It’s Always Tiki Time Somewhere at the Catalina Museum for Art and History

Posted on by Diversions LA

Serving as a truly beautiful adjunct to the Catalina Museum for Art and History’s permanent collection, now through September 3rd, visitors to Catalina Island can enjoy the transporting exhibition Tall Tiki Tales. Curated by author, tiki scholar, and cinematographer Sven Kirsten, the widely encompassing show includes artifacts from films shot on the island, dining spots, and resorts, as well as and original books and artwork that enhance the understanding of a cultural phenomenae that shaped tastes and traditions – as well as wildly fun beverages – both on and off Catalina.

Frequently serving as a film set that helped to popularize tiki as an art form, Catalina has a rich history in the development of America’s happy obsession with all things tiki, including the bars and restaurants that grew nationwide during the 1930s.

A highlight of the well-curated exhibition is an interactive one – visitors can sit down at a cozy table in a replica tiki bar to experience a unique design by master tiki bar designer Bamboo Ben. Viewers are transported to a blissful paradise with the sound of pattering rain upon sitting down. The only thing missing is a classic beverage.

According to Johnny Sampson, the museum’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Catalina Island served as a major film set for movie adaptations of works such as Nordhoff and Hall’s Bounty Trilogy and The Hurricane, W. Somerset Maugham’s short story “Rain” and The Ebb Tide by Robert Louis Stephenson. “Hollywood quickly adapted these and other stories into movies, using Catalina Island as an accessible backlot for far away South Seas locales…we had Christian’s Hut from the set of Mutiny on the Bounty, the Chi Chi Club at the Isthmus and in Avalon, Hotel Waikiki, and Hurricane Cove—which even had lighting effects and fans to recreate the thrill of Hurricane for its patrons.”

The fascinating mix of photographs, original art, and collector’s items – as well as the one-of-a-kind tiki hut immersive experience, beautifully support another look at the island’s past, a stellar permanent historical collection touching on other areas of Catalina life, including other film shoots, Chicago Cubs memorabilia, a wide ranging survey of Catalina pottery and tile, and a collection of photographs, negatives, and films documenting island life from the early 1880s to the present.

Viewers will also observe early phone switchboards, the evolution of transportation from the mainland, sport fishing items, and a wonderful collection of Tongva and Gabrielino artifacts. The fine art collection includes photography, plein air painting, contemporary sculpture, and examples of architectural and graphic design.

Combined with Tiki Tales, viewers will find an absolute treasure trove of art and history, as the museum continues to live up to its name with deep dives into island life and vibrant, intelligent art exhibitions.

And, if Tiki Tales made you thirsty or hungry, there’s a quick solution for that. Walk on down Crescent street to Luau Larry’s. The indoor  thatched roof hut and bamboo walls and delightfully kitschy ocean-themed paintings and murals here are even joined by an historic tiki wood carving, hanging above the booth we choose to sit in, a happy coincidence.

We enjoyed  vibrantly colored Polynesian- style cocktails – a bright Blue Hawaiian and the bar’s signature tiki drink, a Wiki Wacker with Cruzan aged light rum, Parrott brand, pineapple/orange juice and grenadine. The latter comes with imbibers’ choice of straw hat or bumper sticker. The food was fine too –  fresh, savory popcorn scallops and shrimp, a well-seasoned, fresh poke, and a first-rate seared ahi platter served with ginger, wasabi, soy sauce, and a nicely sweet, crisp cole slaw.

Currently, the Catalina Island Company is offering a terrific getaway – the Tall Tiki Tales package, that combines a hotel stay at the beautifully updated Hotel Atwater and a boat ride to Catalina – we had the pleasure of traveling from Long Beach via Catalina Express,  a safe, swift, and beautiful passage across the blue Pacific, arriving with a great view of the historic Casino building upon arrival in Avalon Harbor. We experienced the journey two ways – indoors in the comfortable Commodore Lounge, replete with a glass of Brut Chandon, and outdoors, with the wind whipping our hair and an eye trained on pelicans on a long flight.

In an upcoming article, our stay at the Hotel Atwater, a look at the in-depth Behind the Scenes casino tour, and additional dining experiences. For now, go experience a few Tiki Tales at the Catalina Museum for Art and History – and then raise a toast to the exhibition at Luau Larry’s.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis and provided from the museum’s collection

 

Magnificent Nature is Monumentally Fragile in Palm Desert

Posted on by Diversions LA

The natural beauty of the desert is art in itself.  A recent weekend viewing these desert vistas, the exhibitions at Desert X, and the gorgeous luminescence of Phillip K. Smith’s work at the Palm Springs Art Museum – both exhibitions up through May 5th – was richly rewarding. Both exhibitions will be featured in a separate pictorial essay here in coming weeks.

But the biggest art standout of all was an exhibition that spoke to those desert vistas, the mountains behind them, the fecund forests, natural landscapes far and near. Monumentally Fragile at the Walter N. Marks Center for the Arts in Palm Desert offered the most resonant of all the exhibitions viewed on this trip to the desert, memorable images with a dream-like lingering in the eye and heart. The three-gallery space was curated by StartUp curatorial founder Ray Beldner, and featured three different artists, each with a single room to present large scale, but yes, delicate, individual exhibitions.

These intricate paper works were each entirely unique, but taken as a whole, vibrated with even greater meaning. Here is nature in all her wonder, in her own precarious state, given humankind’s rampant disregard for preserving her.  Using fragile materials to create images of an environment that we should all strive to protect is an inspired idea; carefully, gently, and pointedly positing the importance of our stewardship. Having recently curated an exhibition in Los Angeles about climate change, Leaving Eden, I was excited to see work that spoke to the same precious fragility of nature.

The works in Monumentally Fragile are as magnificient as nature herself.  Catherine Ruane, who lives in the desert’s Morongo Valley, has created a series of emotionally moving smaller circular works, arrayed in a pattern around a larger circular work. Here are yuccas and Joshua Trees, night sky and its constellations, each so perfectly rendered in the artist’s signature monochrome use of pencil and charcoal that their intricate beauty brings tears. On an opposite wall, Ruane adds walnut ink to her coloration, depicting leaves and flowers with an even more wistful cast, as if they were relics from a distant time. The centerpiece of the exhibition, however, is her vast General Sherman tree, a nearly life-size paper cut out of a tree with  delicate drawn leaves and branches shaping a mesmerizing, even ethereal, creation. These pieces ache with life and light.

David Tomb of Marin, Calif., creates in full color, shaping wonderfully sweet and fairy-tale-like forests of voluptuous green, flowering plants, and animals to frolic and fly through this world.  Reminding the viewer of a wondrous jungle, within this amazing world bright blue, yellow, and orange butterlies and golden-beaked birds are joined by shadow-casting, dimensional sparrows suspended in flight.  Dimensional vivid green plants spring from the ground. Tomb’s lustrous work is like a stage set for the senses, poetic, wild, and adventurous.

Holly Wong of San Francisco fills the center of her gallery with brightly colored abstract shapes, reminiscent of both flowers and mosaics, of woven lace and cacti, undersea coral and tangled vines. On the walls, smaller pieces of mixed media also evoke sea life, with a rich and opalescent cast and tangled strands of netting and fiber. Hers is mutable moonscape of nature,  mysterious and fascinating, a tapestry of colors and movement.

All three artists have created work that is beautiful and carefully wrought, special works that reveal sensuous, solemn, grand, and perfect nature in all her wonder and all her valuable, vibrant, easy to break, glory. While the exhibition has closed in person, the works can be viewed online, by clicking on each image. Take care of nature – and watch out for the blissful work of these three artists.

  • Genie Davis, photos by Genie Davis