Exhibitionists

“No reading, no memorizing. It’s all oral,” described Storytellers of San Diego president Marilyn McPhie of the yarns these spinners create live for audiences. Join the performers for the Storytelling Festival on March 21 at Encinitas Library (free). Enjoy a beach view, hear a tale, attend a workshop, or speak extemporaneously at the open mic. Featured this year, local emergency first responders tell their stories. Find the storytellers first Wednesdays at Rebecca’s in South Park, the Story Swap at Mira Mesa Barnes & Noble, or al fresco at Native Stories and Harvest of Tales in Mission Trails Regional Park.

“Calligraphy” means beautiful handwriting, and Wendy Ware can pen over 40 exquisite styles. After moving to San Diego from a farm in Iowa, the self-trained artist has made a living addressing envelopes and designing decor for more than 30 years. Wendy’s handwriting has graced holiday cards for pro golfer Phil Mickelson’s family and Sempra Energy. With her line of place cards, gift tags, and accoutrements, Wendelline Papers, Wendy’s art has earned enough to buy a house in Bay Park, where she has a home and studio.

At Lux Art Institute, nestled on a chaparral-covered hill above San Elijo Lagoon, it’s about the artistic process as much as the finished art piece. Lux invites resident artists to create on site while their work is on exhibit, so visitors can “see art happen.” Gardens of native plantings and outdoor installations expand the “museum without walls” experience. Workshops for children, teens, and adults, like mini-comics and batik, encourage artistic development. Adults $5, under 21 free (additional fees for classes). Free Family Day February 28th, with art-making and tours.

After local glass sculptor Michelle Kurtis Cole first encountered the “vibrant world of coral” while diving in Montego Bay, Jamaica, she carried the memory of the colors and shapes with her as inspiration over the years. When she returned to the same spot a decade later, the reef was dead. Thus began the Fallen Reef project: creating glass sculptures that would provide a home for new coral growth. From hundreds of pieces of custom molded and colored glass, Cole formed conglomerate coral shapes. In 2012 these test pieces were placed in a tank at the Birch Aquarium, where — amazingly — baby corals “started calling them home.” The long-term goal is to place glass coral statues, maybe up to six feet high, in the ocean to possibly generate new reefs.

Many of Cole’s large-scale sculptures take “the textures, shapes and movement of nature” and recreate them in glass. Fragile, a three-tiered, turquoise-and-blue, expansive piece that is displayed by suspension from the ceiling, echoes the swells of the ocean. When it was on exhibit at the Oceanside Museum of Art, kids would “spontaneously dash underneath it and look up as if they were really under water, with light from the blue glass reflecting off their faces.”

Cole is currently looking for a new space to exhibit Fragile. She recently returned from two months in the Czech Republic followed by a residency at the Pilchuck Glass School, cofounded by Dale Chihuly, in Washington.