| Fountain Family Group | |
|---|---|
 Sculpture and fountain (photographed 1995) | |
| Artist | Richard H. Ellis |
| Year | 1969 |
| Medium | Bronze sculpture |
| Location | Hilbert Museum of California Art, Orange, California, U.S. |
Fountain Family Group, sometimes called Nuclear Family, [1] is a 1969 bronze sculpture and fountain by Richard H. Ellis, formerly installed along Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, California.
The artwork features four figures: a father, a mother, a boy, and a girl. The original location of the fountain and bronze was the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and 26th Street in Santa Monica, with a street address of 2600 Wilshire Blvd. [2]
The 8 ft (2.4 m) tall [3] sculpture was installed in 1969 at one of Howard Ahmanson Sr.’s richly decorated Home Savings of America branches, along with a mosaic mural called Pleasures Along the Beach by Millard Sheets. [4] The Millard Sheets Studio hired Ellis several times. Ellis created statues for five Home Savings branches, all on family themes. [4] [5]
Family was surveyed by the Smithsonian Institution's Save Outdoor Sculpture! program in 1995. [6]
The fountain and mural at the former Santa Monica branch were relocated to the Hilbert Museum of California Art in Orange, California in 2019, along with a third piece from the building, John Edward Svenson's cast bronze Child on a Dolphin. [7] [8] Family and Dolphin will be installed in the museum's California native plant garden when it reopens after expansion in 2023; the Sheets mosaic will be installed on the facade of the museum building. [1]
The original building also featured stained glass windows by Susan Hertel; they were removed and put into storage in 2021. [9]
Arenson, Adam (2018). Banking on beauty : Millard Sheets and midcentury commercial architecture in California. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-1-4773-1529-3. OCLC 986993216.
Robert Graham was a Mexican-born American sculptor based in the state of California in the United States. His monumental bronzes commemorate the human figure, and are featured in public places across America.
The Third Street Promenade is a pedestrian mall esplanade, shopping, dining and entertainment complex in the downtown area of Santa Monica, California which originally opened as the Santa Monica Mall on November 8, 1965. It is considered a premier shopping and dining district on the Westside and draws crowds from all over the Greater Los Angeles area. Due to easy access to Downtown Los Angeles via the Big Blue Bus rapid transit service, E Line's terminus station and the Pacific Coast Highway-Santa Monica Freeway Interstate, the neighborhood's north-south thoroughfares connecting to Muscle Beach, Venice Canal Historic District, Marina del Rey, Ballona Wetlands and Los Angeles International Airport, and its proximity to historic U.S. Route 66, Santa Monica Pier, Palisades Park, Tongva Park, Santa Monica State Beach and the Pacific Ocean coupled with Los Angeles's mild mediterranean climate, it is also a popular tourist destination.
Wilshire/Western station is an underground rapid transit station on the D Line of the Los Angeles Metro Rail system. It is located under Wilshire Boulevard at Western Avenue, after which the station is named, in the Mid-Wilshire and Koreatown districts of Los Angeles. It is the current western terminus of the D Line.
Wilshire Boulevard ('wɪɫ.ʃɚ) is a prominent 15.83 mi (25.48 km) boulevard in the Los Angeles area of Southern California, extending from Ocean Avenue in the city of Santa Monica east to Grand Avenue in the Financial District of downtown Los Angeles. One of the principal east-west arterial roads of Los Angeles, it is also one of the major city streets through the city of Beverly Hills. Wilshire Boulevard runs roughly parallel with Santa Monica Boulevard from Santa Monica to the west boundary of Beverly Hills. From the east boundary it runs a block south of Sixth Street to its terminus.
Millard Owen Sheets was an American artist, teacher, and architectural designer. He was one of the earliest of the California Scene Painting artists and helped define the art movement. Many of his large-scale building-mounted mosaics from the mid-20th century are still extant in Southern California. His paintings are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Chicago Art Institute, the National Gallery in Washington D.C.; and the Los Angeles County Museum.
Jack Zajac is a Californian West Coast artist who has been concerned with the “Romantic Surrealist tradition”.
The Electric Fountain is a water fountain with public art sculptures and evening lighting, surrounded by mosaic pavement, seating, and landscaping. It is located in Beverly Gardens Park on the corner of Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards in Beverly Hills, California.
Beverly Gardens Park is a public park in Beverly Hills, California.
Christian Petersen (1885–1961) was a Danish-born American sculptor and university teacher. He was the first permanent artist in residence at a U.S. college or university, and he is noted for the large body of sculpture associated with a single place, Iowa State College, now Iowa State University.
Brooks + Scarpa is an American architectural firm based in Los Angeles, California, and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA. Angela Brooks and Lawrence Scarpa are the recipients of the 2022 American Institute of Architect Gold Medal, the institute's highest honor. The firm was also chosen as the 2014 Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Award Winner in Architecture. In 2010 they were the recipient of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Firm Award. Los Angeles projects completed by the firm include the Solar Umbrella home in Venice, California, the Orange Grove lofts in West Hollywood and the Colorado housing project in Santa Monica.
Urban Light (2008) is a large-scale assemblage sculpture by Chris Burden located at the Wilshire Boulevard entrance to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The 2008 installation consists of restored street lamps from the 1920s and 1930s. Most of them once lit the streets of Southern California.
Lawrence Tenney Stevens (1896-1972) was an American sculptor who was one of the progenitors of the "Cowboy High Style" movement in western American art and furniture. He created large allegorical figures and stylized depictions of the American west.
May Sun is a Los Angeles-based artist known primarily for her public art projects. Sun works in the mediums of sculpture, mixed media, photography and installation. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She was born in Shanghai, China, moved to Hong Kong at the age of two with her family and immigrated to the United States in 1971 to attend the University of San Diego. "May Sun often refers to aspects of her Chinese heritage in her work, which consistently crosses cultural and political boundaries as well as the boundaries traditionally separating art forms and disciplines."
The American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) is an art museum for ceramic art, located in Pomona, California. Founded in 2003 as a nonprofit organization, the museum exhibits historic and contemporary ceramic artwork from both its permanent collection of 10,000 objects and through temporary rotating exhibitions.
William Tunberg is an American artist specializing in marquetry, sculpture, drawing and assemblage (art). He lives and works in Venice, California.
Pomona Mall was a pedestrian mall in Downtown Pomona, California, recognized by the Los Angeles Conservancy as an outstanding example of Mid-century modern and modern architecture and design. It was completed in 1962 and designed by Millard Sheets. It had been in the planning for five years, one element in a larger plan of civic improvements covering the whole city.
The Hilbert Museum of California Art is a U.S. museum located at Chapman University in Orange, California. The museum's collection consists of more than 1,000 paintings – primarily watercolors and oil paintings by artists of the California Scene Painting movement.
Santa Monica is an Art Deco sculpture by Eugene Morahan (1869–1949) installed in Santa Monica's Palisades Park, overlooking the Pacific Ocean in California.
Eugene H. Morahan was an American sculptor.
