Culture Lust Weekend:

ART

There’s no better way to segue from summer to September than with Art San Diego Contemporary Art Fair. It’s a four-day art forum for artists, collectors, and of course, Culture Lusters. Forty contemporary art galleries will open their doors alongside street stands and collaborative exhibitions while Art Labs (xxx) crop up all over downtown. The fair opens tonight with hors d’ouevres, wine and a preshow and starts early tomorrow with “Art Collectors Boot Camp.” In addition to the actual art there will be films, concerts, conversations with some of San Diego’s own curators and different conferences highlighting everything from “Professional Resources for the Serious Art Collector” to “Utilizing Art & Culture as Transformative Tools.” If art is your passion, this is your Mecca.

Opening tonight as well, Alexander Salazar is hosting reactionary art fair Easel Art Af(FAIR). It's five days of 5,000 square feet of art, for five dollars. We’re excited to see an extensive collection of local, international and student work, and we’re thrilled that 10% of all proceeds going to It’s All About the Kids Foundation.

As we learned from The Graduate, it’s all about “plastics.” This Friday at Subtext the APASD has come together with curator Joseph Bellows to present Plastic Fantastic - a group photography exhibition featuring film from plastic cameras. Cancel your plans because it’s one night only and San Diego band Pocket is performing.

Artists from up and down the west coast have come to Escondido to show off their alternative art during the Fiber Book Arts Exhibition. Beading, pine needle basketry and crochet paper are just a few of the fibrous textiles used by this year’s artists, so to get your daily dose of filament find your way to the Escondido Municipal Gallery sometime this month.

Man meets machine this Friday at Device Gallery. At the hands of Greg Brotherton, Nemo Gould, Jeremy Mayer and Guillermo Rigatteri, old apparatus’ and scrap metals take shape to become Creatures of Industry. We’re equal parts awed and alarmed.

THEATER

Probing into the ties that bind this month at the Moxie, is Eleemosynary. The one act play by Lee Blessing follows Dorothea (the eccentric grandmother), Artie (Dorothea’s strong willed biochemist daughter) and Echo (Artie’s estranged, but highly intellectual daughter) as they navigate the dialectic between finding themselves and loving one another. Opening night is this Saturday.

Motherhood, the environment and crossing the boarder are all topics in tonight’s “Blurred Summer Dance Festival.” Presented by Sushi Performance and Visual Art, The Patricia Rincon Dance Collective and Art Fair San Diego, the festival will feature seven diverse dance companies (and styles!) from both sides of the border.

Test-drives turn predictable lives into duplicitous ordeals this month at the North Cost Rep. Becky Foster literally backs onstage asking for the audiences advice, setting the tone perfectly for Steven Dietz’s capricious comedy Becky’s New Car. It opens this Saturday with previews tonight and tomorrow.

MUSIC

We can hardly keep our hips in line after listening to Cuban musical group Septeto Nacional. Champions of African/Mambo/Salsa/Latin Jazz movement “Son,” they have already secured their position in Cuban musical history and, if we have any sway in the matter, are well on their way to making musical history here. They’re play this Friday and Saturday at Anthology.

EVENTS

This Saturday, stickball is hitting the streets of Little Italy. Part baseball part back alley brouhaha (with broomsticks), this classic east coast city street game (complete with the traditional taunting) has moved west for the weekend. Six local teams showoff their stickball skills and will compete next weekend for the championship