Somewhere Else

We’re a bit preoccupied with journeys at present, since tonight we will be doing the long flight from Los Angeles to Sydney. But of course, journeys aren’t always quite that big.

We saw this unusual labyrinth in Venice, California earlier this week. You can trace out the path through the labyrinth with your finger, without moving from the spot where you are standing. It’s a reminder of the fact that in medieval times mazes often had a religious significance – they were a miniature pilgrimage or act of penitence. So you can think of them as a illustration of the concept that “it’s the journey that matters, not the destination”.

This labyrinth is the work of venice sculptor Robin Murez. And in case the idea of doing a journey while standing still is just a bit too mystical for you, she has created another labyrinth in the grass right next to the sphere. That one you do have to walk around:

Last week we showed you the Public Art Walls at Venice Beach in California. They are like an ever-changing exhibition of contemporary street art. But there is also a more permanent collection of public art at Venice Beach.

Along the Ocean Front Walk (generally referred to as The Boardwalk), there are murals painted by several prolific local artists. The one below is by Rip Cronk, who also painted the Jim Morrison mural that we featured in June. This one is very Van Gogh-esque and is appropriately titled “Homage to a Starry Knight”. It’s been there for 20 years.

Facing this mural there is the one below, by artists Chase and Bue. You can also find other works by Chase along Main Street in Venice, and in many other parts of the world.

For us, no visit to Los Angeles is complete without a wander around Santa Monica. This trendy seaside village/suburb has plenty of interesting shops and restaurants, especially along the pedestrianised Third Street Promenade. But if you look past the shops and the buskers, you can also see some very interesting buildings.

The quaint brick building above is the Rapp Saloon on Second Street. It dates from 1875, the year that the town was established. During its colourful life, this building has been used as a beer garden, City Hall, a movie company, a youth hostel and even a Salvation Army location.  The proud 12 storey Art Deco building below is the Bay Cities Guaranty Building which was completed in 1929, just before the Depression (which put an end to the Bay Cities Guaranty and Loan Association).

And along the Promenade there are some very flamboyant cinemas, including the Broadway Cinema below. It was built in a mix of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne styles, with the distinctive sign tower and strong vertical and horizontal lines. For more information on the interesting architecture of Santa Monica, visit the website of Santa Monica Conservancy.

Another sculpture that we liked at the Sculpture Garden at UCLA North Campus in Westwood was this Henry Moore “Two-Piece Reclining Figure, No. 3” from 1961. Moore is one of our favourite 20th century sculptors, maybe because his distinctive artworks turn up in many places that we visit.

In fact we admired another sculpture by this British sculptor a week earlier, when we were in Sydney en route from Cairns to Los Angeles. Right next to the Art Gallery of New South Wales we saw “Reclining Figure: Angles” from 1980:

On the weekend we went to the UCLA North Campus in Westwood to see the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, which has over 70 works of art in a tranquil garden setting.

The sculpture above especially caught our attention. It’s titled “Pensive” and was created by American sculptor Deborah Butterfield in 1996. Although it appears to be made of driftwood, it is actually cast bronze. The totem pole-like “Tower of Masks” below is by Austrian sculptor Anna Mahler and dates from 1961.

But for an Australian, maybe the most appealing sculpture was “Obos 69” by American sculptor George Tsutakawa. It was made in 1969, is set in a fountain and is amusingly reminiscent of the armour worn by Australian bushranger (outlaw) Ned Kelly:

If you are an avid traveller and you happen to live in Australia, it often feels like most of the world is just a bit too far away. So we rather liked this map which we saw on the weekend.

It’s on the outside of the AT&T Center in S. Olive Street, Los Angeles. The artistic map relocates Australia to the mid-Atlantic, fairly close to Europe and not so far from New York. That sounds good to us!

For the same reason, we liked the map below. It’s on a shop front in Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, California and again places Australia closer to the rest of the world. The image is reminiscent of the hypothetical super-continent Pangaea, which existed about 250 million years ago. It split into Laurasia and Gondwana, which in turn fragmented to form the continents as we know them today.

While we were walking along Broadway in Los Angeles yesterday, we saw plenty of interesting places in addition to Angels Flight and the Bradbury Building. Directly across the road from the Bradbury Building, there is an impressively ornate building. This is the Million Dollar Theater which was built in 1918 for LA showman Sid Grauman for the then outrageous price of a million dollars. It was one of America’s first “movie palaces” and still looks fairly palatial today.

In one corner of the building there is a most intriguing pharmacy – Farmacia Million Dollar Botanica – which specialises in worship of Santa Muerte, the Saint of Death. The shop windows have appropriately macabre statues of the Grim Reaper:

A little further along Broadway there is an interesting mural called Calle de la Eternidad (Eternity Street). It shows the Aztec calendar, with hands reaching upwards. As we were walking along, we happened to pick up a copy of the local newspaper, Los Angeles Downtown News – and were surprised when we read it later to find that the current (Aug 30) issue has an article about Broadway between Third and Fourth Streets, exactly where we had been walking. Coincidences do happen!

During this visit to Los Angeles we’ve been reading “Angels Flight”, one of Michael Connolly’s LA crime novels. So today we went along to see Angels Flight, a funicular railway in the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles. The railway was built in 1901 and is where the murder that sets the scene for the whole plot took place.

The brightly painted railway looks oddly jaunty and funfair-like amid the surrounding glass and concrete tower blocks. We also visited the Bradbury Building, which was built in 1893 and is just a few blocks away on the corner of 3rd and Broadway. This building also features strongly in the novel, since the LAPD Internal Affairs Department is located there and the murder victim had an office in the building as well. If you’re a fan of Blade Runner, you may also recognise the building – some of the movie was shot there.

Walking along Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, California yesterday, we noticed an icon from our childhood. Pasted on the wall beside a bar, there was a stencil poster of the Monopoly Man – playing a piano. And on the base of a nearby lamppost there was another stencil, painted directly onto the surface (below). These appealing images are the work of LA street artist Alec, who leaves his Monopoly stencils all around the city.

The lifeguards’ towers on the sand at Venice Beach in California are another iconic attraction for photographers. But this year they are even more photogenic than usual. Instead of the normal sedate blue colour, they are painted in bright psychedelic colours.

This unusual exhibition of beach art is titled “Summer of Colour” and is the work of thousands of school children across the United States.