Mosaic in East Los Angeles Library

Titled "Our Legacy: Forever Presente" by Jose Antonio Aquirre, this tops the library on 3rd Street in East Los Angeles. Supervisor Gloria Molina got the funding for this new building, which opened in 2004. THis is from the library's own website:

Community residents requested that the new library reflect Mayan design and themes. Since many Mayan structures in southern Mexico and Central America were astronomical observatories, the designers incorporated references to the sun and the moon, both themes in Mayan art, in the pavement at the entrances and in the lobby.

The interior foyer features artist Jose Antonio's monumental mosaic mural cycle "OUR LEGACY: Forever Presente..." which is a visual tribute to East Los Angeles' proud cultural heritage and socio-political struggle.

The sculpted limestone column is part of the artwork as well, but the mosaic--which covers 2000 square feet, is the focal point. Byzantine and Venetian glass are the materials--Venetian glass is glass from Venice, and Byzantine glass are small glass tiles, usually opague, made by mixing molten glass with metal oxides for color. The technique was developed in ancient Byzantium, and the glass is also called smalti. Smalti can be mass-produced these days.

I really like the image at right, because it shows some detail of the pieces. I 'borrowed' it from the LA County Arts Commission website.
The mosaic has four sections: "The Gift to Humanity," "Arrival," "The Heart of the People," and "Departure." THe figures on it are famous people of past years--people like Cesar Chavez, Ruben Salazar, Oscar De La Hoya, Edward James Olmos, and even Supervisor Molina.

Public Art: The One Percent Solution

Years ago, I was told of Los Angeles' one percent rule on public art. I've just now looked it up: In 1989, the city passed a law allocating one percent of all costs of capital improvements to commission public artwork.

That's why so many of the business office buildings have street-level sculpture or fountains. The city's Cultural Affairs Dept. keeps records and even a pool of pre-approved artists who might accept commissions.

Here's an example, which I chose only because the artist has my grandmother's last name: Tim Doyle's Cutting Corners, installed 2003 at Wilshire near Bundy.

What do others feel about this policy? The 1% art of Los Angeles can feel cold and uninviting. Beautiful fountains--but often no pedestrian traffic enjoying them. Is it the location which discourages public enjoyment of the public art, or does the legislated origin of the art make it less...lovable? That's all so subjective, it must be clear that I'm just talking through my hat. I'm actually very happy that cities have such policies, because I doubt that many businesses would include public art in their budgets otherwise.

None of which applies to the piece at right, titled Cradle...except that it's in Santa Monica, and Santa Monica also has a 1% public art policy for capital improvements.

Ball Nogues Studio created it for an exterior wall of the new Santa Monica Place, facing Colorado Blvd. Construction crews are still working on this section of parking lot--that's what the commotion at the bottom is. The piece was commissioned by the City of Santa Monica and is 39 feet wide.

Here's a 2:37 minute video of time lapse photography of the installation, which is nearly as exciting as watching grass grow.

Here's what the Argonaut says about Cradle:

Cradle is called an aggregation of mirror-polished, stainless steel spheres, and the sculpture operates structurally like an enormous Newton’s Cradle — the ubiquitous toy that can be found on the desktops of corporate executives. Each ball is suspended by a cable from a point on the wall and locked in position by a combination of gravity and neighboring balls. As a whole, the balls imply an articulated surface suggestive of foam or sea life, said Ball Nogues Studio representatives.

A Church with Sheets Mosaics

A two-fer. When I started Mosaic Mondays I realized that most posts would be on either Millard Sheets or churches, and today we have both.

Precious Blood Catholic Church on Occidental near 4th Street was built in 1926. In 1951, Wallace Neff oversaw a remodel and contracted with Millard Sheets for the mosaics surrounding the altar. That's about all I know, and I thank Marcello Vavala of the Los Angeles Conservancy for telling me about this beautiful site.

The gold is dazzling and overwhelming. I could not get a decent picture from the back of the church--it was a bit like trying to photograph the sun. At another time, with different lighting, a better photo is surely possible.

When I visited just after the 4th of July weekend, a film crew from Sons of Anarchy was taping dark, heavy trashbag plastic over the stained glass windows in preparation for shooting. So the church and mosaic may soon make a TV appearance.

While the angels are "evocative of an earlier era," as Marcello put it, the lower, earthbound artwork is very much Sheets' style of painting.

I'm kind of amazed that Wikipedia, the Catholic Directory, and even an LA Times article on Precious Blood Catholic Church never mention the incredible artistry of this church. The sites call the church Italian Romanesque in style and state that it has three rose windows.  Well, it does and rose windows are nothing to sneeze at, but for heaven sakes...if you walked into a vault lined with gold and someone asked you what it was like, would you talk about the pretty windows outside the vault?

The only place that notes this church's artistic heritage officially are the folks who produced the Angel's Walk LA pamphlet on the Wilshire Center, which includes a paragraph about Precious Blood Church.

As for this shot to the right, I really screwed around with the contrast, etc, to try and get some details of the angels in. Didn't result in the payoff I'd hoped for...

Please do yourself a favor when you're in the neighborhood--the edge of Silver Lake--and drop into the church yourself. Outside and in, it's covered with mosaics: the Stations of the Cross, the Seven Sacraments, etc. But it's Millard Sheets' earth and angels around the altar that truly make this sanctuary not just religious, but transcendent.

Hollywood Chase, Part Deux

Yikes! How could I let this slip? Fortunately it's only 11pm in Los Angeles and I have the pictures....

These mosaics are mounted on the back end of the Hollywood Chase Bank, the former Home Savings and Loan. I showed a portion of the front last week. The bank actually sits diagonally to the corner, leaving a big triangle of land for public art on the corner. There's a fountain there with a bronze figure of Europa--a fountain that needs lots of regular maintenance. Since the fountain was drained when I showed up to take photos, I didn't bother shooting it. To fill that void, here is a link to a lovely picture on the YouAreHere website.

This, however, is the back of the bank--probably the loveliest bank derriere you will ever see.

There are four figures in back--larger than those in front. Remember, this was designed and built in 1968, so the choice of icons should not be a surprise. Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII--a classic, made in 1933, for which Laughton won an Oscar. Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday--again, she won the Oscar for that role, and I think that's why she's not portrayed as Holly Golightly (Breakfast at Tiffany's, for which she was nominated, but didn't win) or Eliza Doolittle (My Fair Lady).

On the right as you face the back entrance, we have Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins--an Oscar winner, of course, but more importantly, my role model. I jumped off the roof with an umbrella many times after seeing that movie--but, as I hadn't read The Secrect in 1964, I did not manage to fly. (I did, however, not break my leg, and that's something.)

The last figure, on the left in this picture, is William S. Hart.

You might expect that one out of four might slip out of public memory in 42 years, and so William S. Hart has. He was the original cowboy star (I had to look him up--he was born during the Civil War and became a movie star. Amazing, huh?) He never won an Oscr because his last movie was made in 1925.

Of course, just because I didn't recognize Hart doesn't mean he's forgotten. But I suspect most folks, like me, need a nudge.

The black marble is inscribed with the names of other Hollywood greats, just like on the front of the bank. Inside, there's a stained glass window depicting chase scenes--as well as The Squaw Man mural, which I think I mentioned last week. And now it is officially Tuesday; I've had two glasses of wine and am probably no longer an authority on anything.

Mummies of the World at California Science Center

This should be categorized as 'History Visiting Los Angeles' but I'll settle for event. The largest touring mummy exhibit ever is in Exposition Park afor a few months, and I went to see it yesterday.

Mummies of the World opened at the California Science Center earlier this month, and you do need to buy tickets in advance. 

On to the good stuff that I learned from the exhibit.

FIrst, not all mummies are from Egypt. The tattooed babe to the left, for example, lived in Peru at least 600 years ago. Up close, you can see the impression of a woven fabric on her chin--fabric that was wrapped over her face after death.(American Exhibitions furnished this and other photos for Mummies of the World.)

The exhibit has mummies from South America--one is the oldest mummy ever found, a 6500-year-old baby--as well as from China, Hungary and other sites--including, of course, Egypt.

BTW, do you know technically what a mummy is? I didn't. It's a dead body whose soft tissue (as opposed to its skeleton) has been preserved. By that definition, a peat bog body is also a mummy, and yes, there is a bog body in the exhibit.

Second, not all mummies are human. This fellow is a cat, mummified and wrapped during the Ptolemaic period of Egypt (Cleopatra's era). An Egyptian falcon mummy was also exhibited--archaeologists have found over one million falcon mummies in Egypt!

Finally, and this was a big part of the exhibit, not all mummies are intentionally created. The most interesting mummies there occurred naturally:

• The hyena who got caught in a cave and starved to death. The arid cave preserved its body and fur.

• The afore mentioned 6500-year-old baby. The desert air of high-altitude Peru mummified him/her (they're not sure of the sex)

• Three members of the same family--father, mother, and infant--who died in the early 1800s and were mummified along with 250 other folks, buried in a crypt in their village in Hungary. Something about the air and lack of humidity in the sealed crypt mummified all the bodies, which were discovered in 1994.

So. Go see the show. Take your kids and gross them out. Dead bodes, leathery skin and bones, a weasel head and a dozen or so other animals, videos showing CT scans of the bodies--even one poor, naked Egyptian mummy with his mummified penis...gives a whole new meaning to the word shriveled. What's not to love? 

Hollywood Mosaics

With all the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of Hollywood's Walk of Fame, this seems appropriate. This is the far right panel of the huge mosaic ornamenting the front entrance of the Chase Bank (formerly a Home Savings and Loan) and Sunset and Vine.

Millard Sheets created the building and the mosaics, and this particular branch was his favorite. Besides the large mosaics on the front, displaying the names of hundreds of movie luminaries, there are also mosaics on the back of the building (including Mary Poppins) which I'm going to save for another entry.

Howard Ahmanson, who owned Home Savings and hired Sheets to design his bank buildings, died about the same time this branch opened in 1968.

The black marble that alternates with the pictures panels contains 480 names. If you click on the photo at right, you should be able to read some of those names on a much larger image. The movie star names are of Academy Award winners between 1937 and 1968, and of pre-1937 actors selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

When the building opened, the original Pathe camera used by Cecil B. DeMille to shoot The Squaw Man--the first full-length Hollywood movie--was on display. I honestly don't know if it's still there, because I arrived after the bank closed. However, The Squaw Man was shot at Sunset and Vine in 1913, when there was nothing but an empty field on the spot.

Nearby--at Vine and Selma--was the barn rented by DeMille and his partner Jesse Lasky as an office for their new film company. The barn was moved from the Vine and Selma location in 1926. Today the barn houses the Hollywood Heritage Museum, across the street from the Hollywood Bowl.

Los Angeles Daily...well, Occasional Photo

Definitely not going "Daily Photo," though I love those sites: Paris Daily Photo, Daily Photo L.A., etc. I'm waaaay too lazy to commit to posting every day. (Sometimes, I'm even too busy, which is a very nice feeling too.)

But on yesterday's long summer evening, ye olde Schwab's sign on Vine near Sunset just presented such a lovely opportunity.

What does the sign stand on? A building I would call streamline moderne--but what's in said building? Lofts? At street leve, there's a Linens and Things store... but I think the Schwab's sign is on top of a restaurnt. Not Cafe Was--that is the place with the red umbrellas.

Shoulda paid more attention, but my focus (as usual) rested on food and the great meal I was about to have. Cafe Was, btw, presents some very exciting cocktails.

Mosque Mosaics

Today's mosaics are on the King Fahad Mosque of Culver City, on Washington Blvd. According to the Taco blog, the minaret of the mosque stands over 70 feet high, and the mosque itself can hold at least 2000 worshippers. It cost $2.16 million to build, which was financed by private donations, and it opened in July of 1998.

Prince Abdulaziz Ibn Faud Ibn Abdul Aziz, Minister of State and Cabinet Member of Saudi Arabia, contributed one million dollars for the land purchase. Two former presidents, Gerald Ford and George Herbert Walker Bush praised the Mosque, which all consider a marvelous gift from King Fahd.

I wondered why Taco blog would have such comprehensive information (I show only a teensy bit of it here) as well as many photos, but their heading mentions "Street Art" as a topic (along with tacos), so there you go.

Switch to the Wall Street Journal, which claimed in 2004 that the "$8 million" mosque, the largest of several King Fahd built throughout the US, was under investigation along with other Islamic charities. Apparently the Saudi government's Ministry of Islamic Affairs kept this and the other mosques supplied with books and teachers from Saudi Arabia. It may be the operating/management organization that is technically the Islamic charity: the Islamic Foundation of Shaikh Ibn Taimmiyyah.

Another bit of trivia mentioned by the newspaper is that two of the September 11th hijackers visited and spent time there--but may be as meaningful as pointing out that a serial killer once stopped by a major cathedral.

Here is a close up of the pillars, which really are beautiful. Even the potted plant has a mosaic on it!

This is a Suni Mosque, btw.

Big Red Car Routes in 1905

Found a great ad for the Los Angeles-Pacific Railroad (the Red Cars) from 1905, advertising the "Balloon Route." Sounds like a Party Train, if I read it correctly! The Balloon Route took you all over LA County, with stops going north to Laurel Junction (as in Laurel Canyon) and Hollywood, then east to Los Angeles and the 4th Street Station and down to Sawtelle and the National Soldiers Home--that outlines a big loop, the "balloon."

Cars then went due west to Santa Monica--the balloon's tether, I guess. From there you could go on to weekend destinations along the coast, but it might be hard to pull yourself away. After all, Santa Monica, "the oldest and most widely known beach on the Coast, situated on the bluff overlooking the sea" had the "famous Hotel Arcadia, Fine Bath House, Pleasure Pier, FIshing, excellent surf bathing..."

Here are some descriptions of the other stops:

• Playa del Rey, the Play Ground of the King--"One of the most beautiful resorts on the Pacific." Apparently, there was a huge auditorium and convention hall there, as well as "Still water bathing and boating on the Lagoon" and a pleasure pier and surf bathing.

• Venice of America, with Parlor Car Service!

• Ocean Park, one mile from Santa Monica. "Bathing, fishing, and every form of beach attraction, including large dancing pavillon, pleasure pier, bath houses and roller coaster."

• Redondo. "At this beautiful beach overlooking a fine natural harbor is located the far-famed Redondo Hotel, commanding the great ocean front, rivaling all others for grandeur of view." They spared no superlative in those days, huh?

And here's what the ad says about Hollywood. Remember, this is 1905--no movie connection yet. "Beautiful Hollywood, "The Bridal Chamber of California," a city of artistic homes. The "Outpost" of Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, Whitley Heights, Laughlin Hill, and many similar beautiful places, including the home of Mr. Paul de Longpre, the celebrated flower artist."

This Balloon Route Map, borrowed from the USC page on the Big Red Cars, is dated a little later but the route itself seems the same. The picture above of the Red Car is from San Pedro.com.

A Humble, Out-of-State Mosaic

This week was spent traveling in New Mexico (Yay!) I expected to find to find some pretty snazzy mosaic art among the galleries at Santa Fe and Taos, but perhaps I was not looking in the right places. (I did see fantastic, incredible paintings and sculpture--especially along Canyon Road in Santa Fe--just not mosaics.)

Mosaic Monday was saved by a mailbox in Madrid--pronounced MAH-drid--a small town on the Turquoise Trail. Madrid is an old mining town that's become an art colony and shopping mecca. The drawing on the link shows you Madrid, but the drawing is way too clean! Where is the dirt & gravel, the old train engine, the delapidated structures reminding you that this is, truly, a recovered ghost town? Highway 14 runs through Madrid, but you have to slow down to five miles per hour as you drive through. That's not a joke. Think of driving past the main entrance to the mall. Five miles an hour.

Bikers love to stop at Madrid, as well as tourists of all stripes. The few dozen old homes (and a couple of railroad cars) host all sorts of art, textile, and curio shops; the prices are reasonable (unlike Santa Fe); and there's good restaurants hidden there too.

Fun place. Just be careful to avoid the gabbing pedestrians.