Art & Treasures...

Julie and I met in Orange for a day of ogling artwork and searching for treasures. It was absolutely perfect!

We began at the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University. Opened in 2016, it is the home of one of the world’s largest collections of California narrative art. Founded through the ongoing generosity of art patrons and philanthropists Mark and Janet Hilbert, it represents the only museum in the world committed to tracing the rich, iconic history of the Golden State from the late 19th century to the present day through works by leading California Scene artists and Hollywood studio artists and animators.
The Hilbert Collection is comprised of more than 5,000 pieces from the 1900s through present day. It features oils, watercolors, and drawings of California life, including acclaimed works by Millard Sheets, Emil Kosa, Jr., Mary Blair, Phil Dike, Milford Zornes, and Rex Brandt. The Collection also features one of the largest private collections of Disney and other animation art, works by American illustrators, Native American arts, and American design. We only had time to visit the North Wing but we were not disappointed.
To our delight, we were introduced to our new favorite artist with the Merry and Bright: Christmas Card Designs by Ralph Hulett exhibit.
Sparkling with Midcentury Modern style and pizzazz, the Christmas card designs of California Scene painter and Disney artist Ralph Hulett (1915-1974) are classics. Hulett studied at Chouinard – where his instructors included Millard Sheets, Phil Dike and Phil Paradise – and started work for Walt Disney Studios’ first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, while still a student. He worked for Walt Disney Studios for 37 years as a background artist, and his brilliant watercolor backgrounds appear in almost every Disney animated feature from Pinocchio to Robin Hood.
He also was a prolific fine-art watercolorist and oil painter, focusing on cityscapes and landscapes of Los Angeles and Southern California. One of his most successful revenue streams, however, came from his card designs. From the 1940s to the 1970s, he created hundreds of lively, colorful Christmas card designs for companies such as Designers Showcase and California Artists.
This one reminds me of me when I head out to the post office to mail my Christmas cards. I love it!

In the Cinema Arts Galleries we took a nostalgic trip via the Disney Classics of the 1950s and ’60s. Selected from the deep archives of the Hilbert Museum’s animation collection, this exhibition spotlights original art by Disney artists from such films as Peter Pan, Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book and more.





In the exhibit 21st Century Realism by California Artists, the museum showcases artists who have developed a very personal and identifiable style, even though all are working in the genres of realism, photorealism or hyper-realism. In fact, several of these realist genres were pioneered by California artists.


Julie and I probably have this same photo at the actual Palm Springs house captured so realistically by painter David Heller. Wow.

Laguna Cove (1941) by Paul Landacre blew me away. The intricate details are impressive but once I learned they were accomplished via wood engraving- so amazing. The patience it must have taken...

There was just something about Alfred Chadbourn's Kitchen Still Life.
Phil Dike has captured many images from my youth. I think I've stood at this spot, depicted in Corona del Mar Jetty (1955).
With the exhibit constantly changing, Art of the Airwaves: Novelty Radios from the 1930s – 1970s. This exhibition features novelty radios that depict Disney favorites, beloved cowboy heroes, holiday characters, sports icons and more. There are even some shaped like world globes, tropical huts, a piano and a Coca-Cola cooler.
Turns out, Mr. Hilbert's dad owned an appliance store where young Mark developed a love of radios. So dang cool!



Ending our visit with Hopalong Cassidy allows for a poignant quote, “A life without complications isn't really a life, you know. In life things go wrong, nothing stays the same and there's nothing you can do about it." It's a more verbose version of my favorite mantra, "It is what it is!"
After fueling up at lunch, we hit Orange Circle, an area of this historic town full of antique shops. We spent hours looking at treasures.
They say, "One man's junk is another man's treasure". That has to be true of all the taxidermy was saw. Wild.

So much of what we saw brought back memories of our childhoods. Oh man, Jell-O molds!
CorningWare always does it for me. I actually wrote about the coffee pot pictured in this advertisement.

We had this exact nut set. It always came out this time of year. Oh man, flashback time!
I think I own this Disney plate. I bought it in 1998 for $3 at a thrift store in Winterset, Iowa. Winterset is a special town for me as it was my Dad's birthplace along with John Wayne's and the setting for The Bridges of Madison County. What an incredible memory evoker!
Okay, a half full bottle of perfume. What a weird find in an antique store. For me, it stopped me in my tracks. Scents are a powerful thing. This one is the olfactory delight Steve fell in love with when he fell in love with me. Calvin Klein released Obsession in 1985, and it became a huge success. He said he wanted Obsession to be "direct, sensuous, provocative" and to represent his feelings about women. The advertising tagline line was "There are many loves but there is only one Obsession!" No, I didn't buy it and actually, I couldn't even get it to spray to see if it held its same power but oh my, what a memory. It was the ideal conclusion to our day.

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Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown... An Exhibit

How could I resist this at the Temecula Valley Museum?

For millions of Americans, it really isn’t Christmas until they have watched A Charlie Brown Christmas at least once! This seasonal exhibition examines the making of this animated classic and celebrates the anticipation, joy, and pitfalls of the holiday season in 50 framed and matted Peanuts daily and Sunday comic strips.
This exhibition, Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown, consists of high-quality digital reproductions of Charles M. Schulz’s original Peanuts strips with thematic graphics, an introductory panel, and a biographical panel about Charles Schulz that includes photographs of Schulz family celebrations. Also included are the DVD program, “The Making of A Charlie Brown Christmas,” didactic panels with photographs, and artifacts related to the making of the holiday classic. In addition, the exhibition contains vintage three-dimensional Peanuts-themed seasonal novelties, including several from the exclusive Determined Productions, Inc. collection.

Charles Schulz addressed most aspects of the holiday season, from the sometimes less-than-sincere letters to Santa to the post-Christmas blues, with his trademark wit and whimsy, allowing the rest of us to recognize and laugh at some of our holiday rituals and foibles. However, not all of Schulz's holiday strips are tongue-in-cheek. In several strips he brings a child's wonder, innocence, and sincerity to the Christmas story. In Schulz's life, the Christmas season meant spending time with loved ones the more the merrier. One more at the table was always fine with him! All the anticipation, joy, and pitfalls of the holiday season are creatively reflected in the Peanuts strips selected for this exhibition. We delighted in reading them all, with giggles abounding.

In the spring of 1965, independent film producer Lee Mendelson was desperately trying to find a sponsor to televise an earlier documentary that he had produced, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, which chronicled a typical day in Charles Schulz's life. When Mendelson did find a sponsor, Coca-Cola, they were more interested in an animated Peanuts special for the upcoming Christmas season than they were in a documentary. As any intrepid producer would do, when Mendelson got a call from Coca- Cola's agent on Wednesday asking for an outline for an animated holiday special by Monday, he said something along the lines of "no problem."

Mendelson made a hurried telephone call to Schulz and the very next day the two of them, along with animator Bill Melendez, developed the concept of and completed the outline for A Charlie Brown Christmas, in what must be a record for a single day's effort! They agreed on a handful of core elements that included: winter scenes with snow and ice skating, a school play, a scene to be read from the Bible, and a soundtrack combining jazz and traditional music. The outline was finally approved by Coca-Cola after what seemed like three very long weeks. That left only six short months to produce what would become one of the best loved specials of all time. Interestingly, it was the first animated film to use child actors for the characters' voices. It surprised me that it had never been done. The only adult voice was that of Snoopy. Wild.
I loved this. Coca-Cola received hundreds of fan letters praising A Charlie Brown Christmas which they assembled into a scrapbook and presented to Schulz. It is interesting to note in these letters that some of the things that concerned people then: the commercialization of Christmas, the crudeness of advertisements, and the quality of television programming, still concern many people almost 60 years later.
One gentleman wrote," Dear Sir: The half hour spent last night watching "Charlie Brown's Christmas" was the most enjoyable and memorable I have ever spent. Charlie Brown's Christmas is destined to become a classic, looked forward to yearly the same as White Christmas and Dicken's Christmas Carol. The handling of the delicate transition from the pure entertainment to the poignant message was beautiful. I will be looking forward to next year's presentation. Yours truly."







After 50 years of creating the Peanuts comic strip, Charles Schulz officially retired in December 1999. For many years prior, he repeatedly stated that the strip would retire with him. Prophetically, Schulz died in his sleep on February 12, 2000, just hours before his last original strip appeared in the Sunday newspapers. Just writing this makes me teary.

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