What Do a Santa Ana Artist, Former Orange County Curator, Leonardo da Vinci and Citizen Space Exploration Have in Common?

A Santa Ana artist who has created an institute dedicated to the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci has joined visions with a former Orange County museum curator opening a new exhibit on citizen space exploration "to dream, conceptualize and build the world of tomorrow."

You can't see the fruits of this partnership here, you have to go to Riverside.

That is where you will find the campus of UC Riverside, its Culver Center of the Arts, its Sweeney Art Gallery and their director, Tyler Stallings, who for years was the Huntington Beach Arts Center and then the Laguna Beach Art Museum chief curator.

Stallings has opening Saturday in UCR's ARTSblock an exhibit titled "Free Enterprise: The Art of Citizen Space Exploration" that he curated with Marko Peljhan. Heavy collaboration came from Santa Ana artist Skeith De Wine, who wrote the text for supporting materials for the show he is using to launch his California Leonardo da Vinci Institute of Discovery.

Courtesy of UC Riverside

De Wine's institute has "presented its concept for economical missions to Mars" for the exhibit, according to the artist. "A rocket ship, constructed out of ice, will travel like an ice comet to its destination. Upon arrival the ice components of the ship are separated and melted down for oxygen and water to increase the crew's exploration time on the planet."

The goal here is to think like Da Vinci in addressing the problems of today--like finding reliable renewable energy--as well as applying them to the future. To that end, De Wine has proposed recruiting 10 artists and 10 scientists to spend a set amount of time "brainstorming " on one current need in hopes of arriving at a solution.

De Wine, who says he has "poured through hundreds of volumes on Leonardo da Vinci and Renaissance history and carefully cataloged his research," also dreams of partnering his institute with a museum or university and wealthy benefactors to present findings from such research and understand Da Vinci comprehensively.

The exhibition opens Saturday with a panel discussion from 3-5 p.m., public reception at 6 p.m. and the formal opening from 6-9 p.m. Visitors will see a variety of media represented, including drawings, photography, videos, sculptures, paintings and artifacts.

These have been collected from: The Arts Catalyst (London, U.K.), Lowry Burgess (Pittsburgh, PA), Center for Land Use Interpretation (Culver City), Richard Clar (Paris/Los Angeles), Skeith De Wine (Santa Ana), Kitsou Dubois (Paris), eteam (New York), European Space Agency Topical Team Arts and Science (international participants), Final Frontier Design (New York), Cultural Center of European Space Technologies / KSEVT (Vitanje, Slovenia), Agnes Meyer-Brandis (Berlin), MIR - Microgravity Interdisciplinary Research (international participants), Forrest Myers (New York), Trieste Constructivist Cabinet (Italy/Slovenia), Nejc Trošt (Slovenia/Houston, TX), Trevor Paglen (New York), Carrie Paterson (Los Angeles), Frank Pietronigro (San Francisco), Bradley Pitts (New York), Cosmokinetial Kabinet Noordung - Postgravityart (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Projekt Atol Flight Operations (Santa Barbara, CA and Ljubljana, Slovenia), Connie Samaras (Los Angeles), Christian Waldvogel (Zurich, Switzerland), Arthur Woods (Zurich, Switzerland), and XCOR Aerospace, Inc. (Mojave, CA).

For directions and other details, visit artsblock.ucr.edu.

Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!