Wednesday, October 5, 2016

SearchResearch Challenge (10/5/16): Who made the mosaics?


Growing up in Southern California tends to put everything in a particular light. 

It's true--the light in SoCal really is different than the light in other parts of the world. Sure, sometimes it's a bit foggy (or even smoggy), but often there's a kind of translucency that's only found in that place.  Everything is different there; even the winds of December can be peculiar.  

Raymond Chandler's most famous passage about LA:  
"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."
-- the opening of Raymond Chandler's 1938 short story, "Red Wind," originally published in Dime Detective.

But here's a memory of my LA childhood that's a bit more prosaic, but beautiful in a way.  It's the memory of driving around the LA basin and seeing beautiful and distinctive mosaics in front of banks. What's that?  Yeah.  In those days, banks would put up beautiful artwork on their edifices or in the space between their entrance and the street.  I'm not sure how many of these there were, but it was significant.  It was public art, true public art meant to elevate the public, before the term "public art" became something housing developers gave up grudgingly in order to get special variances from the city council to build something truly ugly and rake in the dough.  But I digress.  

Here are a few images of those mosaics, taken from all over California. (Remember you can click on any of these to see the full-size image.)  











Today's Challenge is a simple one: 


1.  Who made the mosaics, and what's the story behind them?  


I haven't tried, but you might be able to Image Search some of these.  But before you do that, take a moment to see if you can't figure out another way to answer the challenge.  Is there something else you could do?  (Trust me; there is.) 

When you figure out the answer, please tell us all in the comments below.  Be sure to say WHAT you did to figure it out. 

And I'll tell you that I had no idea who made these mosaics when I lived in Los Angeles.  When I took these pictures, I still didn't know.  But two queries cleared it up for me.  Can you figure out what I did, decades after I was curious about these minor masterpieces? 

Search on!  


12 comments:

  1. ''Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."" what a great line! sounds like something out of a campaign…
    anyway, didn't use the images (will go back and check them later) used [california bank mosaics] and that SERP opened the gates… fascinating subject on multiple levels… the video below is worth viewing.
    Did the NYT article prompt the challenge?
    BTW, any thoughts on how Navassa survived Matthew? seemed it was ground zero while it was a cat 5…
    Hurricane Matthew
    WeatherCarib

    the top 3 links from the SERP:
    NYT article
    Curbed/LA
    The Arenson Blog

    Home Savings & Loan… the art outlasted the institutions… sculpture and stained glass too…
    Millard Sheets (1907-1989) video - great history - by Beverly Hills Television
    Adam Arenson research
    from the video -
    Carnevale & Lohr, Inc.
    wiki on Sheets
    not just SoCal… Touchdown Jesus, ND,SB,IN.
    gallery bio

    near you
    SJC
    LA map
    list
    Sheet's studio in Claremont
    street view, San Diego… accessible from the car - how Cali?
    La Mesa (San Diego, at the onramp for I-8) tied to the El Camino Real history

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Actually, I hadn't seen the NYTimes article on this at all. Thanks for the link!

      Delete
  2. I feel like there was a trick to this one. I searched "Los Angeles bank mosaics" and got the Curbed/LA article remmij noted above. Fascinating to read about the Ahmanson father and son, too!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I Googled mosaics California banks and this New York Times Article came up. I see the person ahead of me found everything that I found. That artist is Millard Sheets.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/arts/design/the-artist-who-beautified-california-banks.html?_r=0

    His son, Tony, is also an artist and is dedicated to preserving his work. http://www.millardsheetsart.com/ http://www.tonysheets.com/

    ReplyDelete
  4. Good day, Dr. Russell and everyone.

    1. Who made the mosaics, and what's the story behind them?

    [california banks mosaic]

    The Artist Who Beautified California Banks...Mr. Sheets and his wife, Mary, raised four
    children. One of their three sons, the artist Tony Sheets, runs a website that tracks artwork

    in the fifties designed more than 100 Home Savings bank buildings and their accompanying artwork

    Site mentions "Howard Ahmanson Sr"
    Comment here says: "between Howard Ahmanson and Millard Sheets was actually an insurance building that stood where the Music Center is now" Interview

    And Adam Arenson's blog

    Millard Sheets: A Renaissance man Sheets used his architectural firm to promote and illustrate his philosophy that art should be incorporated into every aspect of daily living.

    Denis O'Connor, a mosaic muralist who executed massive portraits of idealized California life at many Home Savings of America buildings in the 1960s and 1970s as part of an ambitious public art program

    Then, Searched by Image to verify results with

    this image +

    "california bank mural"


    [list of Millard Sheets mosaics]

    Wikipedia mentions he began designing mosaics in 1952 and designing buildings

    Happy

    Birthday Millard Sheets: Top Ten Public Art Projects to See in Person
    (Source a)

    Reading links and previous site mentions
    Definitive List for Home Savings and Loan artwork, Savings of America artwork,and the Millard Sheets Studio public projects Adam Arenson have
    found 159 Sheets Studio projects intended for public places other than Home Savings locations, and 168 Home Savings locations with Sheets Studio artwork

    Answer:

    Mosaic were designed by Millard Owen Sheets commissioned for Howard Ahmanson Sr. beginning in 1952. And executed by Denis O'Connor (at least many of them).

    The last photo posted by Dr. Russell (dolphins.) Site mentions about this one: His mosaic for a Santa Monica Home Savings featured dolphins jumping out of the waves. When the building was torn down, he was resigned to the fact that he had no control over the artwork, said Suzanne O'Connor, his daughter-in-law. Denis also mentioned: ""They kept using murals because the banks that had murals on them got more new accounts than those that didn't have murals"


    "I want buildings that will be exciting seventy-five years from now," Howard Ahmanson said to Sheets in 1953, offering him the chance to design the Home Savings look. (source a)

    Other site mentions that bank patrons told Millard "“We like to be associated with something beautiful.” La.Curbed.com says: "Ahmanson and Sheets's first bank collaboration was the Wilshire Home Savings in Beverly Hills (their first building together was the National American Insurance building on Wilshire, near Western, now the Ahmanson Center)"

    ReplyDelete
  5. LA banks mosaic art
    took me straight to
    http://la.curbed.com/2011/10/10/10435072/how-la-banks-got-their-midcentury-mosaics-and-murals

    ReplyDelete
  6. [california historical mosaics] finds

    http://la.curbed.com/2011/10/10/10435072/how-la-banks-got-their-midcentury-mosaics-and-murals

    Why do so many Los Angeles-area banks have amazing murals, mosaics, and sculptures? It's mostly the the work of the Millard Sheets Studio, which starting in the fifties designed more than 100 Home Savings bank buildings and their accompanying artwork. Howard Ahmanson Sr. bought Home Savings and Loan in 1947 and the bank prospered by making home loans to SoCal residents during the mid-century boom, according to historian Adam Arenson's blog on the banks. Sheets was an artist who became well-known in the thirties for his paintings. In 1952, according to the Daily News, Ahmanson wrote to Sheets: "Have traveled Wilshire Boulevard for twenty-five years. Know name of architect and year every building was built. Bored ... Need buildings designed?I want buildings that will be exciting seventy-five years from now.

    Can't 3 point this at the moment but will to later on

    Nifty Challenge

    jon tU

    ReplyDelete
  7. I realised moments later that I had not Challenged the veracity of my answer that all the images you show are by Millard Streets Studio.

    I found this comprehensive list of the MS group here Definitive List for Home Savings and Loan artwork, Savings of America artwork, and the Millard Sheets Studio public projects http://adamarenson.com/homesavingsbankart/thelist/

    Sadly no images. But the site led to this http://adamarenson.com/homesavingsbankart/

    Spring 2016: Do you have any Sheets Studio or Home Savings images?

    Returned to http://la.curbed.com/maps/mapping-millard-sheetss-beautiful-socal-home-savings-banks

    a map which should show all the mosaics done in LA but Nope. Just locations and I am not up to streetviewing all of them.

    jon tU

    ReplyDelete
  8. Query [los angeles banks mosaics]

    http://la.curbed.com/2011/10/10/10435072/how-la-banks-got-their-midcentury-mosaics-and-murals
    " It's mostly the the work of the Millard Sheets Studio, which starting in the fifties designed more than 100 Home Savings bank buildings and their accompanying artwork. "

    Wikipedia reference (after a few attempts obtaining PDF) Millard Sheets a legacy of Art and Architecture

    chrome-extension://ecnphlgnajanjnkcmbpancdjoidceilk/content/web/viewer.html?file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.laconservancy.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Ffiles%2Fdocuments%2Fmillard_sheets_2012.pdf

    query [millard sheets mosaics los angeles] image search provides lots of examples.

    Wayback Machine [via Wiki] has some interesting references as well (some downloadable)

    https://archive.org/search.php?query=millard%20sheets

    ReplyDelete