“Building: San Diego” (Woodbury University School of Architecture, 2212 Main St., San Diego): Sculpture, art/architecture exhibition, film screening and experimental music by Stephanie Bedwell, Tony Cozano, Ingrid Hoffmeister, Julio Orozco, Savannah Sincoff, Brian Sueda, Shinpei Takeda, and the faculty and students of Woodbury University.  6 to 10 p.m.

artproduce.org to contribute).  Todd Partridge’s “Arteria” also opens.  Exhibition from 6 to 9 p.m.; interactive sound and video from 7 to 10 p.m.

On view Saturday

“Adaptable Sites” (The Periscope Project, 300 Block of 15th Street): Exhibition, film screening and performance by Bill Daniel and the artists of The Periscope Project Cooperative.  5 to 10 p.m. Open studios from noon to 4 p.m. today through Sunday. 

“Twins in Twain” (The Front Gallery at Casa Familiar, 147 West Hall Ave.  San Ysidro; La Casa del Tunel Calle Chapo Marquez, 133 Colonia Federal, Tijuana): Ten artists in San Diego and 10 artists in Tijuana will each design and produce two identical T-shirts using silk-screening and mixed media.  One of each will be sold in San Ysidro and one in Tijuana.  Reception at 5 p.m.; T-shirt auction from 6 to 8 p.m.; music from 8 to 9:30 p.m.

On view Sunday

This year’s Art San Diego Contemporary Art Fair, which opens tonight at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, is involving more local artists by expanding its “Art Labs” concept.  Art Labs are exhibitions, installations and performances by local artists, both at the Art Fair itself and in several neighborhoods, including North Park and East Village. 

They are free, except the projects that are inside the Hilton Bayfront, which require an Art San Diego pass.  Here’s the schedule:

Art San Diego Contemporary Art Fair

With the Art San Diego Contemporary Art Fair largely dominated by commercial galleries and aimed toward collectors, the fair’s organizers decided to give San Diego artists an assignment:

“We challenged people to ask: What is San Diego?”  said Susan Myrland, who curated the fair’s “Art Labs” component. “ Show us what it is and do it in a way that challenges people’s assumptions.” 

More than 200 artists involved in 19 projects responded.  Several of the mostly free projects will be on view at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, where the art fair, the cornerstone event in Arts Month San Diego, opens tonight.  Most of the Art Labs are located at studios throughout the community, from San Ysidro to the East Village, downtown to North Park. 

Arts Month promises a diversity of events, including the La Jolla Playhouse’s “Susurrus” (Sept. 16-Oct. 2 at the San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas), the San Diego Dance Theater’s Trolley Dances (Sept. 24-25; Oct. 1-12), and ArtWalk on the Bay (Sept. 10-11 also at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront). 

The month’s activities are relatively family-friendly.  The Art Labs conclude at noon Sunday with a giant family picnic on a 1,000-foot-long picnic blanket on the lawn of the Hilton (a community-engagement art project by Alexander Jarman, Savannah Jarman and Zoe Crenshaw).  But many of the Art Labs projects’ themes are politically and socially charged, ranging from the border to the homeless, and are decidedly outside of the box. 

Or in the case of the East Village artists’ cooperative Periscope Project’s “Drone Ready-made: Fine Military Detritus,” involve a large, 24-by-4-foot box. 

The artists wanted to “explore the tension” between two of San Diego’s coexisting realities: tourist town and military mecca.  The solution presented itself on Craigslist: a shipping case for a Predator Drone.  Original price: $17,647 (the tag is still on the box). 

The artists bought it for $300, converted the coffin-like container into a portable living unit, then carted it around to several military-related sites last weekend and documented its presence through photos and video (while attracting the attention of law enforcement, particularly during a visit to Poway’s General Atomics, whose logo is on the container). 

The Drone box is now back at Periscope’s East Village studios, part of “Adaptable Sites,” the collective’s contribution to Art Labs. 

“We called it ‘Drone Ready-made’ to kind of reference Duchamp’s ready-mades, where the meaning is built into the object,” said Charles Miller, the Periscope Project’s curator and an artist member of the collaborative. “ We’re just trying to do something with it that amplifies that meaning.” 

A group of artists led by Roberto “Bear” Guerra responded to the fair’s challenge with “(In) Visible: A Human Portrait of San Diego’s Homeless Population,” which includes 36 of Guerra’s photos of San Diego’s homeless, as well audio interviews, assembled on a grid-like framework that Guerra hopes can tour to schools and community organizations. 

“It reminds us that there is a pretty large population of San Diegans (estimated at 10,000) that for one reason or another many of us ignore, look away from, maybe some of us don’t even think of them as human,” Guerra said. “ We have this kind of distance between them and us.  But they are part of our community, and we need to keep that in mind.” 

The cross-border Art Lab at Casa Familiar in San Ysidro and La Casa del Tunel in Tijuana — curated by Linda Caballero-Sotelo and conceived by artist Omar Lopez — also involves connections (or disconnections).  Ten artists based in each country designed two identical T-shirts, which will be sold Saturday in simultaneous, videoconferenced auctions in the United States and in Mexico. 

“When Omar Lopez submitted his proposal, his project made no promises of exact results; it didn’t hint at any political solution to border relations or push any prescriptive agenda of any sort,” Caballero-Sotelo said. “ We really like that.”  It will, however, inevitably prompt each T-shirts’ owner to consider his or her relationship with a “twin” in another country wearing the same shirt. 

At Space 4 Art, two East Village warehouses that were converted into artist studios last year, more than 70 artists will be involved in multiple performance, multimedia, installation and open studio projects Saturday night. 

“It’s a way of showing the potential of what an artist’s space like this can be,” said artist Cheryl Nickel, who co-founded the facility. “ We have artists here who are graduates of San Diego State and UCSD, and we are providing an opportunity to help them stay in San Diego.” 

Indeed, the responsiveness of local artists to the art fair’s challenge says something about San Diego’s evolving arts community. 

“I’ve lived here since 1997, and these past couple years, with all the activity, I’m thinking: Am I still in San Diego?”  said artist Xavier Leonard, whose augmented-reality, smartphone-based Art Lab project, “With These Hands,” aims to inject the workers back into the narrative of San Diego history. “ It seems that some stuff I might have liked in other cities and thought I had to do without in San Diego has now become a part of my life.” 

The Art San Diego Contemporary Art Fair features more than 45 commercial galleries selling work by name artists from around the world.  And because the art fair is largely dominated by galleries and aimed toward collectors, its organizers decided to give individual San Diego artists an assignment:

“We challenged people to ask: What is San Diego?”  said Susan Myrland, who curated the fair’s edgier and more accessible “Art Labs” component. “ Show us what it is and do it in a way that challenges people’s assumptions.” 

More than 200 artists involved in 19 projects responded.  Several of the mostly free projects will be on view at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, where the art fair is based.  Most of the Art Labs are located at studios throughout the community, from San Ysidro to the East Village, downtown to North Park. 

Arts Month promises a diversity of events, including the La Jolla Playhouse’s “Susurrus” (Sept. 16-Oct. 2 at the San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas), the San Diego Dance Theater’s Trolley Dances (Sept. 24-25; Oct. 1-12), and ArtWalk on the Bay (Sept. 10-11 also at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront). 

The month’s activities are relatively family-friendly.  The Art Labs conclude at noon Sunday with a giant family picnic on a 1,000-foot-long picnic blanket on the lawn of the Hilton (a community-engagement art project by Alexander Jarman, Savannah Jarman and Zoe Crenshaw).  But many of the Art Labs projects’ themes are politically and socially charged, ranging from the border to the homeless, and are decidedly outside of the box. 

Or in the case of the East Village artists’ cooperative Periscope Project’s “Drone Ready-made: Fine Military Detritus,” involve a large, 24-by-4-foot box. 

The artists wanted to “explore the tension” between two of San Diego’s coexisting realities: tourist town and military mecca.  The solution presented itself on Craigslist: a shipping case for a Predator Drone.  Original price: $17,647 (the tag is still on the box). 

The artists bought it for $300, converted the coffin-like container into a portable living unit, then carted it around to several military-related sites last weekend and documented its presence through photos and video (while attracting the attention of law enforcement, particularly during a visit to Poway’s General Atomics, whose logo is on the container). 

The Drone box is now back at Periscope’s East Village studios, part of “Adaptable Sites,” the collective’s contribution to Art Labs. 

“We called it ‘Drone Ready-made’ to kind of reference Duchamp’s ready-mades, where the meaning is built into the object,” said Charles Miller, the Periscope Project’s curator and an artist member of the collaborative. “ We’re just trying to do something with it that amplifies that meaning.” 

A group of artists led by Roberto “Bear” Guerra responded to the fair’s challenge with “(In) Visible: A Human Portrait of San Diego’s Homeless Population,” which includes 36 of Guerra’s photos of San Diego’s homeless, as well audio interviews, assembled on a grid-like framework that Guerra hopes can tour to schools and community organizations. 

“It reminds us that there is a pretty large population of San Diegans (estimated at 10,000) that for one reason or another many of us ignore, look away from, maybe some of us don’t even think of them as human,” Guerra said. “ We have this kind of distance between them and us.  But they are part of our community, and we need to keep that in mind.” 

The cross-border Art Lab at Casa Familiar in San Ysidro and La Casa del Tunel in Tijuana — curated by Linda Caballero-Sotelo and conceived by artist Omar Lopez — also involves connections (or disconnections).  Ten artists based in each country designed two identical T-shirts, which will be sold Saturday in simultaneous, videoconferenced auctions in the United States and in Mexico. 

“When Omar Lopez submitted his proposal, his project made no promises of exact results; it didn’t hint at any political solution to border relations or push any prescriptive agenda of any sort,” Caballero-Sotelo said. “ We really like that.”  It will, however, inevitably prompt each T-shirts’ owner to consider his or her relationship with a “twin” in another country wearing the same shirt. 

At Space 4 Art, two East Village warehouses that were converted into artist studios last year, more than 70 artists will be involved in multiple performance, multimedia, installation and open studio projects Saturday night. 

“It’s a way of showing the potential of what an artist’s space like this can be,” said artist Cheryl Nickel, who co-founded the facility. “ We have artists here who are graduates of San Diego State and UCSD, and we are providing an opportunity to help them stay in San Diego.” 

Indeed, the responsiveness of local artists to the art fair’s challenge says something about San Diego’s evolving arts community. 

“I’ve lived here since 1997, and these past couple years, with all the activity, I’m thinking: Am I still in San Diego?”  said artist Xavier Leonard, whose augmented-reality, smartphone-based Art Lab project, “With These Hands,” aims to inject the workers back into the narrative of San Diego history. “ It seems that some stuff I might have liked in other cities and thought I had to do without in San Diego has now become a part of my life.”