Lake Machado & Ken Malloy Regional Park in the Winter

To all those back east suffering through another polar blast. . . gosh, I'm sorry.

 I could say I thought of you this afternoon when I took these pictures on a beautiful, sunny, California day, but I'd be lying.

From top to bottom, these lovely creatures around Lake Machado at Ken Malloy Regional Park (formerly known as Harbor Regional Park) in Harbor City are:

• Great Blue Heron

• Snowy Egret

• Great White Heron

• A view of the lake, although there IS a Snowy Egret hiding in there

• American Coots

I had to do a bit of research on the Coots, because I thought they were ducks: small grey ducks with black heads and startlingly white beaks. However, once I googled "ducks with white beaks" I found a page called AllAboutBirds.com that set me straight.

Coots are, I learned,  "common sights in nearly any open water across the continent, and they often mix with ducks. But they’re closer relatives of the gangly Sandhill Crane and the nearly invisible rails than of Mallards or teal."

And there were Mallards there too.

And Canadian Geese, Chinese Geese, Muscovy Ducks, the biggest pigeons I've seen, gulls, squirrels, and more. From the calls I heard among the reeds--calls I don't hear anywhere else--lots more. One book I consulted says over 350 bird species have been spotted at this park.

Lake Machado is not man-made, and is fed by runoff from the Wilmington Drain. Since it has not disappeared over the years, I wonder if perhaps it is fed by an underground spring as well. It has definitely been there for centuries. One of the largest Native American villages in the area was near the lake, though it's never been exactly located or excavated. We know about it from records left by the first few Spanish soldiers and missionaries. Also, another European named Hugo Reid, who married a Tongva woman, collected lots of information and recorded it in the 19th century, as I posted a few years ago.

The name of the village is something like Suangna.

Lake Machado is named for Francisco Machado, who was a Los Angeles County Supervisor in the 1870s. Other Machados are prominent players in our local history--Francisco was one of 14 children of Augustin Machado and Ramona Sepulveda and had uncles and cousins, many of whom were landowners, but I did find a Board of Supervisors statement, on letterhead, that identifies Francsico as the lake's honoree.

As for Ken Malloy, he was a retired longshoreman who fought hard and led a grass roots effort to preserve this land as a park, back in the 1950s. It's the largest chunk of native riparian forest and freshwater marsh in the county, as I learned from Barbara Dye's book, Exploring the Palos Verdes Peninsula: A Driving Tour and Walks. Bits of history from the early 1800s include:

• The Los Angeles River once diverted itself from the Ballona Wetlands to drain out in San Pedro for a few years,

• There was once a stagecoach stop near the lake with an inn called Casa de Sangre (house of blood),

• The Dominguez Adobe once sat on a bluff overlooking this area.

And of course, it was home to Reggie the Alligator from 2005 to 2007.

What about the water quality of the lake? As far as I can see the native fauna have no complaints, but this is an industrial area, with big oil tanks visible to the south. According to Barbara Dye's book, over a million dollars of bond money was assigned to clean up Lake Machado in 2004, with work to begin in 2010.

I found a February 2013 article about how polluted the lake is and how deceptive its appearance can be, and at that point a 2-1/2 year clean up project was slated to begin. Here's an outline of the work to be done.

The Daily Breeze reported in June 2013 that trees and debris were being removed from the Wilmington Drain, and I can say that I saw some kind of pumping set up at the north (PCH) end of the park, in a very ugly, trash-strewn sump or lagoon.

Hopefully, progress is being made.

Added Jan 24: Found a great website, a sort of fansite of the park that has lots of information--especially about the birds, and many aerial shots of the park in the 1950s through the 1970s.

Trashy Lingerie and other great names

Remember when Trashy Lingerie showed up on La Cienega in the early 70s?

Where did they come up with that name?

Or the Apple Pan, for that matter?

Or Spearment Rhino?(or is it Rhino Spearmint?)

Best fun read for Angelenos has got to be this article from LAWeekly: "How Six L.A. Businesses Got Their Weird Names."

It actually came out in early December but I was probably asleep. I must have done a Rip Van Winkle, since it's clearly July now and I slept through the entire winter.

Quest for Flight in San Diego, 130 years ago

If you think you've seen this glider picture before, you're right and you've got a great memory.

 It was 2010 that I first blogged about the glider, which hangs at the Western Museum of Flight at Zamperini Field in Torrance. It's a replica (though it actually was flown, once) of a glider designed and flown by John Montgomery in San Diego, near the Otay Mesa, in 1883.

1883 . . . 20 years before the Wright Brothers.

John Montgomery died testing one of his machines in 1911.

The glider is a beautiful artifact, and when I first saw it I tried to learn more about John Montgomery. There wasn't too much out there. Montgomery seemed to be recalled as a local hero, a forgotten pioneer, but not much more.

However--Craig Harwood and Gary Fogel have dug into the historical record and written a book about Montgomery, giving him back his well-earned place in history and filling in all the details. In Quest for Flight: John J. Montgomery and the Dawn of Aviation in the West, you'll come across names like Chanute, Curtiss, and Loughead (which was later changed to Lockheed) and more.

And it's a great read. Highly recommended to anyone interested in early flight or California history, which is why I'm putting a link to it in the right column, which will stay there for a little while.

If you are interested, the 2010 post is here.

And as I mentioned in a later post, this book--Quest for Flight--was named Runner Up in the Great Midwest Book Festival (Regional Literature Award) and also received Honorable Mention in the San Francisco Book Festival (Biography Award) and the Southern California Book Festival (Biography Award).

Montgomery's parents came to California during the Gold Rush, so their story is the state's story as well. His father Zach, an attorney, came in 1850 looking for gold and quickly determined that he'd do better as a lawyer and politician.

But it's his mother's story that really astounds me.

We all know that men hightailed it to California during the Gold Rush, right? Men and very, very few women. A small number of men brought wives; hookers who felt they had nothing to lose and maybe a bit to gain went west; but for the most part, California was men, men, men from 1848 into the decade following.

So why did an Irish widow pack up her family--two grown daughters and two sons, and a few very young grandchildren--and become one of the 49'r's? That's amazing. Ellen--an unmarried daughter at the time, eventually to be John's mother--became an early Gold Rush entrepreneur, running a store and selling real estate with her mother.

Once married to Zachariah Montgomery, she bore two sets of twins and four other children. The familyl resettled in San Diego County, on a farm they named Fruitland which is today part of Chula Vista.

The Montgomerys were a fascinating, quirky group. If any family was likely to produced a brilliant young scientist obsessed by the idea of flight, it was this clan. And that's just the beginning. We learn all about John Montgomery in these pages, which includes renderings of his early drawings and inventions.

The authors have pulled together every scrap of information they could to build this biography, and I enjoyed it immensely. Here is the the link to see the book on Amazon: Quest for Flight: John J. Montgomery and the Dawn of Aviation in the West.

Enjoy!

Parklet Mosaics in Highland Park

This week's Mosaic Monday site was featured in Westways Magazine last June, in a story about the first few mini-parks, or parklets, or even "street porches," that are opening all over Los Angeles.

Located just outside Bobby's Auto Parts on York Blvd. near Avenue 51, the very first parklet (opened February 2013) is full of mosaics. And redwood benches.

The parklet is about 20 feet long and 6 feet wide, really just a spot for folks to pause and sit down and maybe talk with friends for a bit.  Formerly, it was a red curb, so no one has lost a parking space.

From LACurbed I learn that the park structures sits on concrete piers that are bolted to the curb, bot the street, so they can be moved if necessary.

I'm not sure whether they're calling it the Highland Park Parklet or the York Blvd. Parklet. Not that it matters.

And from the EastsideLA blog (which has pictures of the construction itself): about $10,000 was allocated to build the parklet, and the city government worked with LivingStreets to make the plans.  The LA Conservation Corps and its youth volunteers did a log of the construction work. Once concrete was poured into forms around the planters and allowed to dry, the mosaic panels were applied.

What is LivingStreets, besides a website? It is an initiative of Green LA to make our streets safe for all users. They list four members/officers: an architect, urban planner, landscape designer, and the director of Green LA, Stephanie Taylor.

Cathi Milligan is the mosaicist, and she embedded lots of pictures. She's also very active in her community/ies, serving as the Economic Development Chair of Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council, and Executive Director of North East Los Angeles Art, or NELA Art.

As you can see to the left, a screenshot of Reservoir Dogs is baked into one large tile (the top of the aquamarine stripe on the right). The street scenes were filmed on York Blvd, although I'm not sure if these are the scenes from the bank robbery and shoot out. It's been a few years since I saw the movie. That was Quentin Tarantino's first big film, right?

I have no idea who the cute little dog is, or the significance of the chicken.

Tiles came from The Glass Studio, which is Cathi Milligan's business , right on York BLvd.

This picture, from the opening of the parklet last year, shows former mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel with City Council Member Jose Huisar. I use it for perspective. In the other pictures of the park, the mosaics look much larger to me.

There are lots of beautiful shots on Flickr, taken by someone called Walterrrr.

Nordhoff Station Mosaics

Today's featured mosaic is in Chatsworth, at the Nordhoff Metro Station of the Orange Line. Anne Marie Karlsen designed the 27-foot-long oval, which was installed in 2012. Here's what The Source--Metro's newsletter--has to say about it:

Anne Marie was inspired by the surrounding residential and natural landscape, including the landmark Stoney Point in Chatsworth. She approached the station platform as an outdoor living room, creating wallpaper-like porcelain enamel steel art panels alongside the platform seating areas, and glass and stone mosaic paving patterns designed to read like cozy ellipse-shaped area rugs. The title, Strati, refers to the geologic stratification and formation of the rocks in the northwest San Fernando Valley.

Here's what I learned about artist Anne Marie Karlesen, mostly from an article in Muses, an alumni magazine of Michigan State University. Karlsen was the youngest ever faculty member hired by UCLA's Art Dept back in 1979, and she's been teaching there and at Santa Monica College. In the 1990s she began creating Public Art around town.

That led to her 14 ceramic tile pictures at the North Hollywood Metro Station. "Kaleidoscope Dreams." It's almost a mosaic, and I've certainly covered pictures made of specially painted ceramic tiles before--but since we have an artwork that's unquestionably a mosaic already I'll only include a link to that installation.

She designed the relatively new stained glass artwork at the  Lawndale Library (which won an award), a tile wall titled "Ogling" outside the Pavilions in West Hollywood, and the two tall mosaic panels ("Revival") set into the brickwork at the Raymond Theatre Renaissance building at Holly and Raymond in Pasadena.

She is also the artist responsible for the huge, striking tile panel called "Wheels" on 2nd Street in Santa Monica, north of the 10 freeway. It's on a parking structure. And there is more, outside of Los Angeles County.

At left is a picture of the mosaic as it was being fabricated and laid out at Perdomo in Mexico. Karlsen does not have a webpage showing pictures of her work--at least not one that I could find, sadly.

Mosaic Art in Parker's Lighthouse

Today's mosaic is an opportunistic piece. p I was going to point out that the Norton Simon Museum facade is, in fact, a mosaic. It doesn't portray a landscape or person, but it is tile arranged artfully, right? And it seemed appropriate, two days before the Rose Parade which goes right by the building.

115,000 glazed tiles is nothing to sneeze at, right? And, not to be repetitive, but that is it, at right. The tiles.

Technically, though, I don't think it's ever been referred to as a mosaic facade, and I was saved (actually, you were saved) from this slip into New Year non-mosaic-ness by the simple fact that some friends invited me to Parkers' Lighthouse in Long Beach for a Goodbye 2013 luncheon.

And Parkers' Lighthouse has beautiful mosaics adorning its lobby. 

This is one set, at left. They are under a chrome counter, and I moved a bench to take this picture. Next to it is another quartet of mosaics, but an easel and daily specials where there and I didn't want to cause too much trouble. 

Rather amazing, and I could not find anything about the artist. But here is a close up picture of the fish on the upper right panel.

Christmas Week Mosaic Monday

Went looking for a Christmas-themed mosaic for this week--and found this lovely book of mosaics designed to celebrate the poem, "The Night Before Christmas."

The mosaics are by artist Christine Brallier, and the book can be bought here at Brownian Bee Press for the exceptionally low price (imho) of $16.99.

Holy cow. I know what it costs to produce a full color book (albeit mine is about 8 times bigger, at 250 pgs).  This is a bargain. 15 glass tile mosaics are photographed in the book--here's a shot below of the mosaic itself, not just the cropped version on the cover.

Technically I believe Brallier is in the Santa Barbara area, out of LA County. But she was raised in Los Angeles and went to school here.

 She's done an installation of mosaic panels titled "The Joy of Life" at Rhoads Park in Santa Barbara, and has designed public art at locations in Texas and Kentucky, and even a Steve Irwin tribute mosaic in Australia. You can see pictures of all those at her website.

So enjoy . . . and Happy Christmas.

Johnie's Coffee Shop and Dream of Simultaneous Connection

Two items today;

First, Johnie's Coffee Shop on Wilshire has been declared a historic-cultural landmark.

I have two standout memories of Johnie's. The first was in the mid 1970, when I had an hour to kill between job interview downtown. I was lost--the building on Wilshire are nothing if not intimidating to someone who's never worked there. Johnie's was the friendliest looking place around. Big blue and white roof (I didn't know Googie from Gaga back then), totally unsophisticated and unlike all those skyscrapers with their tinted glass windows. I sat at the counter and drank coffee.

The second memory is of the movie Miracle Mile, which I loved. In that film the early morning crowd--really early, like 3 AM --doesn't believe a guy who comes in, all shaken up, saying he just heard that nuclear warheads are heading toward Los Angeles. Until Tasha Yar (well, the actress Denise Crosby who will always be Tasha Yar to me) uses a gigantic cell phone to call her friends in DC, only to hear that they're all getting out of town. And things go downhill from there.

Johnie's has been closed since 2000, but gets leased out for films. I'm told bits of The Big Lebowski and Resevoir Dogs were filmed there as well as several music videos. (Lebowski also filmed at Dinah's in Culver City).

It opened as Romeo's in 1956, but its location was under consideration as a Purple Line Metro Construction staging area, according to the LA TImes. Now, they're talking about it reopening when the Metro Station is up and running.

The second item is a throwback to the previous post about a mosaic sculpture along Ocean Blvd. in Long Beach--the previous post, just last Monday.

Timing is everything, and my timing was off. I drove by the art today and this is what I saw.

Since there was some scaffolding in place on the upper floors of the building as well, I'm assuming the artwork is being protected against stray spritzes from either a texture or paint coat.

Dream of Simultaneous Connection Mosaic

Well, it's got mosaic elements like this astronaut, but it might be more properly called a sculpture.

However, Ned Smyth, the artist and creator, refers to it as a mosaic of steel, stucco, stone, and glass, so who am I to argue?

Smyth created this work, titled "The Dream of Simultaneous Connection,"  in 1996. It stands in Victory Park in Long Beach, which is in the downtown area, just off Ocean Blvd.

For the record, it's 26 feet tall, and 288 by 100 feet wide and long. Or long and wide.

RDA funds were used for this, and it cost $300,000 back in the 1990s.

There's a picture of the "Victory Park, Established 1899" sign on this blog, which is interesting in that it's the blog of someone who was--at least in 2010--homeless. And it has many links to blogs of other homeless people, resources, and more. Which probably shouldn't be surprising to me--who says a homeless person can't blog on a phone or an iPad, after all?--but it is.

We don't have much more of Ned Smyth's work out here because he teaches and works in the New York area. And he does not confine himself to mosaics. But here is a photo of a mosaic he did for the entrance of a Firehouse in Queens, just off the Long Island Expressway. It's from the I'm Just Walkin' blog.

Back to Victory Park in Long Beach.

The park itself was named to honor the veterans of World War I, back in 1919, but the original land was deeded to the city in 1899 by the Long Beach Land & Water Company to settle a lawsuit.  The land was actually part of a bluff back then. Today, it's a long, 4-acre stretch along Ocean Blvd, intesected by several cross streets, and it looks more like stretches of lawn than a park, and it sits in front of towers,condos, and office suites. Any vestige of a natural bluff is long gone.

The art pictured here is between Linden and Atlantic on Ocean--in front of the Harbor Place Towers with the helipad on top.

You can see just how large and spread-out an installation this is in this picture from the artist's own website. The pillars with the big gold ball--which is also a mosaic, as it's covered in gold tile--are part of it as well. As is another element out of sight, to the right of those pillars. There are a couple of lines of cedar (I think) that outline a slab, and on that slab is more white mosaic pictures.

In the model at right, also from the artist's website, the slab and trees are the topmost feature.

Here is what the Arts Council of Long Beach says about the artwork on its site:

"Smyth's sculptures remind us of the sometimes confusing daydreams that we all experience. Steel, stucco, stone, concrete, glass, and gold-leaf mosaic have been used to create a fantasy environment Three independent facades suggest the silhouette of a dismantled house with white outlines of various images decorating each wall. At first glance, one is greeted by a profile of a woman's face, resting her head on the grass. Her expression is calm expression, as if daydreaming. Adjacent is a figure back flipping into space, an astronaut, an owl in flight, a man in a suit lifting an enormous hoop and a girl in a bathing suit balancing on a ball. Four black columns stand to the right pointing towards a rotunda containing a large mystical sphere brilliantly covered in gold tile."

Johnny Martinez on PBS

This is a clip from an upcoming documentary on Johnny Martinez--to be shown Thursday, December 12 at 10:30 pm on the ARTBOUND show. For those of us in Los Angeles, that will be on Channel 28, KCET.

Full title: Johnny Chano Martinez, El Padrina Salsero

The producer, Roland Aquilar, is a high school friend of mine who made the documentary after meeting Martinez being invited to dinner with him. He asked about making a documentary of Martinez' life, and this is the result.

I found a 1993 article in the LA Times celebrating Martinez, saying that he'd been performing three to five nights a week with his 10-piece band, Salsa Machine, for about 35 years . . . in '93. One of his regular gigs was at the time was the Sportsmens Lodge in Studio City, but he was also at the Quiet Cannon in Montebello and other places.

You'll have to watch the documentary for more!