The tallest building in Ireland \u2014 The Elysian apartment complex in the city of Cork \u2014 tops off at 17 stories, a little over one-sixth the number of floors at Chicago\u2019s mammoth Sears Tower. San Diego artist Deirdre O\u2019Byrne cops to the chasmic difference in a couple respects. In the first place, she\u2019s lived in New York and Houston, the tips of whose skylines almost touch the outer Martian atmosphere; and early on, she toyed with a career in building science as she took in the workaday successes of her architect father. But dad seemed to think O\u2019Byrne would have more fun in graphic design \u2014 and a trove of low-lying Georgian architecture lay at her feet in her native Dublin, the inspiration there for the taking. The works you see at the right are prime examples of O\u2019Byrne\u2019s present-day stock in the watercolor and oil trade, culled from 35 years\u2019 study, travel and devotion to the visual arts, fine and applied. Big fat citified buildings certainly have their qualities in this Mission Valley resident\u2019s mind\u2019s eye, but only as they complement a downtown core. Anything less washes away a city\u2019s character and its residents\u2019 sense of place. O\u2019Byrne, after all, has seen it happen before. Even in fabled Dublin. But this is San Diego, O\u2019Byrne\u2019s residence for nine years and the steward of a true neighborhood environment the likes of which she\u2019s rarely encountered. “I think the different communities really make San Diego stand out,” she told Downtown News. “Little Italy, the Gaslamp [Quarter], Hillcrest, North Park: They all have distinct little characteristics, all kinds of different architecture. And the signs (like the paintings of the overhangs you see here) are all different too, which is kind of interesting. “I started off with the Little Italy [sign] because it\u2019s my number one favorite place,” O\u2019Byrne explained, adding that she plans to paint all 12 city-funded markers that dot the San Diego area. She prefers the plein air approach, which is a fancy term for painting on location. No photographs or visual aids for her \u2014 the rewards lie within the climate alone. “It\u2019s all about the emotion and the feeling,” O\u2019Byrne, 49, said. “I\u2019m not just painting a photograph. A photograph doesn\u2019t give you the sounds, the smells, the whole atmosphere. It doesn\u2019t create that excitement. When I paint on the spot, I\u2019m painting my feelings and emotions of what I\u2019m seeing in front of me. I\u2019d rather be in the middle of it. My preference is to always paint from real life. “If you want your painting to look like a photograph, then why not just take a photograph? And it\u2019s about color, too. Why not use color where you can? It makes you feel good.” Presumably, the jaywalker in the Little Italy piece has lived to see another day. If not, she\u2019s a casualty of Downtown\u2019s urbanization, which began in earnest in the mid-1980s with the opening of Horton Plaza. The Gaslamp\u2019s sleaze factor and Little Italy\u2019s physical deterioration eventually vanished. But O\u2019Byrne is concerned Downtown may swing the other way. “That\u2019s one of the things I hope San Diego\u2019s going to be really careful about,” O\u2019Byrne said, “and not wipe out a lot of the history and the beautiful old buildings that have so much character. I know every city grows. I\u2019ve seen them. I\u2019ve lived in Manhattan, Florida, Houston, Seattle and now here. Houston was nothing, and now it\u2019s grown into all these skyscrapers. And in the nine years I\u2019ve been here, the amount of building that\u2019s been going on is phenomenal.” And there\u2019s so much more to go. Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC), the city\u2019s development arm, says that the Downtown population, now at just over 30,000, will triple in slightly more than 20 years. The C Street Revitalization Master Plan; a new federal courthouse; prospects for a North Embarcadero makeover; the Kettner & Ash mixed-use development; plans for the Civic Center renovation and more: CCDC would love to see \u2019em in place by the time the new folks get here. O\u2019Byrne will be glad to learn that many of the projects include plans for generous green space; moreover, the city is working toward the creation of more open space for Downtown in the coming years. She won\u2019t be so pleased to hear that the current recession is costing the city dearly. The fiscal 2009 Department of Park and Recreation budget \u2014 about $83 million \u2014 would take care of about one-third of all the deferred maintenance costs at Balboa Park alone. And in a March 20 letter to Mayor Jerry Sanders, Councilmember Donna Frye predicts that the city\u2019s immediate budget deficit could be $60 million, 33 percent higher than the city\u2019s current projection. If the recession chokes off growth, it may also force the contractors to rethink their plans, resulting in fewer encumbrances on the landscape \u2014 a landscape that O\u2019Byrne thinks has weathered the urbanization storm fairly well. “I\u2019m glad to see there\u2019s a cute little house in Little Italy they\u2019re going to save,” O\u2019Byrne explained. “They\u2019re actually going to take it up off the ground and move it somewhere,” out of harm\u2019s way amid some planned construction. “And the skyline from Coronado actually looks pretty good. But San Diego\u2019s all about tourism and its beaches. If you put all the modern architecture in, where\u2019s your beaches?” And then, indeed, where would O\u2019Byrne be? “I\u2019d have to move. I\u2019d have to go to the south of France or something and paint over there.” As it turns out, she\u2019s already been to the south of France. “It was fun,” she said. “I met some people from Ireland there. The Irish will always go to where there\u2019s sunshine, and that\u2019s why San Diego\u2019s so great for me. San Diego is a painter\u2019s paradise, with all the beaches and beautiful scenery and, again, those little communities. That\u2019s what I hope they\u2019ll save. I hope the planning committee people are keeping that in mind.” We\u2019ll see. For more information on O\u2019Byrne, featuring her work on people, seascapes and animals, go to odoodle.com.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The tallest building in Ireland \u2014 The Elysian apartment complex in the city of Cork \u2014 tops off at 17 stories, a little over one-sixth the number of floors at Chicago\u2019s mammoth Sears Tower. San Diego artist Deirdre O\u2019Byrne cops to the chasmic difference in a couple respects. In the first place, she\u2019s lived in […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":274455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11556","_seopress_titles_title":"Brush with the future","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11556,11547,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-downtown-news","category-features","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}