BUILDER ‘PRESERVING’ LAND AS ART

“The Golden Land,” the exhibition of California landscape paintings and photographs at the San Diego Museum of Art, makes for an ironic combination of the development industry, land and art.

The exhibit of more than 100 paintings and photographs, which opened last weekend and continues through Jan. 18, is funded by the Fieldstone Co., a Southern California firm that has built hundreds of single-family homes in San Diego County. As one of the firms that is rapidly changing the California landscape, Fieldstone seeks to preserve its natural beauty--at least in paintings.

Nine of the paintings in the exhibition are from Fieldstone’s 60-painting corporate collection of art by California impressionists. Fieldstone Executive Vice President Keith A. Johnson said the exhibition is an opportunity to “preserve elements of the Southern California landscape that become changed as our communities grow.”

Curated by Paul Mills, the exhibit includes views of countrysides far beyond Southern California. Landscapes such as Albert Bierstadt’s “Lake in Yosemite Valley,” painted in the mid-1800s, and the albumen print of “Valley of the Yosemite, from Sandy Run,” by photographer Eadweard James Muybridge recall an earlier age when the hordes of settlers were just beginning to arrive.

The exhibit is not all 19th-Century and impressionist pieces. Works by contemporary artists such as Peter Alexander, Carlos Almaraz and Mark Adams hold their own alongside pieces by Thomas Hill, Edwin Deakin, and Currier & Ives.

CAN’T TELL THE PLAYERS: After a year’s work, the San Diego Arts Directory, a listing of creative people and arts institutions of all kinds, will be officially distributed Dec. 4. Produced by the San Diego Arts Resource Center, the directory includes 850 listings of dancers, musicians, artists, actors, directors, photographers, designers, choreographers, galleries, museums, theaters, writers and agencies supporting the arts.

The primary funding for the directory, which has a first printing of 5,000 copies, came from a $25,000 grant, part of the National Endowment for the Arts matching grant to the City of San Diego through COMBO. Copies of the directory will be distributed at a 5 to 7 p.m. celebration Dec. 4 in Studio One at The Studio Building, 2400 Kettner Blvd. After Jan. 2, copies will be available at city and county libraries and the H.G. Daniels Co.

“RAINBOW WAR”: Direct from Expo ’86 in Vancouver, the fantasy fairy tale film “Rainbow War” has its American premiere Dec. 4 at the Ruben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center. A high-technology tale, “Rainbow War” is about three “color kingdoms”--Golden, Blue and Red--and how their citizens are brought to the point of war by accelerating transportation technology. Tickets for the 30-minute film, which received an Academy Award nomination, are $2.75 for adults and $2 for senior citizens and 5- to 15-year-olds.

COMPUTER ART: Adman and computer artist Michael Gosney is pushing his art of the Information Age again, this time through a journal of computer-generated art. Gosney has published the “preview issue” of Verbum, which he hopes will be a quarterly forum on issues surrounding art created by personal computers.

Gosney plans to explore through “Verbum” the aesthetics of art via the microchip, including the literature, poetry, art, humor and philosophy of the medium.

Stories in the first issue include reviews of software and hardware and technical tips on desk-top publishing systems, scanners and networking.

ARTBEATS: The symphony fund-raiser last week at Symphony Hall attracted 700 to 1,000 singles and cleared an estimated $10,000 to $12,000, according to Tom Benzing of the San Diego Singles Society. The money did not go to symphony operations but into the symphony’s endowment. . . .