After a years-long process to complete the approval and installation of the newest public art wraps around utility boxes in town, on August 7, the Coronado Historical Association (CHA) hosted a dedication for the new Art Outside the Box installation. Seven Coronado High School and Coronado School of the Arts (CoSA) students collaborated with the Coronado Cultural Arts Commission and CHA to update the public art wraps around utility boxes in Coronado.<\/p>\n
Coronado Cultural Arts Commissioner Dawn Richards began the presentation, expressing her thanks for the students\u2019 hard work bringing a new series of public art pieces to the City and to all involved in that process.<\/p>\n
In the spring of 2023, students Sophia Hodges, Griffin Wong, Mason Deane, and Jasmine Lo interned with CHA, where they were responsible for researching the utility box sites and combing through historic photos of Coronado. CoSA students Rebekka Siqueiros, Juniper Clark, and Jocain Howard also partnered with the CHA interns during that time to finalize the selection of images and turn them into the pieces of public art that can now be seen all around Coronado. The final designs were submitted and reviewed by the City and Caltrans.<\/p>\n
\u201cArt Outside the Box is a unique program that transforms our dull, yet very necessary utility boxes into vibrant works of public art, adding color, creativity, and beauty to our downtown area,\u201d Richards noted. \u201cTonight, we are here to celebrate the incredible partnership behind this project and recognize the talented high school students who made this happen. The first group worked with the Coronado Historical Association and made use of their wonderful resources. They probably combed through hundreds of images to try and find the most appropriate ones for this project.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHA President Jenna McIntosh and Curator of Collections Vickie Stone were at the event and were responsible for assisting the students with the initial phase of this project. Stone is one of the direct CHA liaisons for the Coronado Unified School District\u2019s internship program (a partnership that has been going on for over a decade now), where she provided the CHA interns involved with Art Outside the Box access to their archives and the many photos housed there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re so pleased to be able to offer [this internship] to Coronado High School students. Almost every semester, we have students who are interested in what they can do with us,\u201d Stone said during the ceremony. \u201cGenerally, we do an oral history program as our internship project, and so this was a really fun, collaborative project that gave our students an opportunity to think a little bit differently. Not only did the students pick each image, but they had to research them and write an informative and engaging article for the public to read in the Coronado Magazine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second group was with CoSA\u2019s graphic design program,\u201d Richards noted. \u201cWhat they did was [they] took the parameters of all of the boxes and made the artwork fit on each of the four side panels. To take it a step further, they also added pops of color to these historical photos.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councilmember Kelly Purvis, who previously served as the City\u2019s Arts Administrator, was also invited to speak, and Purvis explained how the utility box art wraps have evolved over the past decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis project started ten years ago in 2015,\u201d Purvis said. \u201cCarol Pastor, a wonderful member of the Historical Association, came forward and said, \u2018We have a great idea \u2013 we\u2019d like to paint boxes throughout town.\u2019 That idea evolved, and we came up with the idea of wrapping them in film, taking artwork, and having students do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first iteration of Art Outside the Box involved Coronado students from fifth through ninth grades, who went through an extensive jury process and learned a lot about public art as they submitted their designs. \u201cI have to say, it was a splash of color in our downtown, and it was just lovely to see those boxes,\u201d she continued. \u201cWas it one hundred percent loved? No, but that\u2019s what public art does. It creates conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
That initial project included utility boxes in the Village, and the next iteration of the project focused on the Strand and brought in the Silver Strand Beautification Committee. Members of the committee suggested putting photography on the boxes that would highlight the beauty of the Strand. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what we did,\u201d Purvis said. \u201cWe incorporated the work of a few photographers, one of whom was Brian Lippe. He was a U.S. Navy SEAL who lived down in the Cays.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lippe passed away before those art wraps were completed, and in honor of his memory, a photo of him was also incorporated into Art Outside the Box. \u201cWhat I love about it and [Lippe\u2019s] work is that as you drive out of the Cays, there\u2019s a box with him on it, taking a photograph. So that was a wonderful second project.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the latest variation to the Art Outside the Box, CHA brought the proposal to use historical photos and bring the high school students on board. \u201cOn Third Street, you can see the helicopter [wrap] as you\u2019re going into the Base. On Fourth Street, you\u2019ll see the preschool, which was actually on that block across the street (that was Miss Bunny\u2019s preschool). Down the way, you\u2019ll see the photos of the film festival. We actually had an earlier film festival,\u201d Purvis listed. \u201cThe stories go on and on, and these students learned about our history, about what had been there, and picked out appropriate pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n
I had the chance to chat with Sophia Hodges, one of the CHA interns who had worked on the project, who graduated from CHS earlier this year, at the event. Part of Hodges\u2019 involvement included researching the history, specifically around Avenida del Sol and Avenida de Las Arenas. \u201cI really like history, so I had wanted to do an internship that semester with the Coronado Historical Association,\u201d she mentioned of what had motivated her to be a part of this project.<\/p>\n
One of Hodges\u2019 favorite takeaways from the experience was learning how to use CHA\u2019s image catalogue and getting to go through so many historic photos. \u201cThat was really interesting, and learning new things and seeing these photos I\u2019d never seen before was pretty cool,\u201d she described. \u201cAt Tent City, there was a dance hall, and that one was my favorite because I hadn\u2019t known that it had been there, and it was a really beautiful building. It had a similar Victorian and Queen Anne style as the Del, and I wish it was still there.<\/p>\n
\u201c[CHA] also taught us how to write a research article and how to incorporate that with the images,\u201d Hodges added. \u201cThat was really interesting to try and piece it together. It was definitely a process, but it was worth it, and now I want to try and get more involved with local history, local art, anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the presentation, Purvis also discussed how much effort went into restoring, enlarging, and getting the images from the historical photographs to work with the dimensions of a utility box, a challenge that the CoSA students took on. \u201cThese photographs were very granular, and they had to blow them up, and they decided to add pops of color to them. And that pop of color made these pictures just wonderful. This project is an unbelievable collaboration between CoSA, CHA, the Arts Commission, our City, and Caltrans,\u201d Purvis mentioned. \u201cThey\u2019ve turned these boxes into canvases and made a statement with our history, and they make me smile when I drive by. Public art is for us, it\u2019s a gift.\u201d<\/p>\n
I also had the opportunity to discuss that part of the experience with Rebekka Siqueiros, one of the CoSA students who designed the wraps for the utility boxes on the corners of Avenida del Sol and Orange Avenue, Avenida de Las Arenas and Silver Strand, and Pomona and Orange Avenue. Siqueiros, who is now getting ready to start her sophomore year of college, mentioned how the graphic designers on the project decided to randomly divvy up the utility boxes among themselves and then worked from the narrowed-down selection of photos the CHA interns presented them with.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a couple of meetings with the Arts Commission, where we narrowed it down further to a few photos per box. Then we went through the restoration process, adding color and formatting them,\u201d Siqueiros explained. As Purvis had noted, that process brought with it a series of challenges, given that they were working with older photographs and unusual canvas sizes and shapes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the photos were scanned pictures of a photo from years ago and weren\u2019t the right aspect ratio to fit the frame,\u201d Siqueiros agreed. \u201cWe thought about what we could do, and Photoshop has this cool thing where you can extend [elements]. I did that a couple of times, but I wasn\u2019t changing the integrity of the photo. It was just the sky or the beach [that were extended] to fit the frame. There was also a lot of reworking on the color because we had to figure out if we wanted to do full color or have it be a pop of color on one aspect.\u201d<\/p>\n
She recalled having a lot of freedom with those creative aspects for the designs, including selecting what colors to use. \u201cI personally did a couple of versions of each one. We had another meeting where we could spitball ideas and ask what color we liked best, or if we wanted a different part of the photo to be highlighted, and we came together as a group to decide that. It was a lot of workshopping.\u201d<\/p>\n
Siqueiros added that it\u2019s been a surreal feeling to see that work physically brought to life with the completed installation of the wraps this year. \u201cNow it\u2019s real, and people are looking at it every day. It makes me feel really grateful for all of the opportunities to do this,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were a lot of photos that I really liked that didn\u2019t make it through the process, but they were so interesting. I\u2019ve gone to school here all of my life, but I don\u2019t live on the island, so it was cool to see this stuff that I never would have known had been here if it wasn\u2019t for this project.\u201d<\/p>\n
As part of the celebration of these newest iteration Art Outside the Box public art pieces, the full-sized, three-dimensional models of the art wraps for the utility boxes alongside historical photographs are on display at the Coronado Public Library through September 8.<\/p>\n
A full list of the ten Art Outside the Box locations with information about which students worked on which boxes is available on the City\u2019s website at https:\/\/www.coronado.ca.us\/1093\/Art-Outside-the-Box-Take-2-Orange-Avenue<\/a>. To read the students\u2019 article about the history around each of those locations and the corresponding historic photos, please visit https:\/\/issuu.com\/coronadomagazine\/docs\/coronado_magazine_-_august_2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n VOL. 115, NO. 34 – Aug. 20, 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a years-long process to complete the approval and installation of the newest public art wraps around utility…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":168646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,78695,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-168645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-coronado_city_news","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-sandiego","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115077045473152410","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}