve a few thousand words on what they make, who they bring together, and how their work changes the city around them. The artists, makers, advocates, and behind-the-scenes talent<\/a> below are a small part of that larger ecosystem.<\/p>\n

To help us narrow our list, we looked for names that kept coming up, work that reflects the diversity of our region, and people building something bigger than themselves. <\/p>\n

Across studios, stages, classrooms, and neighborhoods<\/a>, they\u2019re giving San Diego more reasons to gather and the rest of the world more reasons to visit. Here are 31 locals helping shape San Diego\u2019s creative scene.<\/p>\n

Bilal Bikile<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in San Diego have stopped complaining about what we don\u2019t have, and they started doing it here,\u201d says Bilal Bikile.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

Behind a secret(ish) door on Logan Avenue, curator Bilal Bikile<\/a> welcomes visitors to his exhibition and gathering space, Deixis Gallery<\/a>, where he hosts \u201cSalon de Deixis\u201d every Tuesday. Here, community members circle up and hash out a weekly topic.<\/p>\n

Some nights, it\u2019s art. Children\u2019s literature, Bikile says, sparked a more heated conversation than the one about how society would function without a police force. Other evenings bring surprise guests, like a chef. Bikile curates these conversations as much as exhibitions. \u201cSome people call it group therapy; others call it a cult,\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n

Any given Tuesday, there\u2019s a breakthrough. \u201cMy nervous system has regulated,\u201d a participant told Bikile once. Building spaces to deepen connections between creatives is Bikile\u2019s goal: He met Art Power Equity founder Kamaal Martin at the now-closed Swish Projects, which led to both a CreativeMornings talk and a friendship.<\/p>\n

Raised in Paradise Hills, Bikile finds happiness easily in San Diego and thinks the city will soon be known for creative collaboration, adding that it\u2019s underrated that San Diegans smile and make eye contact. \u201cEveryone\u2019s welcome in every neighborhood,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u2014LG<\/p>\n

Kerianne Quick<\/p>\n

Kerianne Quick<\/a> sees themself as part of a larger community. A materialsmith working with unconventional materials, Quick\u2019s a jewelry designer, professor, and curator. They explore jewelry as functional art, and how materials carry meaning.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike other art forms, jewelry is not on a wall,\u201d they say. \u201cIt lives with you; it\u2019s touching you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quick studied at SDSU\u2019s storied metalwork and design studio and now leads it, preparing the next generation of materialsmiths.<\/p>\n

They want to change outsiders\u2019 view of San Diego\u2019s art scene as \u201cflyover country\u201d between Tijuana and LA, and their curatorial work\u2014like the recent SoCal SoCraft series\u2014aspires to make San Diego a destination for handwork artists. Still, they worry about affordability. \u201cBecause of our high living cost, so many craftspeople are dual practice\u2014making cabinets for a living and making weird stuff as an artist on the side.\u201d<\/p>\n

They see San Diego creatives \u201cgetting scrappy,\u201d finding collaborative solutions instead of relying on grants.<\/p>\n

Quick\u2019s next curation project, \u201cBecoming Heirlooms\u201d (on view at Central Library)<\/a>, explores objects as repositories for shared experiences: \u201cWhat if there was an heirloom object for San Diego? What would it be?\u201d Porcelain vases inspired by\u2014of all things\u2014the 805 bridge over Mission Valley. A rooster-shaped belt buckle covered with pop culture images from an artist\u2019s cross-border upbringing. It\u2019s all here.\u00a0\u2014LG<\/p>\n

Kelvin Lopez<\/p>\n

Most people would say printmaking\u2019s about the press<\/a>: the ink stains, the steel rollers, the limestone slabs. Kelvin Lopez would argue it\u2019s about the people gathered around them.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

Founder of the San Diego Printmaking Society (SDPS), Lopez is turning a once hard-to-access art form into something community-driven. In two years, he\u2019s brought printmakers from across the globe to San Diego, and created opportunities for local artists through exhibitions, workshops, and a permanent studio with classes and open print days.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want this space accessible to everyone,\u201d Lopez says, noting scholarships are central to the mission.<\/p>\n

Printmaking wasn\u2019t an obvious home for Lopez at first. The tools were unfamiliar, the process intimidating, the work spaces out of reach. That changed at Cal State Long Beach, where mentors and fellow printmakers\u2014Kimiko Miyoshi, Tava Tedesco, and Jennifer Chen\u2014encouraged him to explore the medium and showed him the power of a creative collective. He earned an MFA in printmaking at Rhode Island School of Design.<\/p>\n

That became the foundation for SDPS, connecting creative pockets from Barrio Logan to Tijuana. \u201cIf I had a superpower, it\u2019d be building community,\u201d Lopez says.<\/p>\n

SDPS is proof: Heritage isn\u2019t left untouched behind glass, but reimagined and passed from hand to hand.\u00a0\u2014ID<\/p>\n

Dennis \u201cDizzy\u201d Doan<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

\u201cBorn from resilience. Built through rebellion. Rooted in purpose.\u201d That\u2019s Dennis \u201cDizzy\u201d Doan<\/a>\u2019s tagline for his shop, BLVCK LOTVS TATTOO. It fits him, too.<\/p>\n

A first-gen Vietnamese American, Doan\u2019s first tattoo machine was an RC motor attached to a guitar string. A friend gave him the homemade device when he was 15\u2014shortly after his mother left the family and his father, haunted by the Vietnam War, spent most nights drinking alone. It became Doan\u2019s lifeline.<\/p>\n

He taught himself the art form by watching a DVD, boiling India ink from a craft store. \u201cThat seemed to be the theme when I was growing up,\u201d he says. \u201cYou had to be a product of your environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clients come from far-flung places to get a Doan, some coming for over 20 years, now with their kids and grandkids. His real reach shows in The Doan Foundation<\/a>, which he founded, and its unrestricted grants built to break the cycle he experienced firsthand. Nonprofit workers told him about students who got accepted into good schools but couldn\u2019t afford a plane ticket to get there. Doan makes sure they can.<\/p>\n

Now a San Diego Arts & Culture commissioner (the first Vietnamese American in the seat), he says, \u201cWhy not open a door for the next person?\u201d Roots meet purpose.\u00a0\u2014AB<\/p>\n

Charles McPherson<\/p>\n

Talking to Charles McPherson<\/a>\u2014San Diego\u2019s alto sax icon who spent years playing with legends Charles Mingus and Barry Harris\u2014is like listening to jazz: inviting, thrilling, quick to find a groove. The improvisation takes an intentional meander and just when it seems like chaos is king, everything comes together with a new perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all connected,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

McPherson still thinks drummer Billy Higgins nailed the description of bebop as a \u201csanctified intelligence\u201d\u2014a fusion of gospel and church music with the best composers of European classical music. \u201cThat covers the whole human spectrum of art\u2014the intellect, spirituality, soul, craftsmanship,\u201d he says. \u201cHow are you gonna beat that? No music has since.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman | Pictured: DAUCH\u00c9 (left), Charles McPherson (center), Kate Hatmaker (right)<\/p>\n

McPherson\u2019s still composing and teaching at age 87. Musicians of all ages<\/a> seek him out for coaching, advice, or just to hear him talk. Catch him at \u201cDetroit to San Diego: A Jazz Celebration Honoring Charles McPherson,\u201d a concert and film screening of\u00a0Jazz From Detroit, featuring the icon, on Feb. 19\u201320, 2027.\u00a0\u2014AB<\/p>\n

DAUCH\u00c9<\/p>\n

It started as two sisters in a National City family room\u2014toy mic, and their parents spinning R&B and gospel tracks. DJ DAUCH\u00c9<\/a>, who spent time at her grandparents home in Paradise Hills, the Urban League, and the YMCA, says Southeast San Diego shaped her.<\/p>\n

This year, when Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz needed a DJ for their \u201cGiants\u201d exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego<\/a>, they called her.<\/p>\n

DAUCH\u00c9 trained with DJ Artistic (\u201che didn\u2019t just share the stage; he made it bigger,\u201d she says), spun for local kids after school, and promoted friends\u2019 gigs. Her talent and community-building instinct manifested in a nine-year global dream tour with LA\u2019s Colors Worldwide, then a Comic-Con activation, and San Diego FC<\/a>\u2019s World Cup parties.<\/p>\n

Wherever she sets up, it tends to be a vibrant, joyous, and inclusive scene.\u00a0\u2014GC<\/p>\n

Kate Hatmaker<\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, violinist Kate Hatmaker<\/a> won a San Diego Symphony chair, moved from Chicago, and found a highly individualized music scene. \u201cSan Diego felt like too small a town for people to be this atomized,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

So, she co-founded a nonprofit called Art of Elan<\/a> with flutist Demarre McGill, bringing classical music to nontraditional spaces. In their 20th season, they\u2019re planning events at Mingei International Museum, along ICA San Diego\u2019s sculpture trail, and in Borrego Springs\u2014which this October will include a nature-immersed performance of Olivier Messiaen\u2019s \u201cDes Canyons Aux \u00c9toiles.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ll be hearing the stars come out in the music,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

What she wants for San Diego\u2019s culture is new habits: \u201cWe\u2019re all on the couch, doom-scrolling. Pick a neighborhood, any given night, [and in five years,] there\u2019ll be something worth getting up for.\u201d\u00a0\u2014JB<\/p>\n

Mashonda Tifrere<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

Before Mashonda Tifrere<\/a> was a curator, she was a singer alongside names you may have heard of: Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Nas, and DMX. In 2016, she shifted her focus and founded ArtLeadHer and Art Genesis, two nonprofit organizations that platform emerging, underrepresented artists and give women and teenage girls a foothold in the visual arts. Since then, she\u2019s curated more than 40 exhibitions and worked with over 250 women artists<\/a> worldwide.<\/p>\n

Last year, Tifrere launched Inscape, a mindfulness audio tour paired with the Stuart Collection\u2019s sculptures at UC San Diego. This past winter, she curated an exhibit at Mandeville Art Gallery celebrating the late artist, author, and one-time UCSD professor Faith Ringgold. And this summer, she curated \u201cSomewhere in Between\u201d at Quint Gallery in La Jolla<\/a>, spotlighting local and international talent side by side. The woman doesn\u2019t seem to rest.<\/p>\n

Tifrere is now curating her first exhibition with MCASD featuring the work of NYC-based Swoon\u2014one of the first female street artists to gain international acclaim in the male-dominated format\u2014while also launching an art and wellness residency built for women creators. Having dedicated herself \u201cto building a vibrant community of creators and cultural thinkers,\u201d in her adopted city, Tifrere seems to have found her stride: \u201cI\u2019m all about connecting the dots and bringing that big New York energy and creative drive to San Diego.\u201d\u00a0\u2014AB<\/p>\n

Katie Ruiz<\/p>\n

A pom-pom sits somewhere between fuzzy yarn and a tiny act of optimism. It begins with softness: a bundle of thread, a handmade ball, a textile passed down through generations\u2014gentle materials that don\u2019t usually carry conversations about borders. In Katie Ruiz<\/a>\u2019s hands, they do.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

Ruiz created The Pompom Project<\/a>, a community art program transforming thousands of pom-poms into large-scale installations across the region, including at the Oceanside Museum of Art and ICA San Diego.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call it community craftivism,\u201d Ruiz says. \u201cThe revolution has to be soft, and we have to lead with softness.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a Tijuana-born father and US-born mother, Ruiz\u2019s biracial, cross-border identity shapes her exploration of the third culture born from migration, assimilation, and preservation. (Her painted and sculpted \u201cBorder Portals\u201d captures the emotional weight of crossing a border.)<\/p>\n

Ruiz\u2019s pom-poms aren\u2019t high school football game regalia: She uses oil painting and textiles, activism and lightness, personal identity and collective storytelling. A figure painter, she began layering Mexican blankets over her canvases\u2014a shift that led her into textile research and the colorful fiber-based work she creates today.<\/p>\n

Her rainbow yarn spheres have formed a massive Pride heart in a school, a monumental pink Venus symbol cascading down the Women\u2019s Museum of California, and a floating canopy of color suspended in the trees at Centro Cultural de la Raza. It\u2019s commentary in a poof.\u00a0\u2014ID<\/p>\n

Jennifer Brawn Gittings<\/p>\n

With three decades in costume design, nearly 200 theater productions, and many awards, what\u2019s Jennifer Brawn Gittings<\/a> (or \u201cJBG,\u201d as her friends call her) doing at Grossmont Community College? Honoring her and her late brother\u2019s dream.<\/p>\n

Her fraternal twin, who was also her childhood theater partner, died in a car accident at 16. So she majored in theater at his dream school, UC Los Angeles, then worked to pave access in San Diego. \u201cFour-year universities are increasingly expensive and competitive,\u201d she says, \u201cbut our city has evolved to expand accessibility across economic and minority status.\u201d<\/p>\n

Co-chair of Grossmont\u2019s theater department, JBG has modernized a Eurocentric curriculum for her students; many of whom are trying to balance school with financial, food, or housing insecurity. Many of her costumes and scenery and textiles are upcycled, a savvy way to make the program both more sustainable and affordable.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman | Pictured: Jennifer Brawn Gittings (left), David Reynoso (right)<\/p>\n

\u201cSan Diego\u2019s an innovation lab, developing exclusive world premiers, and that makes our region special,\u201d says JGB, who staged \u201cEl Henry\u201d\u2014a Mexican-American machismo play\u2014in a dirt lot in Barrio Logan.\u00a0\u2014GC<\/p>\n

David Reynoso<\/p>\n

\u201cLuchadores may be icons of courage in the ring, but we all take everyday risks with no audience or applause,\u201d says Guadalajaran-born David I. Reynoso<\/a> of his theatrical work \u201cLa Lucha,\u201d inspired by Mexican wrestlers.<\/p>\n

The two-time Tony Award\u2013nominated and OBIE-winning costume designer believes San Diego\u2019s strength is embracing risk. \u201cTheaters here support regional runs before Broadway,\u201d he says. \u201cThat permission to create without perfection is the only way to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an era dominated by digital media and algorithmic feeds, Reynoso\u2019s immersive design demands our physical presence. You can\u2019t scroll or swipe past \u201cLa Lucha\u201d\u2014you must interact with it in a multisensory space.<\/p>\n

Reynoso\u2019s Mexican-American heritage saturates his work, from his grant-funded \u201cWaking La Llorona,\u201d inspired by Mexican folklore, to a new piece derived from Loter\u00eda (Mexican bingo). He likens immersive theater to D\u00eda de los Muertos, where reconnecting with lost ones through treasured possessions, foods, and music creates powerful shared experiences.<\/p>\n

His studio? An iPad at his dining table. There, he envisions a San Diego where more non-arts institutions support the industry and more multidisciplinary maker spaces. That way, everyone\u2019s capacity for innovation, identity, and human connection has the freedom to grow.\u00a0\u2014GC<\/p>\n

Mia Fiorella<\/p>\n

There\u2019s hardly a more ambitious and cool public arts event than the Without Walls (WOW) Festival<\/a>. Performance art comes alive in distinctly un-theater-like settings: giant sea monsters wading into the ocean; a glass box in the middle of the street with someone living inside; a micro-play unfolding in the front seats of a parked taxicab, an audience of two in back.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

As director of La Jolla Playhouse\u2019s WOW Festival, Mia Fiorella<\/a>\u2019s upped its global sophistication and extreme accessibility. She\u2019s always scanning for work that fits WOW criteria: Does it transform the audience, connect people, take risks, make us a little uncomfortable? If it\u2019s in the realm of the odd (see above), you\u2019ve piqued her interest.<\/p>\n

Supported by the Prebys Foundation and the City of San Diego, WOW leverages its work with the San Diego Symphony, the Fern Street Circus, and the Blind Spot Collective, among many others, to produce the annual four-day festival. Fiorella aims to make the WOW Festival \u201cyear-round, neighborhood-deep, and nationally watched, with immersive and site-inspired work woven into the fabric of the city, and other cities banging down our door to understand how we got so audacious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fiorella sees positive change in San Diego\u2019s self-investment, but says the next step is for city stakeholders to build \u201ccreative capital\u201d for the arts community and create a city known for arts and culture as much as for sports and beaches.\u00a0\u2014LG<\/p>\n

Diana Benav\u00eddez<\/p>\n

Originating in 12th century China as a fairly thrilling way to celebrate the new year, the modest pi\u00f1ata wound its way through history and eventually found itself at kids\u2019 birthday parties across Latin America and in the US. A symbol of frivolity, joy, childhood innocence. Which, of course\u2014in the vein of artists like Niki de Saint Phalle and Mike Kelley\u2014makes them ripe vehicles for adult commentary.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are surprised to think of a pi\u00f1ata as a sculpture,\u201d says mixed-media artist Diana Benav\u00eddez<\/a>. \u201cBecause pi\u00f1atas are super accessible, I think people don\u2019t realize how much work goes into them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her University Heights studio apartment, the UC San Diego grad meticulously creates her sculptures using cardboard, tissue paper, and kanji paper. Her piece \u201cText Me When You Get Home\u201d\u2014a pi\u00f1ata shaped like a green text bubble\u2014expresses how women check on each other and protect each other after a night out. Another pink pi\u00f1ata reads, \u201cShe was asking for it.\u201d It has a crack down the middle.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of celebrating another year of life, which is how it\u2019s used in Mexican culture, it\u2019s a way to break the things that usually affect women,\u201d she says. \u201cIn that sense, breaking it is a relief.\u201d\u00a0\u2014ME<\/p>\n

Jennifer Findley<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Jennifer Findley<\/p>\n

Jennifer Findley<\/a> is surrounded by color. We\u2019re sitting in \u201cOrganica: Flora to Fauna,\u201d an exhibition she curated at the Granger Hotel downtown. Green botanicals shroud the room over rust-colored couches. Walnut cyanotypes and earthstar mushrooms line the walls. In her own home, Findley collects black-and-white art. In photographs, she wears yellow in honor of her late mother. (It was her favorite color.) She sits and stares at the space beside me\u2014seeing things I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t create with my hands, I create with my eyes,\u201d she says when asked to explain the role of a curator.<\/p>\n

As founder and lead art advisor of JFiN Collective<\/a>\u2014plus Director of Arts & Culture at Oram Hotels, co-curator of \u201cAmerican Minimal\u201d (2025) at San Diego Museum of Art, and chair of Mingei International Museum\u2014Findley has a knack for recognizing artists whom others tend to miss. And she\u2019s made sure they\u2019ve found a space to be seen.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s an art matchmaker. If you\u2019d like art to be a part of your life, she\u2019ll start by asking about the places you\u2019ve been, the things you\u2019ve held onto, the colors you return to. Somewhere in those answers is the beginning of a collection.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople should be able to walk around your home and see inside your soul,\u201d she says and earnestly means.<\/p>\n

The way she sees a room is the way she sees San Diego. Nothing exists on its own. Artists make the work, galleries give it walls, collectors give it homes, and museums preserve it. \u201cTo not fund these institutions is to not fund living artists working in the city,\u201d she says. \u201cIf that cycle of life is broken or one suffers, the whole ecosystem collapses.\u201d Showing up for an artist talk, walking through a gallery, reposting, tagging: Small acts, committed investment.\u00a0\u2014LK<\/p>\n

Kamaal Martin<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

Kamaal Martin<\/a> doesn\u2019t have an office or a lane he stays in. When I ask what he does, he booms with laughter that shakes my dining room window. \u201cI\u2019m the fucking ecosystem, dude!\u201d He\u2019s the connective tissue in the San Diego art scene. Like water over stones, he moves in government, nonprofit, and philanthropic circles without belonging to any of them.<\/p>\n

Co-founder of Art Power Equity<\/a>, Martin built a career out of intersectional work. Some wins? He persuaded a funders\u2019 collaborative to back an arts-and-health pilot in San Ysidro, where healthcare practitioners prescribe museum visits and watercolor classes instead of pills. He also secured a binational Grantmakers in the Arts conference for San Diego and Tijuana. On the city\u2019s arts commission, he\u2019s pushing to fix a 30-year-old funding formula that rewards organizations for already having money.<\/p>\n

Hitching his consulting business to a client\u2019s name opens doors his own wouldn\u2019t, and Martin\u2019s candid about the tradeoff. \u201cYou can get a lot more done if you\u2019re willing to be flexible about whose name is on it,\u201d he says. Call it playing the game\u2014and Martin does, without apology. He\u2019s not in it to be seen. He\u2019s in it to keep good ideas alive long enough for someone to run with them.\u00a0\u2014AB<\/p>\n

Dajahn Blevins<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

Dajahn Blevins<\/a> has spent decades creating spaces for Black artists in Southeastern San Diego.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a rich, incredible, powerful heritage in history,\u201d he says. \u201cIt should be celebrated, so those who come after us know they can at least do this, if not something greater.\u201d<\/p>\n

An artist himself\u2014an actor, singer, dancer, playwright, and director who studied sociology and performing arts at San Diego State\u2014Blevins was familiar with the road blocks.<\/p>\n

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So he created Urban Warriors in 1986, using performing arts to reach young people who weren\u2019t responding to traditional intervention programs. In 1993, the group launched Kuumba Fest<\/a> (Kuumba is the Swahili word for creativity), an annual gathering celebrating Black arts and culture. After years of advocating for the community, he now sits on the committee of the San Diego Black Arts and Culture District<\/a> in Encanto.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlack culture, just like everyone else\u2019s culture, is what you eat, what you believe in, what you value,\u201d Blevins says.<\/p>\n

For Blevins, art is a place to gather. The African drum call has historically been used as a tool for communication and community. \u201cWe use our entertainment, our children\u2019s ability to sing, dance, write,\u201d Blevins says, \u201cas the drum call.\u201d\u00a0\u2014ME<\/p>\n

Lisa Porter<\/p>\n

Lisa Porter<\/a> and her 8-year-old daughter sat on the floor outside the bathrooms in The Old Globe\u2019s basement. It was 2012, and they were listening to \u201cDr. Seuss\u2019s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!\u201d playing upstairs. Born with multiple disabilities, Daisy\u2019s sensory system was overloaded by the big musical. That particular \u201cpity party,\u201d as Porter calls such moments, was sensory overload for her, too.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018There\u2019s got to be a way for families like ours to have access to live theater, \u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

A behind-the-scenes giant, Porter has stage-managed productions on six continents, worked with some of the world\u2019s most renowned artists (Yo-Yo Ma, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Laurie Anderson to name a few), and is a Distinguished Professor\u2014the highest faculty honor\u2014at UC San Diego. She could work anywhere. She stays here.<\/p>\n

Making something positive out of the basement experience is among Porter\u2019s proudest achievements: She pitched the Globe on a sensory-friendly \u201cGrinch\u201d\u2014muted effects, blue-lit transitions, telegraphed entrances, and license for lots of audience noise. The Globe said yes. Porter donated her time, brought in Daisy\u2019s speech and occupational therapists, and when she talked with the cast about what to expect, she tore down a wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kept these parts of my life very compartmentalized\u2014professor, stage manager, parent, and separately, a lot of grief and hard stuff with Daisy,\u201d she says. \u201cI thought,\u00a0Fuck it, I\u2019m just going to tell the story and be real with them.\u201d The cast met Porter\u2019s tears with their own.<\/p>\n

Porter has consulted on other sensory-friendly productions throughout San Diego, and 14 years later, that custom production of the famed show sells out every December. Daisy, now 22, has her own special seat, and families like Porter\u2019s get to experience the magic of theater.\u00a0\u2014AB<\/p>\n

Hugo Crosthwaite<\/p>\n

Hugo Crosthwaite<\/a> is the region\u2019s foremost chronicler of the border that he refuses to recognize.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Hugo Crosswaite<\/p>\n

Born in Tijuana and trained at San Diego State, Crosthwaite draws his native city in teeming charcoal crowds\u2014saints, hustlers, vendors, shoulder to shoulder\u2014and in 2019, won the Smithsonian\u2019s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition for a stop-motion animation of a young Tijuanense\u2019s portrait. The line dividing the two cities, he says, is \u201cridiculous\u2026 They are one community, and always have been.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next year, two Crosthwaite shows will continue documenting his argument. In April, he\u2019ll install 60 drawings at Pierogi Gallery in New York as a single unbroken line circling the room, a work he calls \u201cTira Strip;\u201d a nod both to comic strips and the lively, sometimes sordid, but always-human activities on Tijuana\u2019s streets. Next summer, the San Diego Museum of Art will open \u201cLa L\u00ednea,\u201d a survey of nearly 20 years of his work.<\/p>\n

Crosthwaite improvises without preparatory sketches, which means galleries commit to work no one has seen. \u201cGallerists and curators have to take my word for it,\u201d Crosthwaite says, crediting Bread & Salt and La Caja Galer\u00eda in San Diego and Tijuana for providing art spaces<\/a> \u201cthat take risks bigger institutions won\u2019t.\u201d He adds that San Diego still has an experimental spirit that other cities\u2019 art institutions have largely stamped out.<\/p>\n

Crosthwaite wants collectors to take the same risk: \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of money in San Diego, there\u2019s a lot of money in Tijuana, but there\u2019s no investment in collecting artists.\u201d\u00a0\u2014JB<\/p>\n

Mark Quint<\/p>\n

The art gallery industry humbled Mark Quint<\/a> after his first show. He was 27 and sold all 10 pieces by a Los Angeles artist. \u201cI thought it was the easiest job in the world, you know?\u201d he says. \u201cHang a couple pieces on the wall and sell them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

But then: \u201cI didn\u2019t sell a thing for over two months and was ready to go out of business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quint was more passionate than defeated. \u201cYou have to know and believe that the art you\u2019re working with is important and viable,\u201d he says. He founded La Jolla\u2019s Quint Gallery<\/a> in 1981, and it became a tour de force\u2014helping propel hundreds of artists, including now well-known names like Kelsey Brookes, Kim MacConnel, and Jean Lowe.<\/p>\n

At 73, Quint is to San Diego what Arne Glimcher or Barbara Gladstone have been to the New York art world. His endorsement has weight. So when he chose Barrio Logan as the location for his newest gallery in 2021\u2014ONE (at Bread & Salt) focuses on showing a single artwork at a time\u2014it was yet another sign that the neighborhood is becoming crucial to the city\u2019s creative scene.<\/p>\n

Confidence is key when you\u2019re an art dealer, Quint says: \u201cPeople can read [desperation] on your face or hear it in your voice or read it in your text.\u201d<\/p>\n

And humility. He and his staff greet everybody\u2014longtime collectors, newcomers to buying art, admirers\u2014with a welcoming smile. Then they leave them the hell alone, letting them wander and enjoy the art.\u00a0\u2014ME<\/p>\n

Luis Lopez<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

Perfect-looking people don\u2019t interest Luis Lopez<\/a>. As a director and videographer, he wants to capture the sun and the rain\u2014metaphorically and physically\u2014whatever makes his subjects special and flawed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not perfect. We\u2019re all so messy,\u201d he says. \u201cThe stories I connect with are when they show it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born and raised in San Diego (and a graduate of San Diego State), Lopez worked as a cinematographer on\u00a0Dear Philadelphia, Renee Osubu\u2019s 2020 Sundance-nominated short. That experience pushed him toward telling the stories of nonprofits<\/a> across San Diego, and he founded Legacy Light Studios in 2023.<\/p>\n

Working with mission-driven organizations and those society overlooks takes an empathetic approach. Lopez is able to humanize stories without the dreaded heavy hand. As a father of one with another debuting soon, he says he just loves showing his son \u201cthe best of what San Diego has.\u201d<\/p>\n

His work has helped The Doan Foundation, granting unrestricted funds to underserved youth and creatives, and with United Way, profiling a former gang member rebuilding his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery film gives a dose of empathy,\u201d Lopez says\u2014offered through eye contact and thoughtful listening. The other day, a film subject texted him: \u201cThank you so much for making me feel important.\u201d\u00a0\u2014ME<\/p>\n

Thao Huynh French<\/p>\n

Thao Huynh French<\/a> is fairly certain she\u2019s the first Vietnamese female muralist working in San Diego. Born in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, French\u2019s family came to the US through the Amerasian Homecoming Act, passing through a refugee camp in the Philippines. She ended up in San Diego by accident: In town visiting her sister, her purse was stolen at a bar, leaving her stranded. So she got a receptionist job, which turned into a life. \u201cSan Diego basically chose me,\u201d she says. She found her way to City Heights, and it shaped everything that came after.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

In 2022, French painted \u201cYear of the Tiger,\u201d Little Saigon\u2019s first historical landmark mural, a direct response to the gentrification happening in the area. \u201cWe exist,\u201d she says of the message. \u201cStop exploiting us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Co-founder of Mindful Murals and specializing in interactive art at local schools, French has a solo show at the Mesa College Art Gallery (runs until Sept. 17). \u201cFuture Flowers: Memory, Meaning, Mischief\u201d is built around thousands of photos and documents she saw upon returning to that refugee camp in 2025.<\/p>\n

French\u2019s mission: Art beautiful enough to shift human behavior. \u201cAside from being an artist, I am a human being,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m trying to create something from my experiences, good and bad, so I can impact the world in a better way for systemic change.\u201d\u00a0\u2014AB<\/p>\n

Bob Lehman<\/p>\n

Artists need advocates, and Bob Lehman<\/a> is a fierce one. He\u2019s dedicated his career to making sure the people who make art can keep making it. As executive director of San Diego Art Matters (SDAM), he spends his days meeting with council members, supervisors, and Baja counterparts in an effort to keep arts funding on the table.<\/p>\n

For five years before SDAM, Lehman ran the region\u2019s Museum Council, building relationships across the border. He\u2019s quick to correct the assumption that those partnerships only run one way: \u201cDon\u2019t think because you\u2019re helping a smaller organization, you\u2019re not getting something out of it. You are.\u201d Under his guidance, Baja became the Council\u2019s second-largest social media audience, right behind San Diego.<\/p>\n

Now Lehman is steering Artists Count, sending unrestricted grants of $20,000 to $50,000 directly to 42 artists across the city, county, and Baja, and he\u2019s working alongside Christine Martinez to come up with a regional plan to make the yearly arts-funding scramble obsolete.\u00a0\u2014AB<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman | Pictured: Bob Lehman (left), Christine Martinez (right)<\/p>\n

Christine Martinez<\/p>\n

Ours is a hustle economy, meaning few of us do just one thing. This is true for Christine Martinez<\/a>, marketing director of San Diego Ballet and manager of Arts+Culture:San Diego, the advocacy arm of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership.<\/p>\n

She calls herself and Bob Lehman \u201ctwin spirits\u201d because, while they work for different organizations, they\u2019re lockstep in the same fight. When the city\u2019s proposed 2027 budget zeroed out arts grants entirely, the duo got a day\u2019s notice before it went public. Martinez turned her contact list into a town hall, and the town hall into months of rallies. \u201cWe won\u2019t be caught off guard next year like we were this year,\u201d Martinez says.<\/p>\n

With Vibrant San Diego, the 501(c)(4)<\/a> she\u2019s building, she\u2019s focused on lobbying candidates to lock in the \u201cPenny for the Arts\u201d initiative\u2014the great promise for local culture, unanimously adopted by the city council in 2012, but never realized.\u00a0\u2014AB<\/p>\n

Brendan Nguyen<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

Musicians travel the world\u2014teaching, performing, and collecting new ideas\u2014and come home ready to experiment with their craft. That\u2019s what led pianist Brendan Nguyen<\/a> and his then-fellow UC San Diego PhD candidates, vocalist Leslie Leytham, to co-found Project [BLANK], giving cross-border interdisciplinary artists a dream space to create via concerts and events that intentionally break the traditional rules of art and music, all in the name of art and music.<\/p>\n

Complicated-but-cool projects are routine for Nguyen. At UCSD, he curated a show that simultaneously utilized almost every performance space in Conrad Prebys Music Center. A logistical avalanche, but perfect practice for Project [BLANK]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During Covid, Project [BLANK] took on its experimental ethos to adapt with the times. Audiences couldn\u2019t physically immerse themselves, so Project [BLANK] livestreamed shows as first-person POV\u2014panning the room to capture multiple synchronous performances and art pieces. \u201cWe took [Covid] as a moment to rise to the occasion and do something for our communities,\u201d Nguyen says. \u201cWe did whatever we could to help keep the social fabric intact.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a talent pool, or the potential for one, that rivals any other major international city,\u201d Nguyen says of San Diego. With Project [BLANK] established, he\u2019s returned to piano performance. His next piece? \u201cBlood Replica,\u201d which he says is the sonic representation of dying of AIDS and will premiere at Project [BLANK]\u2019s Working Title show next May.\u00a0\u2014EV<\/p>\n

Brandon Boomizad<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

Brandon Boomizad<\/a>\u2019s hands move faster than a casino dealer\u2019s. As Head of Sound for The Old Globe<\/a>\u2019s Festival Stage, he\u2019s an expert at line-by-line mixing, the in-the-moment, rapid-fire art of making sure actors\u2019 mics don\u2019t pick up interference or feedback.<\/p>\n

\u201cThroughout an entire show, my fingers probably move over a thousand times,\u201d Boomizad says. The biggest misconception? \u201cWe just turn everything on and then sit there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having just finished the Globe\u2019s \u201cMuch Ado About Nothing\u201d and next launching the new musical adaptation of \u201cBegin Again,\u201d Boomizad teaches actors specific microphone techniques, specializes in the latest audiovisual tech, and collaborates with AV pros from New York who use the Globe to test their shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ll show me how they do things, and that [validates] me to be like, \u2018Oh, I could make Broadway,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

After training to become a recording engineer, Boomizad stopped listening to music for pleasure. He obsessed on the technical nuances behind everything he heard\u2014from The Beatles to Kendrick Lamar\u2014and applied that to theater.<\/p>\n

\u201cI watch a musical and think: \u2018How did they mic all these actors? How did they mic the band? How did they program the console?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cI definitely incorporate that into how I do things now.\u201d\u00a0\u2014ME<\/p>\n

Leticia Gomez Franco<\/p>\n

Leticia Gomez Franco<\/a> knew nothing about art conservation when the Balboa Art Conservation Center (BACC) board handed her the keys in 2020. They hired her not despite her inexperience, but because of it. They wanted \u201ca leader to inspire,\u201d she says. Gomez Franco\u2019s the person you want in your corner when you\u2019re backed into it; the one who\u2019ll ask you to hold her earrings.<\/p>\n

Five years later, she\u2019d secured two million-dollar Mellon Foundation grants, blowing the locks off an institution that celebrates 50 years this year, a gatekeeper that had served only museums and private collectors before Gomez Franco arrived.<\/p>\n

She recalls being dumbstruck touring BACC\u2019s lab\u2014part science class, part art studio, with X-ray machines. Microscopes. \u201cFreaking lasers.\u201d She thought of years co-leading The Front Arte y Cultura in San Ysidro with college friend Monica Delgadillo Hernandez, now executive director of the Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center<\/a>, the pair selling carne con chile for $5 a bowl to afford mural paint. \u201cWe were picking up pennies, and then there are spaces like this?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman | Pictured: Leticia Gomez Franco (left), Monica Delgadillo Hernandez (right)<\/p>\n

Now she\u2019s thrown BACC\u2019s doors open\u2014tours, X-ray sessions, heirloom consultations\u2014insisting preservation belongs to everyone.\u00a0\u2014AB<\/p>\n

Monica Delgadillo Hernandez<\/p>\n

When Monica Delgadillo Hernandez<\/a> was growing up in San Ysidro, today\u2019s arts scene didn\u2019t exist. No galleries, no museums, not even a high school\u2014kids were bused out. Culture survived in living rooms and backyards, through\u00a0tocadas\u00a0and the neighborhood\u2019s graffiti and hip-hop scenes. Hernandez is an \u201cartivist,\u201d her work built on the belief that art and social justice share one root.<\/p>\n

She attended UC Berkeley, where she met Leticia Gomez Franco and saw real infrastructure in the Bay Area arts scene. She convinced Gomez Franco to come back to San Diego and build a similar framework. In 2004, the pair founded The Front Arte y Cultura with zero city funding, before Delgadillo Hernandez stepped away for nearly a decade as a shelter case manager running\u2014unsurprisingly\u2014an art-based program.<\/p>\n

Now, she\u2019s executive director of the Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center and a San Diego County Arts & Culture<\/a> commissioner. With the latter, she helped resurrect a defunct grants committee and win the county\u2019s first dedicated arts funding. Last August, she curated \u201cAn Artist\u2019s Duty\u201d at The WOO, showcasing 142 Chicano artists\u2014work that became protest when ICE raids hit San Diego. \u201cArtist and activist,\u201d she says, \u201cone and the same.\u201d\u00a0\u2014AB<\/p>\n

Paola Cap\u00f3-Garc\u00eda<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

Before Paola Cap\u00f3-Garc\u00eda<\/a> became San Diego\u2019s Poet Laureate (2025\u20132027), she was a teenager with an empty journal and a curiosity about language. She didn\u2019t know where those first poems would take her, only that they gave her a way to find her place.<\/p>\n

Today, the Puerto Rico\u2013born educator is charged with bringing the art form out of diary solitude and into San Diego classrooms, libraries, and community spaces. In an age where written communication is being outsourced to GPTs, humans focusing on the rhythms of spoken language, singular turns of phrase, the sound of vowels and consonants\u2014feels both quaint and urgent.<\/p>\n

Her current project, \u201cApertura,\u201d<\/a> combines video, visual art, and writing to explore poetry through a workshop and an upcoming zine. \u201cPoetry\u2019s an act of service,\u201d Cap\u00f3-Garc\u00eda says. \u201cI can offer people space to do it for themselves\u2014or to write it\u2014and feel empowered and transformed by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cap\u00f3-Garc\u00eda is funny, and her language is concise, weaving in Spanish phrases for a different weight. \u201cThere\u2019s an intimacy in that,\u201d she says, \u201cand I think that\u2019s needed right now for people who feel scared to speak Spanish in public; people who feel scared to show who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

She hopes more people give themselves permission to create and take risks. \u201cWe\u2019re going to explode if we don\u2019t start embracing the cringe and the vulnerability.\u201d\u00a0\u2014ID<\/p>\n

Lauren Christie<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

Malashock Dance<\/a> is one of the city\u2019s top modern dance studios, and Lauren Christie is the star within the star. As a dancer and rehearsal director, she\u2019s an expert at harnessing her vulnerability and infusing her performance with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to feel something for someone watching to feel something,\u201d says Christie.<\/p>\n

She grew up training at Ballet Memphis School in Tennessee and minored in dance at American University in Washington, DC. Her talent took her across the globe. This past summer, she was in Amsterdam studying countertechnique, a contemporary dance movement system that enables dancers to move more fluidly and spatially while limiting impact on the body. One of the most physically grueling art forms, dancing\u2019s annual injury rate is between 67 and 95 percent.<\/p>\n

Whether channeling emotion or baring her inner world\u2014through contraction and release, a spiral skyward, a fall to the floor\u2014Christie is magnetic. Delicate one moment and leaden the next, gravity is confused by her, and audiences are rapt. She brings intention into any performance space she enters. A world-class performer, right here in this city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way that I try to really live in each moment as I\u2019m dancing and performing, I hope that stays with other people,\u201d Christie says. \u201cAnd I hope the way I communicate through my dancing also carries over into the rest of my life.\u201d\u00a0\u2014AB<\/p>\n

Dinah Poellnitz<\/p>\n

Dinah Poellnitz<\/a> didn\u2019t wait for San Diego\u2019s arts infrastructure to appear. She built it.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the last 14 years, all I did was ask until someone said yes,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

One of the region\u2019s most important arts leaders, Poellnitz co-founded The Hill Street Country Club<\/a> (HSCC) in Oceanside in 2012; the space she wished existed, where artists could find opportunities without having to fight their way in.<\/p>\n

Since then, HSCC has become one of San Diego County\u2019s most influential DIY arts spaces. Her upcoming project, the Art Hotel Project<\/a>, extends that mission into hospitality as a social enterprise supporting the creative economy. The hotel will fold artist studios, programming spaces, performances and community experiences into the guest experience\u2014from textile studios to culinary programming\u2014making creativity part of the infrastructure, not decoration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives me creative autonomy; it gives my community creative autonomy,\u201d Poellnitz says, noting her goal to give artists more ownership over their work and futures.<\/p>\n

One of the few Black women leading an independent arts space in San Diego County, Poellnitz says she uses art \u201cas a tool for critical mass.\u201d Hill Street is free to all\u2014using art to explain public budgets, local policy, and arts advocacy\u2014and anchors mutual aid by supporting collectives offering food access, laundry, and wellness programming.\u00a0\u2014ID<\/p>\n

Johnny Bear Contreras<\/p>\n

Look at the shut eyes of \u201cStargazer,\u201d and artist Johnny Bear Contreras<\/a> hopes you\u2019ll feel connected to the past, present, and future of the Kumeyaay. The bronze face of a Kumeyaay in a corolla of steel, an ancient force experiencing rapture or struggle (or both) in shiny, modern materials surrounding him. Scan a QR code, and you\u2019ll get a lesson on birdsong, a core tradition of Kumeyaay culture.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Matt Furman<\/p>\n

\u201cStargazer\u201d is one of four existing\u2014and 10 total planned\u2014art pieces in San Diego State\u2019s \u201cLiving Land Acknowledgement\u201d<\/a> series on campus. The series was designed to tell the stories of San Diego\u2019s core Indigenous people and tribe, who lived on the mesa (and everywhere) and are still here, our third regional nation.<\/p>\n

A tribal member of the San Pasqual Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, culture bearer and sculptor, Contreras makes public art that contextualizes Indigenous contributions in today\u2019s settings. \u201cAs I work, I\u2019m thinking, \u2018Is this relatable?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s what I want.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1981, Contreras began studying patina and mold-making at Palomar College while working as a journeyman carpenter, selling art out of his \u201965 Buick station wagon on weekends. Today, he\u2019s a central voice for his people who made here, here\u2014an advisor for both the Tijuana Estuary Foundation and La Jolla\u2019s History and Culture Museum, and an arts fellow at Far South\/Border North (a regional collaborative supporting communities in San Diego and Imperial counties).<\/p>\n

Next up for Contreras is the first-ever permanent curated Kumeyaay exhibit at the Bonita Museum and Cultural Center<\/a>, new sculptures for the local MTS, and Indigi-Con (he\u2019s a co-founder) at Harrah\u2019s Resort SoCal<\/a>. \u201cI think the depth we have here is underestimated,\u201d Contreras says. \u201cSan Diego is becoming the arts community it deserves to be recognized for, which includes diversity and a trinational effort.\u201d\u00a0\u2014LG<\/p>\n