Art From The Sidewalk: Max Lofano’s ‘Ray’
Tuesday, December 29, 2020, By Julia Dixon Evans

​North Park's Art Produce Gallery has transformed their exhibition model throughout the pandemic, making more room for residencies for artists and even dance companies who need a place to develop, create and share art. Art Produce's storefront sits directly on University Avenue in North Park, with a large front window and glass doors to showcase works to passersby on the sidewalk.

Right now, the gallery window is home to current artist-in-residence Max Lofano's new, ephemeral work, "Ray." It's a series of sculptural lines that seem endless, spanning from their suction-cup attachments on the front window back to a vanishing point on the gallery's distant back wall.

Lofano worked with the gallery spotlights and intentionally created the work to be viewed from the sidewalk, at night.

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.

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