The History of Art Walls O’side
The Original Vision
OCAF wished to seek out new exciting venues for the region’s artists to show and sell their art work. With that thought in mind, Ruth Jameson started Art Walls O’side in 2018 as a year-long pilot project of OCAF to further the fine arts in the City of Oceanside. The first venue for Art Walls was the O’side Bakery in East Oceanside. OCAF’s goal was to excite and engage our communities and visitors in the exploration of Oceanside’s establishments of fine dining and shopping through the arts.
The Original Mission
OCAF felt that by bringing businesses and artists together they could provide economic benefits to both. The many walls of our business communities can offer regional artists new places to gather and exhibit their work and meet new clients. Great food and great art have always had a simpatico relationship – music, poetry, readings, and visual art can make Oceanside full of exciting experiences with the Art Walls O’side program by presenting new artists and performers every two months during “opening
receptions” for the artist.
Oceanside Cultural Arts Foundation
Phyllis Swanson is a lifelong resident of San Diego County. After graduating in 1978 from San Diego State University with a degree in biology, Phyllis pursued a long time interest in art by studying oil painting from local artist, Frances James. She broadened her skills studying scientific illustration and Chinese brush painting at UCSD in La Jolla and three years of watercolor study from the nationally recognized artist, Lola Juris.
Phyllis presently continues her artistic expression through the medium of acrylics and collage. She has pursued the use of recycled materials for her collage and has been fond of the great color and texture provided by wine foils. Phyllis enjoys toying with the viewer of her works through the juxtaposition of the expected and not so expected…to find a bit of the humorous in our everyday experience. Her use of color is very strong and plays well with the images she expresses.
Phyllis has worked as a muralist with Studio 2, in Carlsbad, California for the last 25 years. She has participated in many of the studios’ performance art pieces including thirteen years as featured artists for Carlsbad’s Artsplash, two years as featured artist for Chalk La Strada, Little Italy, San Diego, and inclusion in the prestigious I’Madonnari Street painting festival in Santa Barbara, California. She was also a resident artist of the New Village Arts Foundry in Carlsbad for 12 years.
Phyllis’ various credits include twelve time award winner at the San Diego County Fair, inclusion in several Southern California Regional Juried Award Exhibitions at the San Diego Art Institute, the Cannon Art Gallery Juried Exhibition (2003 & 2013), the Cannon Art Gallery Public Artists Private Works 2012 show, as well as the selection of two of her works in the International Society of Interior Designers Design Home in La Jolla, California. Also, she has been included in a three person show at the Kruglak Gallery in Oceanside and a two person show at the Lyceum Theater in San Diego.
Commissions include:
Canine Companions for Independence (multiple murals), Southwest regional office, Oceanside
Carlton Lund of the Lund Team “Puppy Power Box” Carlsbad Village Dr., Carlsbad
City of Carlsbad, “Barrio Carlsbad”, Walnut and Roosevelt, Carlsbad
City of Vista, “Tribute to 395” Mural, Main Street, Vista
Rady’s Children’s Hospital, San Diego, CA, NICU Unit
Mayur Pavagahdi, “Cecil the Lion” Mural, Carlsbad Village Drive, Carlsbad, CA
SeaWorld, San Diego (multiple murals)
Other corporate and private collections
OCEANSIDE CULTURAL ARTS FOUNDATION
Summer Ramesh was born in Amarillo, Texas and raised in Laguna Hills, California. She has not always embraced her artistic talent. Following her graduation from UCLA in 1998 with a major in Psychology and a Specialization in Business Administration, Summer pursued a career in helping people finance their dream homes. With very little time for anything outside of work, her passion for art was put on the back burner for years. 
Fast forward to the devasting loss of a father figure in 2019 and to the start of COVID (an unprecedented time in history where so many emotions and feelings came to the surface for so many people), Summer could no longer suppress her desires to express herself through her art so she began rediscovering her talent for creating beauty on canvas but with different mediums and styles. First experimenting with Pollock-like acrylic abstraction, Summer has since developed her own unique signature style of acrylic movement art. With an innate talent for color selection and positioning, Summer’s motion art is captivating and beautiful while leaving each viewer to discover what they themselves feel and see in each piece.
Summer now resides in Rancho Santa Fe with her fiancé, Kash, and puppy, Gemma Jones.
“My art is the transference of passion, chaotic and sometimes inexplicable emotion, love, joy and pain onto canvas. My art is a collaboration with destiny and It is truly my privilege to share this piece of myself with you.”
Summer Ramesh
(949) 633-0720
Email: sramesh@gemcorp.com
P.O. BOX 195
Rancho Santa Fe, CA 92067
OCEANSIDE CULTURAL ARTS FOUNDATION
Linda Ponder is a North County artist, painting primarily abstract figurative. She studied under Larry Butler (Delta College) and Reed Cardwell (UCSD). She has shown in many juried competitions including winning an outstanding award in the Carlsbad Oceanside Art League Regional Show (COALS). Her works have also been in the Sharp Gallery and the San Diego Museum of Living Artists in Balboa Park.
Linda describes her approach to the canvas as emotive – a moving of the mind or soul; an excitement of the feelings. Her paintings have a magical and strange beauty; unexpected, and some might even say, unconventional. The results are often whimsical, childlike and surreal.
Oceanside Cultural Arts Foundation
Artist’s Statement:
I stand before each blank canvas with a sense of adventure and trepidation because I never know for sure what the end journey will look like. I create with a sense of mystery and risk, from a quiet place knowing I am painting in the presence of the greatest creator of all time. It’s not how much time a painting may take, it’s how I will use the combination of tools, creativity, and skill I have acquired over the years (to make it so).
Artist Bio:
I began my art career in the textile field after completing several design courses at UCLA. Designing has always been very natural to me. I love textures, prints, and using my imagination. I designed beach wear and home interiors. My clients included Roxy, OP, O Neil, Waverly, and many more. Additionally, my designs have been featured in the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. Over the years I began to study more drawing and painting. Eventually, I transitioned from gouache to oil, and gained an appreciation for the diversity of colors, and the way oils lay unto the canvas. Still never leaving design, I have found a way to incorporate my imagination into fine art paintings.
My mother Millie Greene is an incredible impressionist painter who studied with a Russian master Sergei Bongart. I have been fortunate to be surrounded by beautiful art, she has spurred me on, and challenged me at the same time.
My latest series is gold, copper, silver leaf, and oil. In this medium I continue to explore ethnic, figurative, and abstract paintings. I don’t paint only one way, it depends upon my subject, and allowing the unexpected to enter my creative process. My art is a way of life that encompasses the way I see the world, and my inspiration expresses itself onto the canvas.
Linda Phillips
Email: 77lindasart@gmail.com
SHOWS & AWARDS
2021 Artist Alliance, Oceanside Museum of Art
2021 Hi Ho Silver, Ashton Gallery, San Diego
2021 Contemporary Works Show, Studio Door, San Diego
2021 Front Porch Gallery, Carlsbad
2020 Crow Show, Studio Door, San Diego
2019 In Gold We Trust, Ashton Gallery, San Diego
2019 Artist in Residence at Chateau d’ Orguevaux, Ardenne France
2019 Creative License, Sparks Gallery, Gas Lamp, San Diego 2019 San Diego Fair
2018 San Diego Fair, Abstract, first place
2018 50 Artist to Watch, Best of Show, Studio Door, San Diego
2018 Legends, Studio Door, San Diego
2018 Black Out, Ashton Gallery, San Diego
2017 Art Beat, Solo Show, San Diego
2017 San Diego Fair, Figurative 3rd place
2017 Artist Alliance Oceanside Museum of Art
2017 L Street Gallery, San Diego
2016 Front Porch Gallery, Carlsbad
OCEANSIDE CULTURAL ARTS FOUNDATION
Blake is an Oceanside resident and has lived in North County since 1975: Married for 50 years with two adult children, and two grandchildren. She is a retired educator (2008) who now has the time to explore her personal creativity. She joined the Artist Alliance through the Oceanside Museum of Art in the fall of 2007 and has been trying to establish a reputation for creating unique, one-of-a-kind altered and hand-made books as well as Altar (art) boxes. She has participated in many shows at the Oceanside Art Gallery, Oceanside School of Art, Jazzercise Exhibits, Oceanside Art Walk, and Art in the Alley in Oceanside. She has sold many pieces and has been praised for her distinctive style.
Blake enjoys writing poetry which becomes the story behind the art in her sometimes rather dark and mysterious books. Creating altered books and altar boxes is a way for her to focus on a particular theme and develop the layers of texture and 3-D effect that is not obtainable with canvas or paper. She explains her process as follows: “I begin with an idea or sense of where I want to go, and by the end finds myself somewhere unexpected. The piece just takes on a life of its own, and I know when it’s done because it just feels right.” Blake’s goal is for the viewer to have a visceral reaction; to explore the box or book and discover the tiny details and symbolic messages that it contains. Not only does she want to evoke an emotional response, but she wants to tell a story.
Contact Info:
blakekern@gmx.com
760.805.5547
OCEANSIDE CULTURAL ARTS FOUNDATION
After raising four children and a career as a medical transcriptionist, Melissa retired, picked up the paint brush again and tried her hand at watercolor. She left Orange County for beautiful Oceanside where she took an acrylic class at Studio ACE in early 2020. Melissa says that acrylics have opened up a whole new world of bold color with a never ending potential to express herself.
OCEANSIDE CULTURAL ARTS FOUNDATION
ABOUT THE ARTIST: 
Trish has traveled around the world as a former International Flight Attendant for Pan American World Airways, which further peaked her interest in culture, religion, language and history. Upon the abrupt ending of this career she decided to re-enter the educational system and received her undergraduate graduate degree in Art History and Sculpture, Masters in Feminist Clinical Psychology, Masters in Art Therapy and currently practices as a Licensed Marriage Family Therapist and Art Therapist.
Trish has been a recipient for many awards, Who’s Who in American Women, published in over 25 Arts & Crafts Magazines; along with her art having been displayed in various museums and collected by art lovers. She published “Women, Art & Mental Illness” while working in the Bay Area Jails and mental health programs while sharing her experiences through her personal art works.
Trish explains, “Part of the purpose in my life is that I am human enough to serve as a prism for a universal story. Our experience is limited by the boundaries of our own consciousness and art making is a place that I can get around those limitations. I create to clear my mind of all external and internal debris. I strive to build a fluid bridge between the hand and mind so that they can become one voice that speaks to the moment. Creating art is my way of keeping a personal diary of the encounters that I have experienced in my life.”
Trish Brown Vernazza, M.A., LMFT, ATR-BC
Web site: www.VisionsofVenus.com Contact: info@trishv.com
QUESTION OF BEAUTY I will be offering these two pieces either separately or together during my solo show. Fifty percent (50 %) of this sale will go to NCAAWA (North County African American Women’s Association) who help to educate women and girls of all colors. This has been a long time passion of mine. I have been a member for over 15 years and previous board member.
Based in Oceanside, California, Kenneth L Montgomery is the award-winning artist behind Fine Art Expressions. His work has been on exhibition at the San Diego County Fair’s International Exhibition of Fine Art, The Lyceum Theatre Gallery as well as The Art Institute of California at San Diego. Kenneth has been involved in photography and digital artistry for well over two decades. His focus includes such subjects as animals, floral, seascapes, landscapes, abstract, cultural, historic, butterflies, and more. Each expression represents a culmination of Kenneth’s photographic vision and digital artistry style. His aim is for each expression to be a catalyst that brings about positive emotion, a feeling of relaxation or simply a feeling of enjoyment. Kenneth’s full collection of Fine Art Expressions can be viewed on his website at www.FineArtExpressions.com and you can also follow his work on Instagram @FineArtExpressions.
Oceanside Cultural Arts Foundation
