Seventeen-year-old Armando Varela stood in the middle of a crowded art gallery, working up the nerve to speak. 

It was Saturday afternoon and the halls and exhibit rooms at A Reason to Survive, a two-decade-old nonprofit youth arts program in National City, were full of eager children, harried parents and artworks ranging from wall-sized murals to a cluster of decorated wooden boxes small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. The families were there for ARTS’ (as the organization is commonly known) annual spring exhibit of student work. 

Varela stood before the cluster of wooden boxes, a project he and a handful of other students had recently completed in a sound design class taught by art teacher Pablo Dodero. The hand-built boxes were festooned with springs, pebbles, doorstops and other found objects that create musical notes when the boxes are plugged into an electric amplifier. 

Dodero briefly described the project then turned the presentation over to Varela. “Armando?” he said. 

Varela stared in alarm at a roomful of expectant faces. “I didn’t see myself as artsy when I first joined ARTS,” he said haltingly. “But that changed pretty quickly…ARTS helped me find my voice in so many ways I didn’t expect.” 

He grinned, looking more assured. “For example, I’m speaking here.” 

For nearly a quarter century, ARTS, which occupies National City’s former main library building adjacent to City Hall, has provided artistic programming and a warm embrace of encouraging community to vulnerable young people in San Diego County.

Started in 2001 by a Boston native named Matt D’Arrigo as a one-man volunteer art-making session for children with cancer in a San Diego hospital, the program has since expanded into a 20,000-square-foot regional arts teaching hub with a full-size painting studio, a sound technology lab, welding equipment for metal sculpture, power saws for woodworking and a staff of 72 teaching artists, administrators, interns and volunteers. 

Each year, 1,500 students, many of them from low-income, Spanish-speaking or bi-national families, cycle through three program sessions offered in fall, spring and summer. ARTS teaching artists fan out to after-school programs in local school districts and work with teens attending juvenile court schools. The annual budget, most of it supplied by philanthropy, is close to $2 million. 

“We’ve become an established arts and culture center for National City and South Bay youth and families,” said ARTS Executive Director Lucy Eagleson. “We’re the bridge for [families] because we have the trust and the community.” 

Or, as Armando Varelas, a senior at Sweetwater High School, put it on Saturday, “I never had a plan and a future” before enrolling in ARTS. “Now I applied to Southwestern College for a music major with an emphasis in mariachi. Then I want to go to UCSD or SDSU and become a musician and music educator…After I saw this, I knew what I wanted to do.” 

Until this year, ARTS was on an upward trajectory. It moved into the National City facility in 2012 and has won awards and been featured on NBC’s Today Show and in an Academy Award-winning documentary. 

After a budget crisis in 2017, a new executive director, James Halliday, stabilized funding and maintained programming through the Covid-19 pandemic. Eagleson took over last year and has broadened ARTS’ reach further, negotiating contracts with local school districts, recruiting teaching artists and volunteers and upgrading facilities with the help of philanthropic and local corporate support. 

The growth ground to a halt in December. ARTS has an unusual agreement with its landlord, National City. The city allows the organization to use its former library building for free and covers utilities. In return, ARTS is required to provide the city with at least $125,000 worth of art programs and public art projects annually – an amount “we far exceed every year,” Eagleson said. 

Typically, the city has renewed its agreement with ARTS every two years. This year, Eagleson said she hopes to negotiate a longer arrangement, perhaps for five years, maybe even 10. A longer time period, she said, would attract additional funding and make possible a capital campaign to refurbish studios, add equipment and broaden offerings. 

Greater stability would also help ARTS weather a period of heightened national economic uncertainty, Eagleson said. 

“We have to be creative because foundations have less to give with the stock market down, and schools have less,” she said. “I stay painfully positive, energetic and committed to the work. That’s all I can do.” 

The city temporarily extended ARTS’ lease earlier this year. Negotiations continue over terms for a longer arrangement. In the meantime, the City Council has been mired in bouts of infighting and recently parted with former City Manager Benjamin Martinez. 

Eagleson was diplomatic about the situation at City Hall, saying only that ARTS remains firmly committed to serving National City and surrounding communities, which include some of San Diego County’s most ethnically diverse and lowest-income neighborhoods. 

“There are a lot of arts organizations in [San Diego] but it’s so important to have a program in the community you’re trying to serve,” Eagleson said. Students and their families can “walk, bike or take the bus…The trust-building and connection-building are here. We’re grateful that the city of National City recognizes the importance of art and creativity and how it plays a role in building a great community.” 

Examples of trust and community could be found in every room of ARTS’ spring exhibition on Saturday. On a wall near Varela’s sound boxes, a colorful poster depicted ARTS’ latest planned public art project, a series of student-made decorative additions to a free community water spigot at National City’s El Toyon Park, currently undergoing a $7 million city-funded renovation. 

Eighteen-year-old Ada Escamilla stood beside the poster, explaining her part in the public art project. She had designed a metal globe sculpture, she said, which would be painted to show what the earth might look like in a hotter future climate. 

“Our world used to be so much more blue,” Escamilla said. “Now it’s green and yellow and drier.” 

Asked what kept her coming to ARTS, which she first encountered at age 13, Escamilla talked briefly about her love of artistic expression. Then she shared a deeper reason. 

Two years ago, she said, her younger sister was diagnosed with leukemia. “I didn’t want to do anything,” Escamilla said. “I lost interest in all my passions.” 

Escamilla told her ARTS teacher, Sheena Rae Dowling, about her sister’s diagnosis. “It allowed me to be vulnerable,” Escamilla said. With Dowling’s encouragement, Escamilla made an artwork for her sister, a photograph of the two of them together as babies painted to create the impression that “the environment was supporting her [sister],” she said. “If I didn’t have this, I might not have art at all.” 

A few rooms away, Monica Guzman, a medical assistant at Kaiser Permanente, watched her 12-year-old son Joshua decorate a hat with an intricate pattern of smiling faces. 

“He’s done better with this art program,” Guzman said of Joshua. “I went through a divorce seven years ago. He acted up in school…He went through anxiety.” 

After a Kaiser patient told her about ARTS’ after-school art programs in local elementary schools, Guzman said she signed Joshua up for the program at his school, Lincoln Acres Elementary. 

“His mood stabilized,” she said. “It gave him a way to express his feelings. He has a sketch pad at home. He’s proud of everything he does.” 

The program, free like all of ARTS’ offerings, has been a godsend, Guzman said. “I work every day, Monday to Friday, 8:30 to five…He likes to stay [at school] and do art. If I get off early, he says, ‘Pick me up at five.’” 

She flicked through her phone, showing photos of hand-sewn puppets Joshua makes when he’s not drawing. There was C4, a robot determined to “destroy the world,” Joshua said in a deadpan robot voice. Also, the Cheese Wizard, a wizard who loves cheese – but, Joshua said solemnly, “his real name is Dave.”  

“Art and baseball are his life right now,” Guzman said. 

Claudia Rodriguez-Biezunski, a textile art teacher presiding over an exhibit of student sewing projects on the other side of the room, said many, if not a majority, of her students live in Tijuana or have parents in Mexico. 

“I asked my students if their parents were going to come see the exhibit and they said, ‘My parents can’t cross [the border],” Rodriguez-Biezunksi said. “Their family drops them off at the border, they walk across and take public transit here.” 

Rodriguez-Biezunksi said art draws students to ARTS. But they stay because teachers “pour our heart and soul into them.” 

“I also come from an under-resourced community,” Rodriguez-Biezunksi said. “I’m a daughter of immigrants…I was a runaway when I was 15. At age 16, I was kicked out of high school. I dropped out of life. Eventually I graduated and became a teacher because I would have loved to have a teacher who would have cared about me.” 

Saturday’s three-hour exhibit was wrapping up and the galleries were emptying when 16-year-old Fernando Guerrero walked into an exhibit room and pointed to a six-foot-long welded metal sword hanging on the wall. 

The sword, Guerrero said, was his creation, forged in ARTS’ metalworking studio as an homage to his favorite video game, Devil May Cry. The sword was a replica of a sword wielded by the game’s protagonist, a half human, half demon who uses the sword to fuse together the two aspects of his nature. 

Guerrero, a soft-spoken sophomore at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts, described how he made the sword. Starting with a metal pipe, he said he welded a cross bar to the pipe then fashioned a paper model of a basketball-sized skull to decorate the handle. 

He molded the skull in ARTS’ metalworking forge and welded it to the handle. Then he cut sheets of metal into the shape of a blade and welded them together. 

“It took me 10 weeks to make,” he said proudly of the sword. “I’ll get to take it home. I’ll put the sword over my bed. I’ll hang it on the wall.” 

He pulled out his phone and showed a video of himself heaving the sword off the ground and waving it in the air. “I think it weighs 40-60 pounds,” he said. 

He put his phone away and gazed at his handiwork in the now-quiet gallery. “This place helps me see myself as an artist,” he said. 

The post Lauded Arts Program Faces Uncertain Future  appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

The music industry is a mess. While the internet allowed artists to beam their work to new audiences across the world, it also collapsed the industry, devaluing music and draining power from musicians. None of this is to say that the industry was fine and dandy before Spotify bulldozed its way across the world – it clearly wasn’t.  

The arts have always been a place of exploitation. Artists’ work is devalued because it’s often not viewed as real “work.” The internet hasn’t helped that perception either. But as someone who spent years caring for and trying to nurture a local scene, there was another impact that has gone more unnoticed: it’s partially erased the individual personality of regions.  

When people can access nearly every song ever recorded all at once, what motivation do they have to explore what their hometown has to offer? For a music scene like San Diego’s, which has always struggled with an identity crisis, that has been particularly damaging. Society’s increasing atomization, which was supercharged over the pandemic, has also taken its toll. 

That’s why I so adored the most recent episode of “The Finest,” the excellent new arts and culture podcast from KPBS reporter Julia Dixon Evans. The episode is filled with big questions about the value of art, and harsh realities about what it takes to make it as a working musician. 

The episode also introduced me to a local musician I’d somehow never heard of: Shua. That alone is worth the listen. 

Shua, “How to Let Go”: Dixon Evans is right. In the episode of “The Finest,” featuring Shua, she calls his voice “stunning.” It is, but not because of its technical perfection. It’s stunning because of how richly emotive and incredibly impactful it is – he’s able to communicate so much more than the simple words he’s singing. 

That richness is evident on Shua’s big hit, “You Can Only Go in Pieces,” during which he forlornly meditates on love, failure and growth above a sunny folk picking pattern. But it’s on the more meandering and meditative “How to Let Go,” that Shua really showcases his ability to craft a song that truly transports you. The gentle acoustic strums are offset by ghostly backup vocals, synths and hints of bass.  

Like what you hear? Listen to the full episode of “The Finest,” here, or catch Shua live at Belly Up on Thursday, April 17. 

Do you have a “Song of the Week” suggestion? Shoot us an email and a sentence or two about why you’ve been bumping this song lately. Friendly reminder: all songs should be by local artists.

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There’s no shortage of reasons to feel angsty nowadays. That’s especially true for young people, for whom the future doesn’t feel nearly as rosy as it did for past generations. Whenever our world has hit those heavy inflection points, young people have often produced correspondingly existential and angsty art movements. Think of the anti-Vietnam War rock of the 1960s and 1970s, the hyper political punk of the 1980s or the George W. Bush-era musical counterculture. Heck, there was even a fair amount of it during President Donald Trump’s first term. 

It’s very possible it’s just because I’m getting older, but I haven’t seen that same kind of fire lately. That’s likely not a fair assessment. After all, politics is no longer reserved for three–chord punk bands or hip-hop lyricists – it’s often alive and well in the poppiest of pop music. So, having said that, I think what I’m really missing isn’t politics, it’s the angst.  

This week, I found a song that scratched that itch, but I’m still starving. Please, slide into my inbox and get me some more. 

SLACKER, “Velvet Worms”: It’s all well and good to write something political, but at the end of the day it has to actually sound good. Bad songs are often made even worse by political pandering. Luckily for SLACKER, “Velvet Worms,” rips. It’s an under two minute anti-capitalist punk jam that feels both nonchalant and scathing. “Terroristic pests festering at the top of a skyscraper. A fish rots from the head, I think it’s time to cut it off,” lead singer JP Houle sings over loose, distorted electric guitar strums.  

Like what you hear? Check out SLACKER Wednesday, April 9, at Whistle Stop. Do you have a “Song of the Week” suggestion? Shoot us an email and a sentence or two about why you’ve been bumping this song lately. Friendly reminder: all songs should be by local artists!

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I have a football-field-sized soft spot for acoustic guitars. It was the first instrument I picked up, and to this day, they do something special to me. I’m not even talking about songs that feature virtuosic fingerpicking, just the gentle strums of a steel string. The kind of thing I did when I was first writing songs as a teenager. The kind of thing that makes your mind drift slowly. That’s the good stuff. 

Ian Curtis, “Novel”: An enchanting, understated dose of indie rock, “Novel,” is both wistful and hopeful. Curtis’ velvety vocals float on top of a mellow acoustic guitar and bouncy bassline. It’s the kind of song that, although compact, feels like it’s taking deep breaths. It’s in no hurry to get to where it’s going, even if where it’s going is right around the corner. 

Like what you hear? Check out Ian Curtis at Soda Bar on Saturday, April 5. 

Do you have a “Song of the Week” suggestion? Shoot us an email and a sentence or two about why you’ve been bumping this song lately. Friendly reminder: all songs should be by local artists.

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There’s a feeling of sensory overload to much of Jeremy Field’s music.  

He’ll begin a song with an Alex G-esque croon before devolving into a cacophonous mixture of sounds, like on “Life Warmth.” Then he’ll hit you with 30 seconds of solemn organ on the appropriately titled “(organ).” Then he’ll mix the vibe all up with the simultaneously hyperactive and coolly introspective “Fooled Me Once,” before busting into the ironically revelatory – but genuinely cathartic – bombast of “(soaring into the great church).” 

Simply put, this is ADHD in musical form. Just check out the dizzying keyboard parts and cartoon horn breakdown in “John Maus Shirt,” if you need any proof.  

All of Field’s debut album “Soaring Into the Great Church,” is baffling – but in an absolutely fabulous way. At times, the song feels like someone has stumbled into a room with a purposefully mismatched collection of instruments and said “screw it, I’m using ‘em all.” And that kind of inventiveness too often feels in short supply nowadays. 

Jeremy Field, “Our Day Is Over”: There’s an odd serenity to much of “Our Day Is Over.” The song is underpinned by an infectious loop that’s then layered with violin and sirenic synths. It’s a disarming but genuinely intoxicating concoction. Then, for whatever reason, Field hits you with a verse sung to the tune of “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Fortunately (or unfortunately?), it works.  

Like what you hear? Catch Jeremy Field at Tower Bar on March 17. Do you have a “Song of the Week” suggestion?Shoot us an email and a sentence or two about why you’ve been bumping this song lately. Friendly reminder: all songs should be by local artists.

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KAN KAN’s music has always felt pretty timeless to me. But the more I’ve listened to them the more I’ve realized that’s not quite right – what they really are is not of this time.  

Spiritually, KAN KAN makes indie, DIY music that feels plucked from the indie-halcyon days of the 90s and early 2000s. Through some of their tunes, there are flashes of the sublime meanderings of bands like Pavement. Through almost all of their songs, though, there’s a lethargic, smudged nature that makes their music feel both vivid and hazy.  

But this music isn’t just empty genre posturing. What really sells KAN KAN is just how deeply felt the band’s songs are.  

“I’ll tell you this country will break your heart,” singer Cameron Rogers croons on “Hotel Circle,” a tale of a life spent in a perpetual in-between. The simple, repeated refrain on “Time Manager” manages in only a couple of lines to conjure up the feeling of being a screw up trying against all odds to not screw it up. “I am the same age you were when you died,” begins “Pretty Horses,” a song about persevering through loss and grief that also features the soul-crushing line “Please don’t let me sleep through the day it all ends.” 

KAN KAN won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. The band’s true blue DIY approach – much of the music is recorded by bassist Joseph Hoang – means some songs feature a thin hum of static or flubbed notes. But it’s all of those little “imperfections that make KAN KAN’s music that much more impactful.  

This is music made for real people and by real people.  

KAN KAN, “Around the Bend”: One of the best things about KAN KAN is the band’s ability to conjure delicate, tender melodies amid messiness. “Around the Bend,” highlights that knack with a gentle picking pattern that radiates a folky melancholic nostalgia. So much of the band’s music grapples with the difficulty (impossibility?) of change – from changing yourself to changing the world around you. On “Around the Bend,” Rogers seemed resigned to substantive change being impossible. Even so, in a strained whisper, he pledges, “I’ll try to be a better man.”  

Like what you hear? Catch Kan Kan tonight at the Brown Building. Do you have a “Song of the Week” suggestion?Shoot us an email and a sentence or two about why you’ve been bumping this song lately. Friendly reminder: all songs should be by local artists.

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Nashelle is a musical wanderer. On “cherry blisters,” the distorted guitars are dialed up to an eleven, while the bass flits up and down. “The Cycle,” showcases a snotty mixture of alt rock and pop. But in my view, her music is at its most potent when her deeply expressive voice has room to roam, like on the infectious pop tune “Where Did You Go?”  

While I don’t know who “you,” is or where they went, I’m definitely wondering now. 

Nashelle, “get up! get busy”: This track is a deliriously woozy bite of jazzy pop. It’s awash in chorus and reverb-laden guitars, honey-sweet vocals and tinkling keys. What’s so great about it though is how much a reprieve from the weightiness of life it is. There’s a delightful levity to everything from the lyrics to the little ad-libs. Hard not to bob your head or tap your foot to this one. 

Like what you hear? Catch Nashelle at Comet Theatre on Saturday, March 1. Do you have a “Song of the Week” suggestion? Shoot us an email and a sentence or two about why you’ve been bumping this song lately. Friendly reminder: all songs should be by local artists.

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Mathy indie rock can be a hard sell. Not everyone is looking to jam to supremely undanceable tracks whose mixture of time signatures and intensities can at times feel like you’ve thrown a whole handful of different songs in the blender.  

Even I can sometimes get turned off by all the sharp edges and angular musical elbows. That’s probably why my favorite track from the band’s 2022 debut album, the deliciously lush “Greenhousing,” is also one of the least mathy tracks in Band Arg’s repertoire. 

That’s why I like Band Argument so much. The group has a knack for finding a dreamy middle ground between all that complexity and tunes that don’t make you feel like you need to follow along with a calculator.  

Band Argument, “Percentages”:  From the opening swirls and flourishes of “Percentages,” Band Argument’s eagerness to dive headlong into kaleidoscopic and ever-changing compositions is showcased. The whiplash can be quite violent, but it’s never unentertaining – and besides, Sila Damone’s ethereally deadpan vocal delivery is enough to keep the listener grounded. Ultimately, Band Arg isn’t for everyone – but if you can’t find a little something you like in the chaotic display you may just not like music very much.  

Like what you hear? Catch Band Argument at Whistle Stop on Wednesday, Feb. 19.  

Do you have a “Song of the Week” suggestion? Shoot us an email and a sentence or two about why you’ve been bumping this song lately. Friendly reminder: all songs should be by local artists.

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The Band Cope, ”submarine”: Music doesn’t have to be for everyone. Some of my favorite songs are some of the most deeply personal – songs replete with cryptic references meant for only one person. While those kinds of songs may wall themselves off, if done well, they allow listeners to see their own experiences within them.  

That’s what listening to “submarine,” feels like.  There’s an intoxicatingly meditative and confessional nature to the lyrics and though I don’t know who Olivia is or what road trip through Arizona lead singer Ellie Cope is referring to, I know the emotional truths she’s communicating. And when you’re hit with lyrics as evocative and emotionally charged as “I pray with tears to a god I heard you talk to,” context isn’t all that important. 

Like what you hear? Catch The Band Cope on Friday, Feb. 14 at The Ken Club. Do you have a “Song of the Week” suggestion? Shoot us an email and a sentence or two about why you’ve been bumping this song lately. Friendly reminder: all songs should be by local artists.

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Phil Geraldi’s music is something else. To many, the kind of experimental, folk tinged ambient pieces he produces may just sound like noise. But if you pop on your headphones and just surrender yourself to the ebb and flow of his latest EP, “Steele, ND,” you quickly find out just how musical they are. Geraldi’s compositions are constantly morphing, like evolution and devolution are simultaneously happening in real time. 

On “North Dakota Sundown,” ghostly synth pads fade in and out of existence, replaced at times by distorted voices and static. On “Blood Runs Green Into Summer,” an angelic acoustic guitar refrain floats by just under gathering clouds of chaotic noise. On “Abducted,” leaves and twigs crunch under the feet of someone unknown as pedal steel-sounding synths, reversed acoustic picking and distorted strums battle for supremacy. On EP closer “Scan & Seek,” a breathy vocal loop repeats as hypnotic drums and guitar flourishes slowly build tension.  

Much of the EP sounds like someone is slowly twisting the radio dial, discovering new and fascinating mixtures of sounds and making what was once familiar entirely new. And it’s that feeling of exploration and discovery that makes listening so enthralling. 

Phil Geraldi, “Veil of Misty Tears”: The EP’s longest track is also its least representative. “Veil of Misty Tears,” is the most straightforward song you’ll find on “Steele, ND.” Yes, there’s the crackling static lurking on the edges of the languid acoustic guitar picking. Yes, even the guitars are made warbly, almost as if they are played from a decades-old cassette tape.  

But listening to this more standard composition is far from the mind-bending sonic experience induced by listening to much of the rest of the release. So, give it a try. If you dig it, play the EP from the beginning. Heck, play the whole release even if you don’t. A little bit of dissonance ain’t gonna’ kill you.  

Like what you hear? Catch Phil Geraldi live at Crescent House on Wednesday, Feb. 5.  Do you have a “Song of the Week” suggestion?Shoot us an email and a sentence or two about why you’ve been bumping this song lately. Friendly reminder: all songs should be by local artists.

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