fallbrook art center

I've walked by the outside, and visited the inside, on several occasions during the past few years, and the transformation of this space into a first rate gallery has been phenomenal. The exhibit space has been upgraded and designed to facilitate the easy flow of patrons, and the site now features a small restaurant. The quality of exhibits is second to none among local galleries.

Bulldog 1Now, ask yourself: have you really been exposed yet to both Art and to Culture ? You can't guess what is waiting for you at the "Fallbrook Art Center" ... the faded signage of which modestly reads "Fallbrook Art & Cultural Center." The Fallbrook "Village Association" ... not to be confused with New York's disco romp group"The Village People" ... has done wonders with this former drug store, while still retaining its original soda water fountain and leasing out the back to a restaurant/ soup and sandwich shop.New York ... Boston ... Philadelphia ... New Orleans ... Chicago ... San Francisco ... Los Angeles ... I thought that I had already seen what the late Henry James called "The Great Good Place", but I never suspected ... as you probably still do not suspect ... that what Henry James also called "The Real Thing" was always waiting here, just 6 miles west off of Highway I-15 in what the local real estate shills in the self-named "Friendly Village" like to call the "Tuscan like" hills, romantically adjacent to the back entrance gate to USMC Base Camp Joseph Pendleton.The loud "booms" of the training exercises at which, as well as the multiple overhead flights of the various types of attack and transport helicopters lend, as the French would say, a certain "Je ne sais quois" to the area. Just that little extra touch, reminding us ... and I say this with all respect to our genuinely great and historic "First Marine Division" ... of our global involvements.Now, as to the "Arts" ... or what "women of a certain age" who aspire to be thought of in the eyes of the other small town yokels as social leaders and as keepers of "the flame of Culture" occasionally and affectedly pronounce as "The Aaaahhhtts" ... well, until you've been to the corner of Mission and Alvarado Streets ... to paraphrase Al Jolson's line in "The Jazz Singer" ... "You ain't seen Nothin' yet !!"But you will. Because except for two good regional sculptors ... Peter Mitten and Les Perhacs ... and a few moderately talented local watercolorists and printmakers ... that is exactly what you'll see.Nothing.However, the inevitable small town self-appointed "coterie" ... including, given the setting, the absurdly named "Big Picture Committee" ... which in classic small town/feudal fashion runs the "Friendly Village" with a near-iron fist, makes for excellent sociological ... if not actually anthropological ... viewing. "Le Tout-Fallbrook," as it were, is itself actually the main show. From faded fashion models long past their prime but with an inherited checkbook, to former middle level city employees from points North, to carpet-bagging real estate developers and imported "house flippers" from Orange County, to former regional bank officers, to "high-minded" wives of local veterinarians ... they're all here ... now, to their great self satisfaction, become the proverbial "big fish" in the also proverbial "small pond."Remember the author Sherwood Anderson's famous depiction of small town American life in his short story cycle "Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-Town Life" (1919) ? Or the claustrophobia of life in small town rural (and socially feudal) Mississippi depicted by William Faulkner ?That hits the "local nail" squarely on the head.With that "prescription warning label" duly slapped on, if you long for life "off the beaten track," and where people really "know who they are" ... and want you to know it, too ... come say "Howdy, Neighbor" ... and be uplifted ... at the "Arts & Cultural Center" of Fallbrook.And if you don't do it, well, shame on you. As the saying has it: there's "Nothing to Lose."Bulldog 1

I know that Fallbrook, CA is not right in the middle of everything. However, the Fallbrook Art Center is certainly worth a visit from most of San Diego County, Riverside County and even Orange County. It is just a couple of miles off of either the 15 or Rt. 76 and you won't be disappointed. The shows are excellent, varied, and well thought out. Some of the artists that show there are local, but most are not. It is just a neat facility. We happened to go to the opening of their 17th annual 'Galaxy of Glass' exhibition, which runs through October 19th, 2014. It was excellent. This show alone is worth the visit.