California Still – California between Coast, Coolness and the 1960s
Share
MANO ET ARTE · CALIFORNIA STILL
California Still is a series of watercolor illustrations of Californian motifs, hovering somewhere between a view of a place, a memory, and a film still.
Carmel-by-the-Sea, Big Sur, Venice, Palm Springs, or San Francisco are real places. However, the illustrations do not aim to reconstruct them photographically. I am more interested in what remains of a place when it is reduced to light, architecture, landscape, and mood – and a new image is created from it.
THE SERIES
California, as it might feel.
Some motifs remain astonishingly close to their real-life models. The steep street with a cable car and a view over the bay immediately identifies San Francisco. Big Sur thrives on the coast, the highway, and the vastness of the Pacific. The canals of Venice, the architecture of Santa Barbara, or the Mid-Century houses of Palm Springs also bear very specific characteristics of their locations.
Other illustrations take greater liberties. An old gas station in Death Valley doesn't have to have existed in exactly that spot. But it could have. And it is precisely this in-between space that interests me.
It's not about an exact address. It's about a scene looking believably like that place.
THE ERA
California somewhere in the 1960s.
The series plays with an era without historically recreating it. It is not California of a specific year, but rather an idea of it: low-slung houses, large windows, palm trees, coastal roads, swimming pools, motels, and that effortless elegance that is now immediately associated with Mid-Century California.
I think of the bright, almost flawless elegance of American films with Doris Day, as well as the much cooler side of the late sixties. Of San Francisco, of Steve McQueen and Bullitt, of asphalt, architecture, and a coolness that didn't have to be loud.
California Still also moves between these two poles: sunny, light, and sometimes almost cheerful – but never entirely sweet.
THE SOUND
Perhaps the pictures even have a soundtrack.
When I look at the illustrations, I don't just think in colors. Music is playing somewhere in the background.
There's the understated elegance of Cool Jazz and West Coast Jazz. Alongside that, the early surf guitars of Dick Dale, The Ventures, or The Chantays – often instrumental, with reverb, rhythm, and plenty of space. And of course, the Beach Boys also belong to this image of California, even if their sunny harmonies were long more complex than the cliché of beach and surfboard.
Perhaps the sound of the series could be described as a mix of muted trumpet, electric guitar, the sound of the ocean, and a car radio playing somewhere on a coastal road.
THE COLOR
Ivory instead of brilliant white.
An essential element of all motifs is the warm, ivory-colored background. It is not simply an empty space behind the illustration.
This cream tone lays like a common veil over the entire series. Colors appear less harsh and less present. Blue becomes more muted, green a little dustier, orange warmer. Even stronger accents remain integrated.
This background reminds me of old paper, slightly faded analog film, and warm Californian light. It gives very different landscapes and cities a common color tone – from the coast near Carmel to the desert of Death Valley.
THE TYPOGRAPHY
The lettering finds its place.
The typography also deliberately does not follow a fixed grid.
The place name is not in the same position for every motif. Instead, the lettering reacts to the image: to open spaces, architecture, the horizon, the viewing direction, and the emphasis of the respective illustration.
Sometimes it stands wide and calm in the open sky, sometimes it moves closer to the depicted scene. The aim is for it not to appear as an added label, but as part of the composition.
The lettering, in a sense, moves with the image.
BETWEEN PLACE AND MEMORY
Not documentary. But not arbitrary either.
California Still is not a collection of classic souvenir views. For that, I am too interested in the places as images and too little as a checklist of their sights.
Nevertheless, many motifs remain surprisingly close to the character of their real-life counterparts. Carmel thrives on its coastal location, its trees, and its small-scale architecture. Venice thrives on water, bridges, and houses directly on the canals. Santa Barbara thrives on Spanish-influenced facades and terracotta. Palm Springs thrives on Mid-Century architecture, pools, palm trees, and the desert mountains.
Reality thus forms the starting point. After that, the illustration begins.
Individual elements are condensed, shifted, or simplified. Some things are added, others disappear. Not to arbitrarily change a place, but to highlight what, for me, constitutes its atmosphere.
CALIFORNIA STILL
A small journey through a possible California.
Perhaps that is precisely the appeal of this series for me: these pictures do not claim to show California exhaustively.
They show individual moments. A street in San Francisco. A view over Big Sur. A house in Palm Springs. A quiet canal in Venice. A gas station in the desert. People only appear occasionally and usually remain small – more a part of a scene than its center.
California Still is therefore less a travelogue than a visual memory of a time and a place – even if this memory was partly created in the illustration.
California between jazz and surf music, between Doris Day's lightness and Bullitt's coolness, between the Pacific, the desert, and Mid-Century architecture.
And over everything lies this warm, slightly faded light.
DISCOVER CALIFORNIA STILL
The illustrations as a mug series
The California Still motifs are available as ceramic mugs at Mano et Arte. The series continues to grow and gradually leads to more locations and landscapes of California.
