To hear Armando de la Torre tell it, he’s been thinking about his new art installation, in some iteration or another, for years. However, it was a chance encounter with nature, specifically a bird he spotted while riding the San Diego Trolley, that really drove the main points home for him.
“I saw this osprey with a fish and I just felt this connection. I know that sounds like Jim Morrison or something, but I began to ask questions like, ‘what does it mean?’ and “am I the fish or the osprey,’” recalls de la Torre, referring to the lead singer of The Doors. “It was just an image or a symbol that instantly connected with this idea of death and dying, but it created an opportunity to open up this narrative about the trolley — the stories and the people coming and going.”
The symbol of the osprey with the fish is one of many cardboard cutout aspects of “On the Blue Line,” de la Torre’s new art installation now on view through May 5 at the Athenaeum Art Center in Logan Heights. A combination of drawings, found objects, sound art, photography, wooden models and topographic backdrops, “On the Blue Line” is a distinct and discursive method of storytelling via a massively scaled-down rendering of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System’s Blue Line, which stretches from San Ysidro to La Jolla.
“It’s kind of the result of a backlog of a lot of stuff,” says de la Torre, who grew up in Chula Vista and has used the MTS trolley system for years. “A lot of it is an exploration of trying to make my way as a young dude growing up here and how the trolley played a role in that.”
De la Torre points to the osprey cutout, mentioning that these recycled cardboard renderings allow him to “unpack,”“weave together” and “add nuance” to a narrative about not only our relationships to transit, but to the land in which it’s built on. He goes on to explain how he became fascinated by the ways in which the trolley serves as a means to move people, particularly those who are crossing into the U.S. from Tijuana and taking the Blue Line into downtown San Diego and beyond.
“I began to think about how much of these civic systems often didn’t take into consideration the people they were serving,” he says. “Obviously it’s a much more complicated issue than that, but when I was on the trolley, I would see these very talented kids that were going to the community colleges and then, later, I would see the same kids on the trolley going to work at 7-Eleven. It was just this picture that, as an artist, I began to have these visual ideas of these stories.”
More pressingly, he says he wanted to explore the “hidden histories” of the places and neighborhoods where land was sacrificed to make these trolley stops possible. This idea came from working with his students at Father Joe’s Villages, where he tasked them to explore their trolley stop via music and research into the environment where that trolley stop was built. He also began to think about one of his frequent trolley stops near Pepper Park in National City, which overlooks both the bay and the mountains and hills of Chula Vista. He says he began to wonder about the “layers and layers” of topographic history of the area and how humans have changed it over the years.
“I began to think about the history of that area way before we were around and how it’s now the opening of half of all the cars that now come into America, they actually land right there around Pepper Park,” de la Torre says.
Still, “On the Blue Line” isn’t preachy and it’s easy to see how the installation originated from a human story; that is, the stories of humans moving through the city, transporting riders to better opportunities, such as college or a job. And while the piece itself is somewhat abstract in nature, it is also a tender representation of history, both past and present.
“The trolley became more of a metaphor for people leaving the plane of existence,” says de la Torre. “It’s about people literally leaving but also about rebelling against the limitations that were given to them — the constructs that surround us and want to define us.”
For over 20 years, De la Torre has developed a storied reputation for tackling community issues within his work. His 2017 installation at the San Diego Art Institute, “Who Are We Anyways,” examined the history of environmentalism within Barrio Logan’s Chicano community via found objects, audio recordings and video art. More recently, he organized the pop-up “Spring Tide” festival in the Southcrest Community Park, which had an emphasis on how climate change can disproportionately affect historically low-income neighborhoods.
“Ultimately art is fundamentally supposed to be in the service of other people,” de la Torre says. “It’s about learning to be human. Making art that relates to people is something that’s always sounded good to me.”
Born in Tijuana and raised in Chula Vista, de la Torre says he was always artistically inclined, but he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served with the 82nd Airborne Division. After his service, he moved around, studying at the New York School of Visual Arts and the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, but ultimately dropped out of both. He did graduate with an associate degree in art from Santa Monica College before moving back to San Diego in 2001.
Since that time, he’s become known for his site-specific and sometimes performance art pieces, but the pandemic all but shut that down. He used the downtime to re-enroll in college at San Diego State University and to emphasize his studio practice, since most galleries and museums were closed. To hear him reflect on it now, it sounds as if the practice of working alone in a studio just didn’t really cut it for him.
“The stories are out in our environment. They don’t really happen in our studios, at least not for me,” says de la Torre. “It feels like we’re constantly having to interpret our surroundings and not lose the values and histories that we’re a part of.”
It’s easy to see this logic having fully played out in “On the Blue Line.” It encomes and enraptures the viewer, immersing them in a decidedly local story of perseverance and permanence.
However unintentional, it is something of a reder to the immersive art installations that can be seen at places like the WNDR Museum in Downtown. While such spaces might be a fun experience, they are, in essence, impersonal and crafted with entertainment in mind. What “On the Blue Line” offers is a more cerebral experience, one that can leave viewers moved and contemplative about their relationship with their hometown.
“Not everybody gets to be seen in art. Ultimately and objectively, I was just hoping to make an accessible space where people feel that they belong,” de la Torre says.
He laughs before adding, “I know, as cheesy as that sounds, but it’s really a place where hopefully people feel it’s relatable. A narrative that they know they’re a part of.”
Armando de la Torre
Born: Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico
Age: 54
Fun Fact: A 2013 art installation at what was then the Westfield Plaza Camino Real mall in Carlsbad sparked a bit of controversy for its cheeky anti-consumerism tone. The pop-up show, which featured a faux Christmas tree lot, was shut down for a day after complaints from shoppers and neighboring stores. “It’s not always about telling people the story they want to hear,” de la Torre says. “It’s about trying to find the story that’s not being told.”
Armando de la Torre: ‘On the Blue Line’
Hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; and from 5 to 8 p.m. the second Saturday of each month. Through May 5
Where: Athenaeum Art Center, 1955 Julian Ave., San Diego
Online: ljathenaeum.org/events/exhibition-de-la-torre
Combs is a freelance writer.
