Stories about the Sparks in the OUBEY MINDSPACE – Episode 12: Windansea Beach

Some places possess a unique power to draw people in. Windansea Beach in La Jolla, just north of San Diego, is one of them.

During the summer months, this relatively small stretch of North America’s Pacific coastline becomes a playground for swimmers seeking relief from the heat and a paradise for surfers eager to test both their skill and their courage. It is only at sunset, when most of the crowds have disappeared, that something of the beach’s original magic begins to reveal itself.

That was exactly the atmosphere when OUBEY and I arrived in La Jolla in the summer of 1992. A small propeller aircraft had carried us—and a handful of fellow passengers—on an adventurous flight from Los Angeles to San Diego, where I was about to spend the rest of the year gaining my first international professional experience in the Human Resources Department of the County Administration.

For the first six weeks, we stayed in the home of a retired U.S. Navy pilot in nearby La Jolla. The house was modest, but it offered one priceless advantage: Windansea Beach was only a five-minute walk away. It was the first of three homes we would live in as part of our home exchange project.

The arrangement was simple. We lived, free of charge, in fully furnished homes around San Diego and used our hosts’ cars while they travelled through Germany and Europe, staying in our apartment during their visit.

The idea had been OUBEYs. He had read an article by a journalist describing her own home exchange with an American family and was immediately captivated. I was far more skeptical, but eventually he persuaded me. Looking back, I am very glad he did.

While we were living in La Jolla, OUBEY spent many hours at Windansea Beach. At the same time, I experienced something entirely new in my professional life: how a consistently applied affirmative action policy could positively shape an organisation.

One example stood out. The organisation’s three highest management levels were all led by women. Whenever a female candidate was equally or better qualified than a male applicant, she was given the position—a temporary measure designed to establish genuine equality as the new normal. Gender was the primary consideration, followed by physical disability and membership in racial or ethnic communities that had traditionally faced discrimination.

Shortly before we left California in December, we returned to Windansea Beach one last time. The beach was deserted, and the powerful surf fully justified its name. As always, I had my video camera with me.

OUBEY climbed onto one of the large, slippery sandstone rocks to get as close as possible to the crashing waves. At that moment, the place held an irresistible, almost magical attraction for him. Here, directly before his eyes, unfolded the turbulent dynamics that had fascinated his inquisitive mind for so many years.

Waves, clouds and galaxies never ceased to captivate him. Throughout the 1980s, he explored the structural principles they shared in his paintings—as far as this could be expressed on coated hardboard panels. That is why I was especially pleased, many years later, to bring together one of OUBEY’s works and Karl Sigmund, one of the world’s leading mathematicians in the field of dynamic complexity, for an Encounter in 2013.

A few days earlier, OUBEY had said to me that if he ever returned to the United States, it would only be to New York. San Diego, he felt, was not the right place for someone—and for an artist—like him. With one final glance across the waves of the Pacific Ocean, he quietly said goodbye.

This moment in his life deserved its own Spark in the OUBEY MINDSPACE. You can discover it here.

No one can ever truly know what is going on inside another person’s mind. I did not know what OUBEY was thinking that day. Yet I could sense the invisible energy of his thoughts and emotions—and even today, whenever I recall that moment, I can still feel it.

He stood there, gazing out across the ocean, completely absorbed in himself and in the immense forces of the sea. I stood nearby, my camera in hand, feeling profoundly close to him. We were separate, yet deeply connected.

When I showed him the footage after we had returned home, he was deeply moved.

The OUBEY MINDSPACE consists of six rooms. Each room contains five Mind Sparks, and every Mind Spark offers a collection of reflections inspired by OUBEYs life, ideas and artistic vision. Behind each one lies a story—and these are the stories I share here.

My sincere thanks go to the team at Kubikfoto³ for creating the remarkable design of the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Their work has already been honoured with three prestigious international design awards, most recently the Red Dot Award 2025.