Arts

Avalon Art

avalon.pngI took this photo of Avalon Harbor from the hill, south of the bay, near the Wrigley Mansion. We were in a tram getting a tour of the town of Avalon when we saw this spectacular view. At the time I took the picture, I was using 35mm film in my old Canon SLR, so this had to be scanned into electronic format. Since it was sort of grainy, Bob went with the flow and applied a photo shop tool to make it look somewhat like an oil painting. Anyhow, this was the result. Click for a bigger version.

As an interesting aside, visitors on the Avalon tour don’t get to go up to this location these days. There is a problem on Pebbly Beach Road, just below this location, with rock slides. The Island Conservancy is concerned with liabilities associated with injuries to visitors, so neither the tour tram nor those little golf carts are allowed access to this area; this is a unique view of the town these days.

The Chieftain

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This is the ‘Pontiac Chieftain’ hood ornament on the 1947 station wagon that we saw yesterday. It’s an Art Deco classic sculpture in it’s own right. Click the image above for the extra large view.

The Catalina Casino – An Art Deco Treasure

art-deco-mermaid.jpgThe Casino in Avalon, CA. on Catalina Island, is truly one of the world’s greatest Art Deco treasures. The mermaid over the box office (see a closer image here) has become an icon associated with Avalon – her image appears on event posters all over town and on the mainland in the terminals.

Cap’n Bob captured this vertical panorama of the mermaid while standing in the loggia at the entrance to the theater and ballroom. He combined three images to render this top-to-bottom view of the mural and box office. Click on her for the really big version – use the scroll bars to see the entire image.

More about the Casino’s murals from LAMurals.org:

Date
1929

Location
The Casino’s Avalon Theatre
1 Casino Way
Avalon

Media Notes
Designed by John Gabriel Beckman. Executed by Emil Kosa. Jr., Aloyous Bohnen, Vyseled Ulianoff, Alexander Kiss, Eugene de Goncz.

Description
Nine panels of underwater marine life including a mermaid encircle the loggia’s inside walls. They are painted directly on the concrete.

Around the dome, within the auditorium in an Art Deco style, are local flora and fauna, scenes of early California, and abstract designs. They were painted on a burlap-like material with extra-fine ground pigments in a flatene medium (used as a binder by printers). On a seashell carried by seahorses, Venus rises from the the waves. She is the central figure above the proscenium arch. Inside the arch are other figures as well as a map of Catalina.

More about the Casino’s description and history from Away.com:

Continue reading…

Shotgun Still Life

After today’s session at the range, we set the guns out for cleaning as usual. I like to take a picture of the guns we took each time we shoot, just for the record. We don’t take all the guns on a given day. I handed my little Canon PowerShot A510 to Damsel while I was opening the tool box, and she took this nice perspective picture of the shotguns awaiting clean-up.

She just seems to have the artistic flair with the camera, while I’m just a mere photo journalist most of the time. I guess I can deal with that.

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Succulent Symmetry

Just a few steps away from the orchid show we went to over the weekend, is the botanic gardens. One of our favorite sections is the cactus and succulent garden. You will find many strange and beautiful varieties such as this beautifully symmetrical member of the agavaceae family, which is closely related to yucca, aloe and agave. Click on the image below for the larger version.

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The Casino’s Art Deco Mermaid

I know that we’ve been putting up a lot of images from our recent trip to Avalon, but we took over 800 pictures and many of them came out quite good (if I do say so myself). We will probably be posting these over the next few weeks in the afterglow of a wonderful island getaway.

This beautiful tile mural is over the box office in the foyer of the famous Casino in the City of Avalon on Catalina Island. She has been restored form the dark days of the 60s to the 80’s when this gorgeous structure fell into disrepair. Luckily, the whole place is looking good, although some places around the building could use a power wash. Nonetheless, this is one of the several wonderful aquatic murals in the Casino’s foyer. Click on the image below to see a larger version.

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