You might be asking yourself, "When did Denise's blog become so art-centric?" It does seem that we've been hitting museums and galleries often, as of late. This is my last art post, at least for a few days. This one is an exceptional one, however!

Interestingly, we were there with Lynne and Scott (far left) who are also good friends with Carol and Mark. Their friends, Linda and Scott also joined in. Okay, so the last time we saw Linda and Scott was at Disneyland in 2009. It was another long overdue reunion. Do you see why I love museums so much? They really do bring people together.

As pictured above, this mosaic Pleasures Along the Beach (1969), by renowned California artist Millard Sheets, was once at home in Santa Monica. Their loss is our gain. It is an incredible greeting to what is now Orange County's biggest art museum and home to one of the world’s largest collections of California narrative art.

I was beyond excited to learn more about the artist by studying the exhibit, Millard Sheets: California Master. "Perhaps the most celebrated of California 20th-century artists, Millard Sheets (1907-1989) could do it all: painter, muralist, mosaicist, designer and teacher. His work is represented here by a selection of 40 original paintings." We actually learned of him when we were admiring one of his mosaics in Redlands.

One of my favorites of Mr. Sheets' masterpieces was this 1935 watercolor, Grocery Interior. Look at the incredible detail. Wow.

I appreciated the write up attached, "Painted during the Great Depression, this elegant watercolor shows the interior of a modest, local, privately owned grocery store. The shop is small and has a limited variety of products, vegetables and fruits. Here, the customer is very likely dealing with the owner of the store."

One doesn't necessarily expect a history lesson at an art museum but we received one with The Hale and Norcross Mine (1933). "Founded in 1859, the Hale and Norcross mine was a silver and gold mine in Nevada's rich Comstock mining district. Many people had invested in it when it first started operating, but it became infamous when a California Supreme Court decision of 1895 found the owners and managers guilty of diverting millions of dollars for their own benefit. One of the unfortunate investors was Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain."

I learned so much about this artist I already admired. Hawaiian Waterfall told us about his various other jobs. "With In 1950, Sheets was hired to teach art at the University of Hawaii. He moved his entire family to a home he rented on the Kona Coast on the Big Island of Hawaii, where they lived for one year. He painted many Hawaiian scenes which were used on advertising posters for United Airlines."

And what was he doing later in his career? "By the 1960s and 1970s, Sheets had become one of America's most popular artists. In addition to his own vast artistic output, he produced murals, architectural plans and various images for advertising. The Capitol Building at Night is from a large series of images of American cities produced for United Airlines calendars and prints."

I discovered so much about Millard Sheets. I am now an even bigger fan.

How could I miss the exhibit A Matter of Style: Modernism in California Art? "The groundbreaking impact of Modernism on the California art in the 20th century, with works from Agnes Pelton, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Roger Kuntz, Helen Lundeberg, Conrad Buff and others."

This work, Amateurs (1937) by Paul Landacre blew me away. This is a wood engraving. Anyone who has ever tried this medium knows how difficult it is.

Look at Mr. Landacre's details. Wow.

We learned about Rex Brandt when we were at the Sherman Library. There was just something about his Surfriders (1959) that appealed to me. "'I saw red'...'he felt blue'...'she was green with envy.' Such popular statements remind us that colors associate with feeling and can therefore be used to convey emotion." Mr. Brandt said, "Regarding the Surfrider painting, the Southern California beach subject matter is geometrically simplified and juxtaposed on a golden, sun-filled background. It reflects more of what I feel than what I see."

Another one of those paintings rich in texture (and somewhat familiar) is Conrad Buff's oil painting Big Pine Creek, Palisade Glacier, Eastern Sierras.

We barely scratched the surface of the California Art from The Permanent Collection. "Eight galleries in the North Wing is dedicated to showcasing the vast variety of oil and watercolor paintings, prints and drawings in The Hilbert Collection, from the late 1800s through today."

I had to laugh when I looked closely at The Barefoot Sixties, Enrico's San Francisco (1968).

The name and date are discretely affixed to the frame with red embossing tape made by using a Dymo handheld plastic embossing labeler. What induced a chuckle is that Steve's grandma, a talented and prolific painter, labeled all of her paintings this way. Steve's Mom still has them and has never removed the embossing tape. I have never seen this before until today. Wild.

"Henrietta Berk's work was also collected by many celebrities, including Julie Andrews, Kim Novak and Edward G. Robinson. One of her paintings (which now hangs in the U.S. Embassy in Peru) appeared in the 1967 hit movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Some have speculated that this painting may depict a youthful Jackie and John F. Kennedy enjoying a picnic. Certainly the timeframe (early 1960s) is right, although no documentary evidence has been found to prove that was Berk's intention. What do you think?"

One of my favorites was the exhibit of antique radios. “When I was a kid, my parents had an appliance store in Pasadena,” said Mark Hilbert. “And one of my first jobs was just to take [radios] out of a box and put a price tag on them to put them on the shelf. And I started to look at these radios and started thinking, ‘Gee, these are some really interesting designs.’ And later, we come and find out that these radio companies hired some of the greatest designers available to design the cabinets and create special plastics for these radios.”

I was partial to the 1935 Sparton Nocturne, created by designer Walter Dorwin Teague. It cost $350 when it made its debut ($7,800 in today's dollars). WOW.

I ran out of time to see the room of Norman Rockwell's but I did briefly pop in to see this Navajo Eye Dazzler Blanket c. 1875. Oh man, we have to return to the Hilbert soon!

I felt nostalgia while viewing Same Place, Another Time: Views of Orange County. "Since the early 20th century, Orange County has been a favorite location for artists to portray, from its shorelines and beaches to its farmland, towns and cities. These paintings showcase the beauty and cultural shifts of OC."

Laguna Beach, Irvine, and Newport were captured beautifully. Ah, my old stomping grounds.