This past weekend, my extended family all packed our bags and headed to Palos Verdes. We stayed one night at Terranea, a Mediterranean-style, oceanfront resort. It was my first time staying there. My sister, Grace, recommended the place, she had come a few weeks earlier for a staycation of her own with just her family. We had an amazing time, the kids loved playing in the pool (they have four) and hiking to the beach. At one of the pools, there was a fast slide, for the older kids, and a splash pad for the younger ones. When we first got there, the husbands all changed into their swimsuits and headed to the adult only pool and spa. My favorite part? On Monday morning, I enjoyed a (free!) morning yoga session with my sisters.
We were suppose to stay in three separate rooms, one for each family, but at check-in Grace asked for an upgrade. Luckily, they obliged and we got placed in a three bedroom villa. (Score!) The villa had a huge kitchen, three big bedrooms and three bathrooms. The best part was that the kids got to maximize their time with each other.
The only bad thing about this place was that the main pool was packed. Apparently lots of people had the same idea as us, staying at a resort on Labor Day weekend. Otherwise, it was the perfect trip! Compared to Pelican Hill in OC, Terranea’s villa was about 25% bigger and the grounds at Terranea are huge. Unfortunately, the “beach” is too rocky, you can’t really play in the waves. You walk there just to enjoy the view or check out the large sea cave.
This place is great if you’re looking for a beachfront staycation in Los Angeles. You have a lot of options in south OC (Montage, Pelican Hill, Ritz Carlton), this is one of the only ones in Los Angeles.
Now here are some pictures.
As we were waiting to check-in, I gathered some of the kids together. Hunter, my niece’s dog, came along, too! (They are a pet friendly property, you just have to pay a fee.)
Palos Verdes is a full 1 and 1/2 hour drive from our place. Logan slept all the way so was a little drowsy when we got there.
The best thing about the resort is that it’s oceanfront. The views are spectacular.
Check-in is at 4pm but our villa was already by the time we finished lunch. We ate at Nelson’s, one of the restaurants on the hotel’s grounds. It was a bit pricey but everything was tasty.
After lunch, we hung out on the grounds. These are the two oldest kids, Evan and Berry, checking out the view. It’s cute how they stick together.
Sam couldn’t help but sneak some bunny ears on my nephew, Evan.
We checked into our villa and my sister, Grace, relaxed with Hunter on the couch.
My poor nephew, Riverton, was sick. He was a trooper to still come along.
The hotel’s grounds are really beautiful. There’s a lot of walking from place to place, or you can take one of the hotel’s shuttles. Here, Parker was excited to go to the pool.
These are my three nephews warming up by the fireplace after taking a dip in the pool. Some of the kids were roasting marshmallows. Nearby, they were playing Big Hero 6 on an inflatable outdoor screen. We didn’t watch but I thought it was a nice touch.
After the pool, we hiked to a really cool cove.
My kids were a little too young to hike into the sea cave but the older kids did. That’s my nephew, Bobby, coming out of the cave.
Sammy took Logan down to touch the water.
My brother-in-law, Keith, sweetly held Parker and took him down, too.
This is one of my favorite pictures. My nephew, Evan, loves horsing around with Parker. It’s cute how they play.
Who needs toys? We put the living room couches together and Parker would jump from one of the ledges into his cousins’ arms.
Our friends, Kat and Kevin, also came along. Here’s Kat next to my sister, Grace, and their dog Hunter.
Kat and Kevin let me take a picture of them kissing. I love how the cabana perfectly frames them.
The boys loved the fast slide! Check out the expression on my nephew, Grayson’s, face.
At the pool, Berry, my niece, gave Hunter a sweet kiss on the head.
After we put the kids to bed, the adults stayed up all night chatting away. It was a little hard for Sam to get up the next morning. Here’s Logan giving him a wake-up cuddle.
This year, Philippines-based illustrator Kerby Rosanes decided to create an amazing new series that fuses geometric shapes with animals. Rosanes is known for his wild doodles that fill up whole pages of his sketchbook. This series, called Geometric Beasts, consists of illustrations that are more precise, half of an image resembles a normal looking animal and the other half consists of sharp, triangular shapes.
What does the series mean to him?
He states, “Each piece is my take on breaking away from societal norms and just be who we truly are as unique individuals. I grew up in a community (and probably most people are) where your value as a person is based on various metrics and calculations just for you to qualify in a society that other people dictates you to be in. This ‘measured’ life deprives us to take risks, to follow our passions and to do what we truly love.
“I use geometry to symbolize the norms and simply because it’s the only math subject I enjoyed at school (lol). I always love drawing animals and in this case, they represent the concept of unleashing the ‘beast’ within us – risk taker, wild and adventurous.”
As you may know, one of my very favorite artists of all time is Audrey Kawasaki. (Inside my home, Audrey Kawasaki, Stella Im Hultberg and Amy Sol paintings all hang on my walls.) Audrey has the ability to paint the female form in this innocent yet sultry way. She just released her latest piece and it’s absolutely gorgeous! Called “Lush,” the painting was created for the Suggestivism:Resonance exhibition at Spoke Art gallery in San Francisco. The show opens tonight and will run until September 24. More works in this exhibition will be released tomorrow, Friday, September 2nd. Can’t wait!
One of my all-time favorite pieces of street art is this giant mural by Poland-based artist Natalia Rak. In it, a young girl is holding a painted watering can above a real life tree. To me, this is the creme of the crop when it comes to street art. While many street artists paint murals on walls with no particular meaning, there are a select few who really study the urban environment and create works that cleverly interact with the real life objects around them. (Ernest Zacharevic is a genius at this.)
Today, I was pleased to to come across the works of Alex Face, a well-known graffiti artist in Thailand. Face wanders the streets and alleys of Bangkok looking for the perfect building he can use as his canvas. In many of his pieces, you can’t quite tell where his works begin. Are you looking at real life props like wires, branches and leaves or did Face draw them in?
One of my favorite pieces is the one he created with first graders at a local elementary school. The messy, spray-painted scribbles are the perfect backdrop for Face’s funny baby. Speaking of baby, what led him to center all of his work around an adorable toddler? According to Widewalls, the baby idea was inspired by the birth of his own daughter. He draws the baby with a third eye because, “I believe in the spirit, that is how I grew up, I feel the spirit” he says. The third eye in his drawings represents another dimension “it’s something that we can feel but can’t see with two eyes so I add the third eye which can see what we can’t”.
I’ll always have a place in my heart for street art, of course no one comes to Banksy but Ernest Zacharevic, Os Gemeos, Etam Cru, and Seth Wall are all up there for me as well. One artist that has popped up on my radar recently is Amanda “Mando” Marie. The Colorado-based painter is known for her eye-catching stencils that are made with acrylic and aerosol and displayed as murals or as paintings on canvas or paper.
There’s a unifying theme to her work, her paintings often consist of children playing or floating in the air. Though some have described her work as “nostalgic storybook-like imagery that is at once playful and ominous,” I don’t understand that feeling of darkness. Marie’s works are inspired by vintage 1940s “Little Golden Book” era illustrations and there’s a recurring visual theme of “twinning” imagery, or a repetition of a child to create doubles. I love the paintings where she creates stars in the children’s eyes, they create a magical mood. Also, notice how gigantic Marie’s murals can be. If you look closely, in the first picture, you can see the artist working on the piece. She looks tiny!
Currently, my favorite art gallery, Thinkspace in Culver City is showing a collection of the artist’s work. You can see them from now through September 10. Marie also contributed a mural piece to this year’s POW! WOW! Antelope Valley, and is featured in the Lancaster Museum of Art and History’s show The New Vanguard, on view from August 13 to October 30.
How I’d love to collect her work!
Here are some paintings by Amanda “Mando” Marie that I enjoyed, too.
“A place with mysterious lights spread out over a Word Heritage Site forest.” One of my favorite art collectives, teamlab, is up to it again, this time bathing a Japanese forest in a rainbow of lights. Near Shimogamo Shrine, they present Resonating Trees, colored lights that shine on individual plants before subtly fading away. As visitors or animals approach the trees, the lights change color and a musical tone emits from the forest. This satisfies both my love for art and rainbows. See it in action by watching the video, below. This breathtaking installation can be seen from now through August 31, 2016.
While most people visit museums and just enjoy the art, Karin Jurick is studying the whole scene. She takes out her camera and captures pictures of museum patrons engrossed in art and then goes back to her studio to paint both the art and the visitor, or as she describes it, “moments in time, people just doing their thing.”
She calls this whole series Museum Patrons. Recently, she narrowed down the work calling it ArtistZ. Jurick made a list of her favorite painters from A to Z. “When I had several for a letter, I dove into learning more about each artist and finding ‘the one’ image that I loved most,” she states. “With a few letters, I had no idea who to choose, like Q or X, so I spent a good amount of time researching artists I’d never heard of.”
One of my all-time favorite paintings is Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss. In Jurick’s version, a couple huddles closely together while enjoying the piece. The artist cleverly named her version Double Date.
If you enjoy Jurick’s work, you can buy her book, here. Called ArtistZ it’s a series of paintings which feature select works of art from her favorite and most-inspiring artists. What a great way to learn about art and appreciate all the classic artists.
What’s most impressive about this body of work is that Jurick has to closely replicate work from the all-time greatest masters. Monets, Picassos, Klimts, nothing seems too intimidating for the artist.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by George Seurat
Irises by Claude Monet
Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh
America Windows by Marc Chagall
Summer by Frank Benson
Nighthawks by Edward Hopper
The Problem We All Live With by Norman Rockwell
Guernica by Pablo Picasso
American Gothic by Grant Wood
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Pablo Picasso
Dance by Henri Matisse
“Close Encounter”, Chuck Close
The Red Armchair, Portrait of Sylvette David and Femme Assise by Pablo Picasso
As an homage to one of her all-time favorite movies, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Jurick painted the scene where the three friends stopped for a moment to take in some iconic art. “There’s a scene in the movie when Ferris, his girlfriend Sloane and his best friend Cameron go through the Art Institute of Chicago – something I’d done dozens of times and even cut school to do so. The three friends stop and stand in front of the three Picassos…Well since then, many people have mimicked the pose – it became a tradition. And their visit to an art museum proved to be an inspiration for young people to do the same. That’s a good thing.”
While perusing the website Tattoo Filter, I came across these cool galaxy-style animal tattoos by Adrian Bascur. I love how he blends traditional animal imagery with the dreamy colors of space. He has a whole collection of space tattoo images over on Facebook.
On a side note, if I ever were to get a tattoo, I’d probably still get something delicate and minimalist from Dr. Woo, though I definitely appreciate Bascur’s style.
Hello, I’m Alice Yoo! I’m founder and CEO of Skylar Yoo, a company dedicated to inspiring and empowering women to be bold. We sell apparel, art prints and accessories to the modern feminist.
In my former life, I was editor-in-chief of the art and culture blog My Modern Met, which I founded back in 2007. I curated and wrote about art, design and photography for more than seven years. (In fact, I published over 7,000 articles which were seen by millions of people worldwide.) I’m also co-author of a book called For Love: 25 Heartwarming Celebrations of Humanity, which is on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
I live in southern California along with my husband and my two toddler boys.
This blog is about what I love, the tough experiences that I’ve learned from, and my journey as a second time entrepreneur. Right now, I’m in the midst of a 365 day challenge, to read one book a day. If you share my passions or want to learn some cool new facts, come along for the ride. I hope to inspire, educate and entertain you!
