Southern California Photography by Alan Pavlik, editor and publisher of Just Above Sunset
Click here to go to a page of links to the high-resolution photography pages at Just Above Sunset

Click here to go to a page of links to more than thirty albums of multiple photographs on single events or specific locations.

Sponsor:

Click here to go there...

ARCHIVE
« July 2006 »
S M T W T F S
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31
Photos and text, unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2006 - Alan M. Pavlik

If you use any of these photos for commercial purposes I assume you'll discuss that with me

These were shot with a Nikon D70 - using lens (1) AF-S Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:35-4.5G ED, or (2) AF Nikkor 70-300mm telephoto, or after 5 June 2006, (3) AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor, 55-200 mm f/4-5.6G ED. They were modified for web posting using Adobe Photoshop 7.0

The original large-format raw files are available upon request.

Contact the Editor


Visitors from February 28, 2006, 10:00 am Pacific Time to date -


Thursday, 20 July 2006
Birds and Art
Topic: Oddities
Birds and Art
The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood BowlAn extra shot from the collection of photographs of the George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl. One pigeon has no problem at all with the Muse of Drama, but the other, on final approach to the fifteen-foot-tall Muse of Music, suddenly has some serious second thoughts.

She is a little intimidating.


Posted by Alan at 6:22 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
home


Wednesday, 19 July 2006
Glamour Restored: The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl
Topic: Historic Hollywood
Glamour Restored: The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl
Streamline Moderne writ large…
From the June 20, 2006, Los Angeles Times - Hollywood Bowl's Fountain Gets a Splash from The Past. The subhead - "Neglected for decades, refurbished Streamline Moderne-style fountain is greeting visitors to the Hollywood Bowl."

The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood BowlSo this is almost a month late. But the traffic past the Hollywood Bowl is always dicey - come south down the hill where Cahuenga turns into Highland Avenue and people get crazy, darting on and off the 101 freeway and maneuvering for the right lane as you roll down into the heart of Hollywood. But Wednesday, July 19, the lane was right and the parking lots empty at the Bowl, and the camera was in the car. So here it is.

From the Times -
Memories of Hollywood's elegant era flowed along with dancing water Monday night as a huge hillside fountain at the entrance to the Hollywood Bowl was brought back to life after more than three decades of neglect.

The Streamline Moderne-style fountain was built in 1940 by the sculptor best known for creating the Academy Awards' Oscar statue. Standing over the bowl's Highland Avenue entryway, it depicts the muses of music, dance and drama.

The 200-foot long, 22-foot high sculpture was heralded as one of America's most ambitious art projects in 1939 when artists and craftsmen hired by the federal government for the Depression-era WPA Federal Arts Project began constructing it.

But in more recent years, it has been more of a symbol of Hollywood decay.
Yeah it had been a mess, overgrown with weeds, the fountains leaking. But it's all fixed up now - George Stanley, who designed the Academy Awards' Oscar statue had been commissioned in 1937 to design the fountain by the Hollywood Bowl Association and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The feds paid for it out of those WPA Arts funds ($125,000 back then) and, as the owner of the bowl, the county paid about a thousand to get things going. And now it's back.

Trivia -
Stanley was already a well-known Hollywood artist who liked to joke that he became a sculptor by accident.

He had been studying at the Otis Art Institute in 1924 in hopes of becoming a commercial artist when he received a part-time job as a school "monitor" whose chief duty was to keep sculpture department modeling clay wet. That job prompted him to experiment with the clay. Playing around, he discovered he had a knack for molding images.

He went on to win sculpture commissions for wealthy Beverly Hills residents, the classic Isaac Newton statue at Griffith Park and artwork for such places as Hoover High School in Glendale and Long Beach Polytechnic High School. Commercial pieces included bas reliefs over the downtown Los Angeles telephone company headquarters and Bullocks Wilshire department store.

His most widely seen piece was only 13 1/2 inches tall, however.

Stanley was the sculptor who molded the original movie Oscar statue. He used a napkin sketch of a man standing on a reel of film grasping a sword that was drawn in 1927 by studio art director Cedric Gibbons.

But this thing was serious. You've got your tiered fountain with a fifteen-foot kneeling "Muse of Music" on top, and, in their niches on the sides, ten foot tall muses of dance and drama. The thing is concrete covered with slabs of decorative granite quarried locally near Victorville. And the whole thing works as a retaining wall that keeps the steep hillside north of the bowl's entry drive in place. Rios Clementi Hale Studios of Hollywood oversaw the four-month renovation that cost almost two million dollars.

It's a hoot, but Hollywood, which had turned incredibly seedy in the sixties, is booming once again, and discovering its odd history.

The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dance -

The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drama -

The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl

 

 

The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Entry to the Hollywood Bowl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl


Posted by Alan at 9:17 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
home


Updated: Wednesday, 19 July 2006 9:43 PM PDT
Tuesday, 18 July 2006
Just what it should look like...
Topic: Oddities
Just what it should look like...
When I grow up I want to be a reporter, or maybe an editor so I can shout to my Lois Lane, Jimmy Olson or Clark Kent the words, "Great Caesar's ghost!" And maybe I'd work in cool newspaper building, like this one, where the LA Weekly is put together each week, down on Sunset Boulevard. That's our alternative paper out here. Unfortunately, there's new management at Village Voice Media, the owners, and they cleaned house, getting rid of a lot of good people and laying down the law - no more left-leaning poltical analyses or hard news coverage, just stick to the arts and the local scene and alternative lifestyle stuff (read about that here).

But still, it's a cool building. And they haven't painted over the public "mission statement" yet.

LA Weekly offices, Sunset Boulevard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 LA Weekly offices, Sunset Boulevard










 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



LA Weekly offices, Sunset Boulevard


Posted by Alan at 7:32 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
home


Updated: Tuesday, 18 July 2006 7:41 PM PDT
Monday, 17 July 2006
Morning Light on Walls
Topic: Color Studies
Morning Light on Walls

Temptations, next to Foreplay (actually Forplay), on Hollywood Boulevard - provocative lingerie and outrageous "clubwear" for the sweet young things to wear to the local hot places, and note on the right the rabbit-as-American-flag with a big white star. It's America. It's Hollywood.

In the morning light - nine in the morning July 15 - it makes a nice composition of colors and textures. And there are no tourists - everything is closed and the center of Hollywood is still asleep.

Temptations, next to Foreplay, on Hollywood Boulevard


Posted by Alan at 7:26 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
home


Updated: Monday, 17 July 2006 11:48 PM PDT
Sunday, 16 July 2006
Bastille Day, Los Angeles
Topic: Unusual Events
Bastille Day, Los Angeles

We all know that Philippe Larrieu, Counsel General of France in Los Angeles, and city councilman Tom LaBonge (his real name, actually), mean well, but this year's Bastille Day Los Angeles, down on the grounds of the Page Museum and next to the La Brea Tar Pits, was a bust.  It wasn't so much that it was one hundred degrees in the shade - and there wasn't much of that - or that the nearby tar pits made the whole place smell like hot asphalt.  It just wasn't very French. 

Our Paris-born friend of many long years said something was missing.  She was right.  The booths were mostly local American outfits, offering "French-like" doodads, or just the usual junk.  Oh there were a few Tahiti tourist tables, TV5 that provides French language broadcasting out here, some Moroccan food stands, and the local pétanque folks with a small area for boules (probably not sanctioned the Fédération Française de Pétanque et Jeu Provençal).  There was the same old black thirties Citroën from last year parked on the lawn.  But the stage was local rappers and South Seas acts, all in English.  They seemed to be having trouble getting anyone to run in the hokey waiters' race.  Paris, the center and soul of France, was a long, long way off on Sunday afternoon, July 16, 2006.
 

But what was missing?  Flags.  There was not one French flag anywhere, not even the small ones.  Nothing, nada, rien.  
 

We left early.  What was the point in staying?
 

Five shots will give you a sense of the event -

 Bastille Day, Los Angeles, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Bastille Day, Los Angeles, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Bastille Day, Los Angeles, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Bastille Day, Los Angeles, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Bastille Day, Los Angeles, 2006


Posted by Alan at 8:07 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
home


Updated: Sunday, 16 July 2006 8:15 PM PDT

Newer | Latest | Older