Los Rios - Oak Glen

Watercolor Class

Because watercolor actually moves on the paper, it is the most active of all mediums, almost a performance art. -Nita Engle

Watercolor, with all its subtle color and value gradations and its many welcome surprises, is the perfect medium for capturing mood. -Ray Hendershot

Watercolor is like life. Better get it right the first time – you don't get a second chance! -Sergei Bongart

Tour of Beverly Hills

El Matador State Beach in Fall

Tongva Park

The park was named in honor of a group of Santa Monica’s earliest inhabitants, the Tongva tribe.

The Tongva people lived in the Santa Monica area hundreds of years ago, well before the first non-indigenous inhabitants occupied the area about 250 years ago.

According to the City Hall, about 1,500 people currently identify themselves as Tongva people.

Santa Monica Community and Cultural Services Director Karen Ginsberg said Tongva Park was designed to recollect an arroyo.

“If you think about an arroyo with a source of water and native and indigenous grasses and topography – that’s kind of the essence of the park,” Ginsberg said.

The park is divided into four areas:

• Garden Hill is defined by a series of seating alcoves and intimate display gardens that showcase a seasonally dynamic, native, and appropriately adapted Southern California plant palette;

• Discovery Hill is a play space for children, offering a range of discovery experiences and settings with hill slides, a music wall, play elements, water feature, and forts embedded into a lush and shaded landscape;

• Observation Hill reaches a height of 18 feet, offering the best views of the ocean and neighboring vicinity, and includes overlooks, a bridge, and public restroom tucked under the hill;

• Gathering Hill provides open space for congregation and relaxation including a large multi-purpose lawn, seating terraces, and an informal picnic area.

Among the most unique features in the park are shell-like overlooks along Ocean Avenue that are perched on top of the tallest of the park’s hills to frame iconic views and vistas of Santa Monica and the ocean.

Another is a sculpture named Weather Field No. 1. Created by artist Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, it is a grid of tall stainless poles with weather vanes and anemometers located on a berm of meadow grasses.

The total cost for design and construction of Tongva Park and Ken Genser Square (still under construction directly in front of City Hall) was $42.3 million – coming in under the allotted budget of $49 million.

James Corner described the project as “creating a new heart for Santa Monica – a new destination and gathering place of great social, ecological, and symbolic value.”

“We have sculpted a dramatic topography of hills and hollows and incorporated a very large number of native plant species to create a spectacular horticultural garden, replete with generous furnishing, water fountains, play elements, and activity areas,” Corner said.

Source: Santa Monica Mirror

Rendezvous Court Biltmore Hotel

The Rendezvous Court, once the hotel's lobby but now used primarily for afternoon tea, is decorated with a Moorish Revival styled plaster ceiling painted with 24 Carat Gold accents, two original imported Italian chandeliers from 1923, and a grand Spanish Baroque Revival bronze doorway, whose astrological clock still keeps time today. Two figures appear on the stairwell front—on the left is the Roman goddess of agriculture Ceres, while on the right is the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa. 

Crystal Ballroom Biltmore Hotel

The frescoed mural ceilings in the Crystal Ballroom were hand painted in 1922 by Italian artist Giovanni Smeraldi, known for his work in the Vatican and the White House. 

Smeraldi and his team famously painted the ballroom's colorful, seamless fresco over a period of seven months, decorating it with figures of Greek and Roman gods, angels, cupids and other mythological creatures. 

It was meticulously restored in the 1980s by Smeraldi's apprentice, Anthony Heinsbergen.

 The imported Austrian crystal chandeliers that adorn it are 12 feet (3.7 m) in diameter.

The Los Angeles Biltmore is known for being an early home to the Academy Award Ceremony for the Oscars. 

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded at a luncheon banquet in the Crystal Ballroom in May 1927, when guests such as Louis B. Mayer met to discuss plans for the new organization and presenting achievement awards to colleagues in their industry. 

Legend has it that MGM art director Cedric Gibbons, who was in attendance, immediately grabbed a linen Biltmore napkin and sketched the design for the Oscar statue on it. 

Eight Oscar ceremonies were held in the Biltmore Bowl during the Academy's early years of 1931, 1935–39, and 1941-42.

 In 1977 Bob Hope hosted the Academy's 50th Anniversary banquet in the same room.