Cartoon By: Dan Cordero
Maybe it is something in the water, our electric, diverse borderlands culture, or our South County gene pool, but one thing is for certain – Southwestern College is a remarkable Mecca of artistic talent.
For 25 years when someone said “Southwestern College…” the response was “Great theater!” SWC has sent thousands of actors, musicians, writers, designers, dancers, directors and technicians to work in theaters, TV studios and movie sets around the world. Mexican pop music sensation Julieta Venegas, superstar screen writer J. Michael Straczynski, Emmy-winning designer John Iacovelli and California’s most produced playwright all come from SWC. So did the rock band P.O.D., a member of Pearl Jam , the reggae wizards Stranger and Shy Fox, San Diego County’s hottest young band.
We are an arts incubator with an enormous heritage.
You would never know it, though, based on our leadership’s recent decisions. A shift in the $389 million bond, Proposition R, approved by voters in 2008, has caused despair among artists and patrons in the college community as inspiring plans for a new performing arts center have been significantly downgraded to accommodate a runaway complex of athletic buildings.
Venerable Mayan Hall, the community face of our institution, has been on duty far too long. It has served the college and the community faithfully, but is crumbling to ruins. A replacement promised to the community under Prop R’s original vision has been scratched and the money reallocated for pools and gyms.
Current plans for the corner lot consist of one 500-seat theater, a 170-seat black box theater, classrooms for dance and offices. Total square footage will be 29,560 feet. Originally, the arts center was to be 75,292 square feet and the centerpiece of the corner lot.
This is a disheartening change from the original plan, which included a 900-seat theater as well as an area for our underfunded and underappreciated culinary arts program to sell its creations during performances.
Disappointment is justified. The jocks have won again. A 75,000 square foot “wellness center” will be built alongside the performing arts center and will include a gymnasium, Olympic swimming pools, classrooms, fitness labs, cardio-workout rooms, community locker rooms and a testing lab. It would be more than double the size of the performing arts center. This on top of $51 million already spent on a new massive 58,000 square foot field house looming over a new field.
Sports facilities will be four times larger than the arts complex. With the budget jump from $23 million to $41 million for the wellness center, sports facilities will capture almost 25 percent of the total bond. There is no way that was the intention of Prop R voters in this arts-loving community.
We love our sports programs and our athletes, we really do. Many members of this staff, as well as its advisor, are or were college athletes. But we also love our artists and SWC has a lot of extraordinary talent. Accomplishments by SWC art students and faculty have far, far outdistanced this institution’s athletic achievements.
SWC alumni have performed on Broadway, written major motion pictures, created classic television series and won Grammys. By comparison, SWC has had one alumnus who played in the NFL, one Major League Baseball player of note and zero NBA players.
Singer/songwriter Jessica Lerner, actor/director/playwright Bryant Hernandez and the world-famous Mariachi Garibaldi, which has traveled internationally at the request of governments, have come from the humble halls of this incredibly diverse school. It was on these grounds that renowned artist John Baldessari found his voice. William Virchis, one of America’s best known Chicano directors, helped put SWC on the map, as has Dr. Teresa Russell and her Concert Choir.
Our entire South Bay community is bubbling over with artists. Bonita Vista High School’s show choirs have been the South Bay’s most successful academic program since the early 1980s. Chula Vista High’s theater program is excellent, as are Montgomery’s Mariachis, Castle Park’s ballet folklorico and Sweetwater’s PASCAT Filipino dance troupe. One thing SWC leadership does not consider is that our college will have the only real theater in the region. Our high school programs rely on SWC for their major events. Let us not forget that the parents of secondary students are also taxpayers contributing to Prop R. Recently, believe it or not, local high schools have had to drive north to Lincoln High School to find an adequate theatre.
Our performing arts center on the corner lot could have been an incredible opportunity for this college to serve its community, but we are about to blow it. This college has neglected our performing arts for the past decade and the downsizing of the corner lot theater is a 50-year mistake.
Art is everywhere and, unlike professional sports, jobs are plentiful. Forget the ignorant “starving artist” rhetoric, there are thousands of working artists for every NFL, MLB or NBA player. They are architects, advertising executives, fashion designers, teachers, graphic designers, automotive engineers, creators of airliners, recording engineers and technicians, landscape architects and countless other well-paying creative professions.
Over the centuries, art has done more to heal, preserve and inspire humanity than any other human force. Artists are the courageous peacemakers, the unsung revolutionaries and the steadfast heart of the human race.
Southwestern College is really, really good at visual and performing art. We will never be an athletic powerhouse. We are a community college. We need to stop pretending we are UCLA and embrace the amazing one-of-a-kind borderlands arts crucible we are. We are truly unique geographically and culturally as an arts force.
There are at least seven gyms within three miles of SWC, we don’t need an iron pumping Taj Mahal. We need a South County arts center. Please, board and administrators, don’t blow it. Embrace who we are, not what we will never be.
