The Vinyl-Wrapped Worlds Of Artist Nassem Navab
-by Julia Dixon Evans, KPBS | May 21, 2020

San Diego emerging artist focuses on the inherited habits and needs of children of Islamic and Middle Eastern immigrants during her Art Produce residency.

"Visual artist Nassem Navab recently moved back to San Diego from Tucson after studying at University of Arizona. She’d built up some connections here, worked as an artist assistant, began applying for teaching jobs, residences and exhibitions and was accepted into the 2020 group of artists-in-residence at North Park's Art Produce gallery.

And then, before her 7-week residency even began, the pandemic struck.

Art Produce, with its doors closed to the public, has continued its residency program as creatively as possible. The building is divided into several segments, so two artists can work in a studio and never interact with the other artist.

​Navab's residency is in the gallery’s "Cooler Room," in the back and away from any University Avenue passersby. Under ordinary circumstances, the space is a dream: High ceilings, south-facing windows flooded with light throughout the day and access directly into Art Produce's lovely garden space, which encourages visitors to mingle and dwell in any exhibitions. But with galleries closed, the gardens are inaccessible, and Navab's in-studio residence is largely cut off.

The irresistibly curious art of Carrie Minikel 
By Cynthia Zanone, San Diego Union Tribune  May 25, 2018

"Thoroughly inspired by nature, Oceanside artist Carrie Minikel has an instinct for transforming common objects into quizzical pieces of art that are at once representative and abstract, familiar yet wholly new.

While she holds a bachelor of science degree in fine art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s in fine art from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, it is the “making” — foraging, building, assembling, creating — that she finds fulfilling. 

​Minikel’s most recent work, “Curious Objects,” on display at Art Produce gallery from May 26 through July 14, is a curious collection of creations from the mind and hands of a collector of … curious objects."
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Project: Mapping Cultural Symbols: Land/Water/Place
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In collaboration with the Karen Organization and other local refugee organizations we will provide a series of multicultural and intergenerational art workshops aimed at facilitating cultural preservation and transmission of refugee communities through the artistic, metaphoric and cultural explorations of land/water/place. The project will explore cultural symbologies and concepts of home, migration and place, to develop and contextualize new collaborative expressions of mapping, navigation and cultural symbols. Art workshops will be offered at two local refugee organizations and will bring refugee families from different parts of the world to Art Produce to work together. This project supports cultural preservation while integrating new collaborative aesthetic expressions into the larger cultural communities of San Diego. The project will culminate in a public exhibition and community celebration in the Art Produce Gallery and travel to other cultural venues and art galleries.

Read more...

Fall arts: Dancer Blythe Barton pushes 'the boundaries of physicality'
By Marcia Manna, San Diego Union Tribune, September 17, 2017

Excerpt from the article:
Besides dance, name an artistic or cultural endeavor that inspires you here in San Diego.

Lynn Susholtz at Art Produce has created a space in North Park that makes art grow. Her combination gallery/studio/garden provides artists a location for experimentation and self-exploration. It is also a venue for those who didn’t know they needed art in their lives to fall in love with its textures, tastes and adventures. A community of people who aren’t typical art-goers: low-income seniors, immigrants, refugees, non-English speakers, families from out of town, come to interact and engage.

Each time I look into the gallery window, I have been intrigued by work that has included knitted tunnels from the ceiling, peek-a-boo art that makes me take a step closer, and videos that bring the outside in via the moving body.

​I first met Lynn many years ago as a patron of dance, and have come to know her as someone who will go out of her way to connect people with people, art makers with art lovers, and eager minds with engaging activities that encourage expression from even the most cynical creators. Lynn’s Art Produce resonates for me the reasons I dance: to offer a snippet of myself for sharing, with the hope of igniting a spark in someone else’s creative soul.