8 San Diego Uptown News | Feb. 18-Mar. 3, 2011


NEWS/FEATURE Not your everyday


one-man show Ron Miriello presents his “100 Worlds Project” in Little Italy today


By Elena Buckley Editorial Assistant


Ron Miriello began his “100


Worlds Project” 18 months ago as a creative outlet with no clear set plan or end in sight. All he knew was that he wanted to put a higher level of creativity back into his life by merging his career expertise with his love of the arts. Then it hit him. And he decided to use the symbol of the globe to accomplish it while also fostering the local artistic community. “I’m really interested in community-building among art- ists, craftsmen and designers,” Miriello said. “It’s a big deal for me. I’m a believer that the arts and the crafts are not as far apart as our culture here tends to make them.”


Carl Vandershuit’s image of Ron Miriello's Globe No. 33 in Bird Rock. (Cour- tesy Carl Vandershuit)


The first 50 of Miriello’s globes will be on display at the JETT Gallery in Little Italy at 989 W. Kalmia Ave. from Feb. 18 until March 26. The exhibit also features photographs of each of the globes taken by 50 different photographers such as Phillip Ritterman, John Durrant and Ken West.


As the presi- dent and creative director of the


brand communications firm Miriello Grafico for the past 30 years, Miriello’s been involved in developing brands and cre- ative communication campaigns for his clients. As a veteran design artist, he likes to mix op- posing genres and mediums. “I like to overlap design with


fine art, with craft, with engi- neering, with photography, with makers, and try to blur the lines between those and see them all as part of a process that is not all that different,” Miriello said. The globes themselves range


in size from small enough to perch on a desk to floor stand- ing, though most are on the smaller scale.


Miriello said that coming up


with the unique concepts for the different globes was “surprising- ly easy,” and he was constantly coming up with new variations on the original metaphor. “I love playing with [globes]; wondering where those places are and what’s going on there,” he said. “I think it’s a great place for mind expansion and wonder.”


Each globe is drastically


different than the one that came before it. Miriello used countless mediums, applying woodworking, cable wrapping, foam molding, welding and even incorporated found objects. He asked different craftsmen to assist him in the creation of the globes, drawing in new talent and forming a sense of community around the project. “It’s kind of a game I have: Who else can I loop into this that would gain something from being a part of the project?”


FROM PAGE 2 ROADMAP


year or two after he chose to stop communicating to you what the pension actuary said about the future.”


He added that the reason that


we are feeling the budget pinch right now is because the amorti- zation of the pension debt was re- duced from 30 years to 15 years. DeMaio responded later that


amortizing over 30 years would lead to negative amortization. He called this, along with another at- tempt last year to lower pension payments, “jiggering the numbers to push the debt off into the fu- ture.”


Zucchet dismissed Aguirre’s idea of San Diego filing for bank- ruptcy, saying, “we would be laughed out of bankruptcy court so fast, it’s not even funny.” Professor Alan Gin, who is also a member of the Citizens Revenue and Economic Competitiveness Commis- sion, presented findings from a sur- vey of San Diego residents. The survey showed that citizens did not like the idea of higher taxes or reduced services, so if revenue had to be increased, they would choose increased fees over taxes. A trash collection fee could generate as much as $34 million per year and a storm water fee could generate more than $30 mil- lion, Gin said.


Four of the submitted question


cards were about the trash fee, so Lewis asked DeMaio why he didn’t support the fee.


“If you gave them more mon-


Ron Miriello’s “100 Worlds Project” is opening today, Feb. 18 at JETT Gallery. (Courtesy of Bay Bird Inc. PR)


This same idea led Miriello to bring photographers into the mix. Each photographer was given a globe and told to inter- pret it into a single image over a certain period of time. “I get to see my own piece


reinterpreted by another cre- ative person. It’s like a gift I get back,” he said. Phillip Ritterman was given globe No. 40, made from laser- cut pieces of chipboard that were engraved with topographic maps. Ritterman described the globe he photographed as being “steam punk, like a futuristic world but it’s all retro-looking.” “You can see it’s handmade,


see Miriello, page 9


ey, they would not end the gravy train,” DeMaio said and then stressed reform before revenue. Gin replied that the trash col- lection system could be reformed and still be revenue neutral. He then weighed in on the assumed 7.75 percent rate of re- turn on investment that was used to show how pension payments would drop so sharply in 2026. Gin said for his own financial planning, he uses a return on stock of about 6.5 percent, and that 7.75 percent would be tough. Aguirre said a pension fund should have very low risk invest- ments, with the benefits set to run hand in hand with the investment, so there isn’t a constant variation. “What we’ve done is converted our pension fund into an investment fund, a hedge fund almost, in which they have all these crazy kinds of in- vestments out there,” Aguirre said. “We gotta get out of all that.” Gin was given the final word, saying that one problem with the pension dominating the discussion of the city budget is that it masks a bigger problem.


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“The city of San Diego and its citizens are cheap,” he said, add- ing that residents seem to want a low tax, high service system that is not fiscally possible. He warned that even a low tax, low service system is not necessarily viable, and with the issue of deferred maintenance, there are billions of dollars in backlog that nobody is addressing. “We’re just trying to deal with the annual problem of getting the budget balanced," Gin said. “No- body is thinking about the future in terms of the type of environ- ment that we want to live in.”u


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