Sunday in Palm Springs!

One of our favorite day escapes is to Palm Springs. Combine it with a friend's birthday and it becomes even more enchanting!

Our first stop tends to be koffi. There are several of these coffee shops in town but only the North koffi, in the Uptown Design District, offers a lush oasis in which to savor one's beverage while in the desert sunshine! From our door to its welcoming store front is only 63 miles. It is so worth the drive.
Our destination was the Riviera and meeting up with Brady and family for her actual birthday. This was our third visit to this iconic hotel. Original architect and visionary, Irwin Schuman, fashioned the resort after major Vegas hotels like The Sands, The Flamingo, and The Stardust. Opening in 1959, this resort immediately became the go-to hot spot for celebrities and sophisticates like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, who would lounge by the pool and in the Presidential Suite.
Elvis Presley was a frequent visitor at here and sought both refuge and rehearsal space in the Mediterranean Room for his band before leaving for tours and shows in Las Vegas. It was the only hotel in the United States, at the time, to be built in a spoke wheel layout, a unique design which would fit into the psychedelic culture of the 60s because of its communal shape. Groovy, indeed.
We began our celebrating at the pool.



A must stop was the home made most famous by one of its guests. The House of Tomorrow is a mid-century modern home by architect William Krisel. It was originally designed as a family home for Robert and Helene Alexander, but became famous after Elvis and Priscilla Presley honeymooned there in 1967. It features four circular pods, a boomerang-shaped roof, and state-of-the-art electronics.
My goal is to one day tour the interior... one day!
After lunch at Elmer's, another MUST, we headed to the Palm Springs Art Museum for their free and quite fabulous FAMILY+. "Presented as part of our Public Programming offerings, every third Sunday of the month artists, creatives, makers, and musicians will produce activities and workshops throughout the museum. Families, friends, and all are welcome."


We were offered numerous opportunities in which to create and all were very unique.
Some of those opportunities were nostalgic! Who didn't make sun prints as kids? By placing objects on special paper and exposing the paper to sunlight, early photographers created blue images, called cyanotypes or sun prints. We were given a table full of things in which to craft our own masterpieces.

With a spirited six year old in tow, the Yoga, Breathing, and Movement was the place for Brady.

Another creativity opportunity involved the moiré effect, an optical illusion that occurs when two repetitive patterns overlap or are misaligned, creating an unwanted (or is it artistic?) visual pattern. It can appear as wavy lines, stripes, or rainbow patterns that aren't part of the original image. We were asked to watch the effect that was on a video screen and create a work of art from it. I couldn't quite grasp it but this artist/quantum physicist could. I loved how organic his piece was. Very cool.

We only did a cursory explore of the exhibits because Steve and I will be back next month with more time to ogle it all. We did hit on some highlights, however. 
I wrote of the artist, Viola Frey, in January after seeing a lecture about her. I like her stuff!

It is always an amazing day when one has the chance to gaze at a wall of Henri Matisse. I look forward to being able to appreciate all his works with more time.

I think Brady will remember her birthday fondly. I'm so happy we were able to help her celebrate with such diverse delights! I 💚 Palm Springs.

"Good art is art that allows you to enter it from a variety of angles
and to emerge with a variety of views."
-Mary Schmich

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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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