Painting

The art at Westside Costa Mesa's World Gallery is intergalactic, but visitors shouldn't expect paintings of orbiting planets or sculptures of little green men. Thomas Burgard opened the gallery in May, hoping to attract more people to the area and to offer locals a place to view and showcase a variety of artwork. "What I mean by intergalactic is it encompasses everything in the universe and is not limited to any sort or style of art," said Burgard, who utilizes oils, acrylics and watercolors to recreate his world adventures on canvas.

A band of pint-sized artists will have a one-day art exhibit in Costa Mesa — right in the middle of nap time. Orange Coast College is showcasing "The Language of Paint," a single-day exhibit of 24 paintings created by the pre-kindergarten students in the college's Harry and Grace Steele Children's Center. The 5-year-old students were given disposable cameras to capture the world around them and asked to re-create their favorite photo in paint. The children had no special arts training, but figured out how to mix the colors themselves and learned through experimentation about different techniques like applying paint with a sponge or Q-tips.

The Newport Harbor Nautical Museum is adding an original art collection of paintings created for the annual Newport Ensenada Yacht Race to its permanent collection. The first painting the museum acquired was the official painting of the 60th anniversary race, the largest international yacht race in the world. The painting, created by Newport Beach artist Carole Boller illustrates the story of the competition. "This new art collection will be a valuable addition to the history of Newport for museum visitors to enjoy for years to come," said Executive Director David Muller in a news release.

Although she said Lake Michigan is beautiful and she enjoyed its scenery while living in Chicago, nothing entranced artist Carole Boller more than the ocean. So six years ago, Boller moved from the Windy City to Newport Beach to open her studio and art gallery just steps away from where the Balboa ferry lands on the peninsula. Boller tries to sail once a week — although she hesitated last week to call herself a sailor — so when Newport Ocean Sailing Assn. Commodore David Garcia approached her about painting the official work for the 60th Annual Lexus Newport to Ensenada Race, she was more than delighted.

Bill Hudson's skill in the most recent annual family talent show was playing Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show's song "Cover of the Rolling Stone" on his five-string banjo, but his genuine flair is watercolor. Family has long been an artistic motivation for Hudson, a father to eight children and grandfather to five. Many of his maritime paintings are inspired by time spent as a young boy with his grandparents in the small fishing village of Greenbackville, Va.; fishing on the Oregon coast with his children; and accompanying his son Luke, a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals, to spring training in Florida.

Sitting in her Costa Mesa trailer, 76-year-old Teri Horton thinks she would like to buy a car when her $50-million ship finally comes in — an Escalade perhaps, but not a new one. “I don’t think I’ll drive one off of the showroom floor — why would you,” said Horton, a retired truck driver. “You lose about $30,000 in value right off the bat,” she said. Horton hopes to turn a $5 painting she found at a junk store into a $50-million fortune.

Though she had badly burned her hand just days before, Sally Jordan said she just couldn't miss painting on a bright afternoon on Balboa Island. "It's too much fun to miss," the Pauma Valley resident said from behind her easel, where she was painting one of the island's several frozen banana businesses. "In all my years here, I've never had anyone be anything but pleasant to me. " Jordan was one of 13 landscape oil painters invited by the Debra Huse Gallery to paint life on the island for one week in the beginning of August.

John Blaich The Newport Harbor Nautical Museum recently received a donated oil painting of the schooner yacht Seadrift. The painting -- by the famous marine artist Caleb Whitbeck, a recognized member of the American Society of Marine Artists -- will be added to the museum's collection of 40 paintings known as "The Famous Yachts of Newport Harbor." This beautiful painting shows Seadrift under full sail about to enter Newport Harbor. Two other famous yachts are also under sail in the background.

Sign-ups are going on now for a Newport Beach Halloween window-painting contest. Scout troops, sports teams, families and artists of all ages may register to paint a window at one of two Newport Beach shopping centers for the Oct. 27 contest. Painting will take place from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Westcliff Plaza and Newport North Shopping Center. Judges will award prizes for the best painting in each age category and the art will remain on display until Nov. 2. Registration is $5. Information: (949)

In the 1970s, Mad Magazine published a classic cartoon depicting an amusement park called Get-It-Out-Of-Your-System-Land, which offered a series of booths allowing visitors to unload their basest urges: defacing classic paintings, burning books, smashing rare violins and the like. The park didn't include an opportunity to create a mess in a major art museum, but that's what the Orange County Museum of Art is basically offering as part of "Ain't Painting a Pain," its chaotic new show by Richard Jackson.

Miguel Perez began noticing positive changes to his Shalimar Drive neighborhood about a month ago. "The houses before were dirtier," he said. A fresh coat of paint now covers many multi-family apartment complexes in the struggling neighborhood. That's in part because the city of Costa Mesa began targeting the Westside last summer with its Residential Neighborhood Enhancement Program. The collaboration between the Planning Commission and City Council was started in January 2011 to address a reduction in code enforcement employees, said Principal Planner and Zoning Administrator Willa Bouwens-Killeen.

Gene Allen's home on the Balboa Peninsula offers so much to delight the eye that it's easy to hide a small object inside it. Even an Academy Award. The longtime Newport Beach resident, who lives in a condo overlooking the Rhine Channel, doesn't make too much of his Hollywood past - at least in terms of decoration. His studio looks like that of any master painter, with canvases depicting his hometown and Catalina Island hung snugly along the walls. If you visit Allen's abode hoping to see the Oscar, you won't find it on top of a shrine.

Think of those restaurant chains that deliberately keep their menus simple - Chipotle, say, or In-N-Out Burger. Then apply that approach to the world of art, and you might have something akin to the Irvine Museum. The small venue, which takes up part of an office building at 18881 Von Karman Ave., restricts itself to a single field: California paintings from approximately 1875 to 1950 that capture the sprawling landscape of a state that developers had only begun to touch. To preserve that part of California's art history, the museum draws on its own stock, as well as on the private collections of Irvine family matriarch Joan Irvine Smith and her son, museum President James Irvine Swinden.

Starting at 7 a.m. Nov. 6, Allyson Jones Wong strapped herself into a safety harness and climbed atop a boomlift. Working nonstop until the light ebbed at 5 p.m. almost every day, she overlooked exhaustion and illness. Her sole focus: to paint. "I was so excited to wake up each day and pick up my paintbrushes," Wong said. "It got to the point where I was getting sick but didn't even realize it. Everything in my life gravitates around my work. When I'm working, I'm happy - it's like I get high off of it. " Now, the rear facade of a former Edwards Theater on Adams Avenue has been given a facelift.

There are two particular areas in which the UC Irvine women's basketball team does not much resemble Anteater squads of recent years. One: What it has inside. And, two: What the Anteaters have inside. The initial reference is to a corps of post players that provide an interior strength that has long been lacking in the program, run now by first-year coach Doug Oliver. The second assertion refers to a preponderance of toughness - bordering on orneriness with a few players, Oliver says - that should serve the 'Eaters well in competitive situations.

The paintings depict the anguish of fleeing one's homeland, death an imminent threat. The artists left war-torn Vietnam, risking encounters with pirates to land in detention camps in Hong Kong, the Philippines and Thailand to wait for asylum. Reproductions of several paintings created by refugees are on display at UC Irvine as part of "Hope of Freedom: Project Ngoc's Decade of Dedication. " * Political organization UCI graduate student Tom Wilson created Project Ngoc in 1987 to provide direct relief to refugees in the camps.

When Kate Batstone came home from a service learning trip to Ecuador two years ago, she struggled to re-adapt to Orange County's culture of affluence. "It's really hard to come home when you're leaving behind so many problems," Batstone, 18, said. "You really want to stay. Orange County is so nice. There's unbelievable shopping and spending. I was so angry at the wastefulness. " Batstone, a student at the Jewish community day school Tarbut V'Torah in Irvine, is going on her second service learning trip with 23 other classmates next month.

About 20 Harbor View Elementary School students spent Wednesday afternoon on the Goldenrod Footbridge, using class art lessons and their hands to paint masterpieces that will be auctioned later this month at a parent fundraiser. "It is freeing, far more than in a regular classroom," said Eve Nycz, the school's art teacher, who stopped by to watch the children paint. "I love that this takes kids out of the classroom. I love the sensory aspect of it. " Parent Mark Akhavain, who paints as a hobby, organized the project after working all year with fourth-graders in their Art Masters classes.

The young artists gathered around the gallery, waiting to talk about their framed artwork hanging on the wall. "Oohs," "ahhs" and "cool" could be heard as students walked in single file through Paularino Elementary School's Room 6, admiring the work of their peers. "I especially like that picture of the iguana," said first-grade student Ethan Elvanter, 6. "It would kind of be cool to have my picture up there. " The Costa Mesa campus was buzzing Wednesday after lunch with the grand opening of 5R6 art gallery, a section of fifth-grade teacher Lisa Roberts' classroom that's dedicated to her students' work, which includes paintings, drawings and photographs on the wall and sculptural pieces on a table.