This Gallery is located on the ground floor of the Del Mar Plaza Mall. Michael Seewald is a painter & photographer.
This internet file (
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"Michael Seewald is a „semi-native? of the San Diego area, arriving in 1963 at the age of 11 (via Virginia, then Texas, and then Arizona). He has been creating art his whole life, mentored by his mom who was a painter (until she had all seven of the boys in his family, he?s the oldest). He attended Southwestern College where he studied photo-journalism and transferred to San Diego State University where he got his bachelors in the same.
After college, Seewald sold advertising and photographed their products/stores for the ads, sold furniture and did the same for them, then tended bar in a place where he could hang his photos to decorate the place. When patrons began buying the images he got the idea to open his own gallery (“heck, if drunks will buy them maybe regular people would too” he?s been heard saying), and he did in May of 1983 in „funky Leucadia?. At first on Hwy 101, and then 20 years later into Bradford?s old frame shop on Vulcan, off Leucadia Blvd and the tracks still. He has also operated galleries in La Jolla, Newport Beach and Irvine.
That initial gallery opening led to him having to learn custom picture framing to make selling his art feasible. In short order his clients asked if he would frame their art too, and he did. Now he has thousands of frame samples and pretty much frames anything brought in, from mirrors to maps. He, and his many of helpers over the decades, have designed and framed 1,000?s of pieces of art.
Seewald has taken top honors in many national (his first a collegiate one in 1971) and international competitions: In the San Diego Reader/ San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts? annual competition he took first price; took „Best of Show? from over 3,000 entries at the San Diego International photo competition with „Canal Reflections, Venice, Italy?, and his "Bridge Undercarriage, Budapest" was „selected to show? by the curator of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; declaring it „In the top 100? from the 3,300 entries submitted.
Local television stations have also done quite a few „magazine style? shows on his world wide travels (56 world-wide trips to date), and he?s been interviewed about political situations as he?s returned fresh from countries in the news: bombing in Mombassa, Kenya for instance the same day he?d left.
He speaks on many arts related subjects locally, and when he is not entering and winning competitions he is often asked to judge them. He currently owns and operates the Michael Seewald Gallery at the Del Mar Plaza (open Wed.-Sun., 11 a.m. till 6 p.m. 858.793.3444) and Seewald?s Custom Picture Framing in Leucadia (835 N. Vulcan Ave., B) open by Appt. only -760.633.1351."
The gallery's website is (
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