The Thriving Art Community of San Diego
​Beyond the big headlines, the city’s contemporary art scene is rooted in its diverse, community-centered art spaces.
By Jordan Karney Chaim October 13, 2022

Excerpt:
​Art Produce, another multifaceted, multiuse art and culture center, is an extension of artist and educator Lynn Susholtz’s public and community-based practice. Susholtz purchased and rehabbed the boarded-up North Park Produce Market in 1999 and it now serves as a cultural hub, where community members can gather and “envision what life in a rich cultural environment could look like,” Susholtz explained. The building houses gallery and studio spaces, community rooms, an art lab, its own offices, a retail tenant, and a sustainable garden. Anyone can apply to Art Produce’s artist residencies, propose an exhibition, or attend its free, all-ages, art making events and workshops. Resident artists and exhibitors are strongly encouraged to propose or develop projects that engage the local community.

When Susholtz moved to North Park 30 years ago, she got involved in neighborhood politics and encouraged other artists to do the same. Art Produce has continued to respond to the needs of artists and community members as the neighborhood changes, always with an emphasis on public engagement. Its gallery is entirely visible from the sidewalk, making exhibitions accessible without even entering the space. “I’m trying to present other opportunities for the neighborhood to engage in art and feel like it’s part of their daily lives,” Susholtz said. “Artists [have been] challenged to experiment with their work and to really learn what community engagement can be, and what it means to their practice and to their teaching.”

Column: SDSU professors’ ‘Small Acts’ exhibition packs big, bold thoughts into pint-sized packages
By Karla Peterson March, San Diego Union Tribune, March 26, 2022 6:02 AM PT

Excerpt:
​"In “Object Lessons,” San Diego artist Lynn Susholtz uses illustrations from a 1964 grade-school primer to examine her own ideas about what it means to be queer, and what the artists behind the illustrations might have been saying about queer life in the still-closeted 1960s."
​

Artist and educator Lynn Susholtz, a mainstay of North Park for decades, sees the neighborhood as her canvas - by Martina Schimitschek, San Diego Union Tribune  November 16, 2018

Lynn Susholtz has a citizen artist logo with a raised fist holding a paint brush. But for Susholtz, who embodies the term citizen artist, a superhero would also be an apt symbol.

For decades, the artist, educator and activist has been a fixture in North Park, a place she calls home, where she has her studio and runs a non-profit community space, which includes a gallery and sustainable urban garden. She also consults at schools, mentors artists and college students and is on the North Park Main Street board of directors.

For Susholtz, it’s all part of being an artist.
​
"I think being an artist is probably the most encompassing part of my work,” she says. “I employ educational and learning opportunities in my art. I see that as an art form. Community engagement work can also be considered an art form."

Check out Lynn's interview with Monkeywrench which was broadcast on January 16, 2018. She discusses artists in communities and being a Citizen Artist!​

Monkeywrench is a radio program aired on KUCI 88.9 FM in Irvine, UC Irvine's independent, underground radio station.

​Fall arts: Dancer Blythe Barton pushes 'the boundaries of physicality'
By Marcia Manna, San Diego Union Tribune, September 17, 2017

Excerpt from the article:
Besides dance, name an artistic or cultural endeavor that inspires you here in San Diego.

Lynn Susholtz at Art Produce has created a space in North Park that makes art grow. Her combination gallery/studio/garden provides artists a location for experimentation and self-exploration. It is also a venue for those who didn’t know they needed art in their lives to fall in love with its textures, tastes and adventures. A community of people who aren’t typical art-goers: low-income seniors, immigrants, refugees, non-English speakers, families from out of town, come to interact and engage.

Each time I look into the gallery window, I have been intrigued by work that has included knitted tunnels from the ceiling, peek-a-boo art that makes me take a step closer, and videos that bring the outside in via the moving body.

​I first met Lynn many years ago as a patron of dance, and have come to know her as someone who will go out of her way to connect people with people, art makers with art lovers, and eager minds with engaging activities that encourage expression from even the most cynical creators. Lynn’s Art Produce resonates for me the reasons I dance: to offer a snippet of myself for sharing, with the hope of igniting a spark in someone else’s creative soul.

NEW ARTISTIC VENTURE - Community activist Lynn Susholtz to turn North Park’s Art Produce Gallery into a nonprofit
By James Chute Sept. 6, 2015

The way artist Lynn Susholtz sees it, she’s been “nonprofiting” for years. ■ Her North Park enterprise, Art Produce, has partnered with numerous community groups. She’s hosted art exhibits, performances, workshops, community forums, even fundraisers for other organizations in her quest to be a cultural force and an educational resource for the community.

She’s finally decided she might as well officially make Art Produce a nonprofit.

“You know when this really dawned on me? Last May (2014),” she said. “It was a busy month, and we were having our fourth fundraiser for other nonprofit organizations in the garden. And it kind of hit me like a ton of bricks: We should be doing a fundraiser for Art Produce.

“We’ll always support the community, other cultural institutions and individual artists, but at some point, we need to figure out a way to subsidize it that’s not out of our own pockets.”

While Susholtz’s art/design endeavor Stone Paper Scissors will continue as a for-profit business, she’s filed papers with the state for Art Produce to take over the nonprofit status of the inactive Green Scene Gallery, started by North Park architects Zagrodnik + Thomas. She’s assembling a board of directors, writing new bylaws, developing an organizational structure and creating what she hopes will be a model for private/public — or for-profit/nonprofit — cooperation.

“I’ve kind of taken this idea about as far as I can by myself,” she said. “I realize I don’t have the capacity to increase the programming here, and develop and sustain the partnerships by myself anymore. And the funding has to diversify. So I’m very excited about the possibilities.”