Monday, November 30, 2009

Mosaic Monday--Claremont

I'm cheating; these pictures were taken a couple of years ago and went with another blog post about Millard Sheets' Centennial. But as I have made the jump from Penniless-Writer to Working-and-Writing-When-I-Can, time is short.

This mosaic of Cleopatra and Isis is one of several Shakespeare scenes that decorate the Garrison Theater in Claremont, now owned by Scripps College. It was built in 1963, but refurbished, enlarged, and tricked out with fabulous acoustics less than ten years ago. Sheets created the mosaics for the original building in his Claremont Studio.

Here's another of the mosaics--the duel between Tybalt and Romeo. That's the sky and surrounding trees reflected off the Italian marble facade and the mosaic. Claremont, after all, is the city of trees & PhD's, or so they say, and the theater's in a beautiful area, with a patio roof that shades the building and frames the reflection.

Scripps, btw, is still the Women's College of Claremont. How quaint! It was founded in the 1920s by a woman--Ellen Browning Scripps--and shares facilities and classes with the other Claremont Colleges.

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