Ceramic tile mural · Ventura, California · 2009

Las Palmas

The history of a town, glazed into the lobby wall at 60 California Street

Dan Frederickson asked for an entrance that could only be in Ventura. He got two centuries read from the top down — and, hidden in it, his dog, his wife’s name and his favourite novel.

Year: 2009
Medium: Hand-glazed ceramic tile on terra cotta
Technique: Cuerda seca, 40-colour glaze
Dimensions: Approx. 13 × 5 ft
Commissioned by: Dan Frederickson
Made in: Ventura, California
Location: 60 California St, Ventura CA
Access: Entry lobby, business hours

Film

Michael and Dan at the mural

Four minutes in the lobby with the artist and the man who commissioned him, walking the wall detail by detail.

Dan Frederickson (left) and Michael O’Kelly (right) in the entry lobby at 60 California Street, Ventura.

Read the transcript

Dan Frederickson“My name is Dan Frederickson, and I built a building in Ventura, California several years ago down on California Street. The idea behind that building at the time was to kind of consolidate the Art Deco work in downtown Ventura with some of the other architecture — and I think that our architect did that. It’s a beautiful building. And as part of that, we had the opportunity to see Michael. One of the best tile people I think I’ve ever worked with … to do an entryway for us in this office building. This is it here.”

“The thing I like about Michael’s work is the professionalism of it, but also the custom aspect. And he’s very, very creative. And he also works with you to customise the type of thing you might want for yourself. So — in keeping with this building, Michael brought together the characteristics of downtown on the tile structure itself, but we also had some fun things. My dog was in it — she has since passed, but she’s right here, she was included. And then he named the boat after my wife. It’s a wonderful history of the town. It shows the Mission up in the centre. Michael, do you want to talk about some of the other aspects of it?”

Michael O’Kelly“I picked four or five buildings that stood out, in my mind, architecturally — Dan’s building, Sears on the right, the City Hall, the Mission, the Watermark and the First National Bank. I thought those were the sort of modern twentieth-century history buildings that were most significant. And then just periods that you match: the Spanish, the pier — the pier which had the railroad on it, with the boxcars to come down and pick up the stuff from Ventura County. And the original name, before the Spanish…”

“I just wanted to give us some character. It’s not an attempt to tell our entire history; it’s just to be colourful and attractive, and make people feel interested in being in Ventura, really.”

Dan Frederickson“But for commercial businesses, for office buildings and things like that — I think that you can make a statement, his company can make a statement for you, that reflects what’s going on in your community that you’re serving, and the type of how you want your business to be represented. This is a Class A office building. I also focused on custom work here. This is an etching of Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged, because I’m a conservative business person … And also — it’s beautiful.”

Michael O’Kelly“Should I tell them the woodpecker story? … There’s a woodpecker, which I liked, and that’s why I put it in. Everything is from Ventura. So when Dan asked me to be here — the members of an Art Walk, and it had just been unveiled, so you wanted me to be here to talk to people. People were coming in and out. About twenty-five people in this room, looking at it. And I was telling him, and trying to say that it’s historical, it’s all true and everything. Then this guy came in, a tall guy, and he shouted across everything that that woodpecker is not from Ventura — that everything’s true, so… Everybody looks, turns around at me, tries to see if I’m going to respond. And I said: well, you see that guy down there? He’s from San Francisco, he’s an architect. He just came down from San Francisco on that boat and he’s saying goodbye to his friends. That was his pet woodpecker, and it escaped. And everybody started laughing, and the guy walked off in a huff. So you’ve got to be on your feet when you’re an artist, okay?”

Transcript lightly edited for readability.

Find it in the mural

Four things hidden in the tile

Every O’Kelly commission carries pieces of the person who paid for it. Find all four: tap a card, or a numbered marker on the mural at the top of the page, and the viewer flies straight to it at full magnification.

Found 0 of 4

Detail: a pileated woodpecker with a red crest clinging to a tree trunk beside the brick facade of the First National Bank building dated 1904 and 1926.

1The woodpecker

A pileated woodpecker on the trunk beside the First National Bank — put there because O’Kelly liked it. It has caused the only argument this mural has ever started.

Detail: a small shaggy long-haired dog lying at the feet of the crowd, beneath a horse, in the upper register.

2The dog

Frederickson’s dog is in the crowd, at the feet of the horses, looking out at whoever is looking in. She has since died; she is still on the wall.

Detail: four octagonal terracotta medallions on an oxide-green ground: Cabrillo's ship, the Mission, an orchard, and an oil derrick.

3The medallions

Four plaques in oxide green, borrowed from the bronze doors of Ventura City Hall: Cabrillo, the Mission, agriculture and oil — the industries that carried the county.

Detail: the coastal steamer at the wharf in the lower register, its name lettered small on the hull.

4The steamer’s name

The steamer working the wharf is named for Frederickson’s wife — lettered small on the bow, where only someone who knows to look will find it.

Reading the mural

Three registers, top to bottom

The mural is built as a vertical sequence. The eye enters at the top, in the street; drops through a band of civic emblems; and lands at the water, where the town began.

Detail of the upper register: riders on horseback carrying the San Buenaventura city seal on a banner, women in period dress, palms, the Mission facade at left, and a small shaggy dog at the lower left. — The upper register. The banner carries the seal of the City of San Buenaventura.

Upper register

The town assembles

A street gathering in front of the buildings O’Kelly judged most significant, with the Topa Topa mountains and a bank of cumulus closing the top of the arch. The figures come from period photographs — the clothing, the saddles and the tack are researched, not invented.

First National BankDated 1904 and 1926 on its own cornice band; still standing at California and Main.
San Buenaventura MissionThe white building facade and bell at centre left.
Ventura City HallThe domed civic building above the rooftops.
The Groene BuildingThe 1920s block now occupied by the Watermark on Main.
60 California StreetFrederickson’s own building, written into the skyline it belongs to.

Detail of the central band: four octagonal medallions modelled in terracotta relief on an oxide-green ground — Cabrillo's sailing ship, the San Buenaventura Mission inscribed 1782, an orchard and row-crop landscape, and an oil derrick against a sunburst lettered OIL. — The medallion band, full width. Four industries in terracotta relief on an oxide-green ground.

Central band

Four medallions in oxide green

A row of octagonal plaques divides the mural and cools it. The device is borrowed from the bronze doors of Ventura City Hall, and each medallion stands for one of the industries that carried the county.

CabrilloHis ship under sail, named on the scroll beneath — landfall on San Miguel Island, Toqan to the Chumash.
MissionThe San Buenaventura Mission, inscribed San Buena Ventura 1782.
AgricultureOrchards and row crops running back to the hills — the valley that fed the wharf.
OilA derrick against a rising sunburst, lettered OIL — the industry taking off as the wharf below was working.

Detail of the lower register: a coastal steamer with a red funnel lying off a timber wharf, passengers at the rail, gulls overhead and a whale fluke breaking the horizon. — The coastal steamer at the wharf, with the Channel Islands beyond.

Lower register

The wharf

Everything used to arrive here. O’Kelly gives the bottom third of the mural to the water: the long timber pier that carried a railroad out over the surf so boxcars could run down and collect the county’s produce, and the coastal steamer standing off it.

The pierRail tracks ran the length of it; freight was worked from the deck.
The crowdHats raised on the pier head — an arrival, not a departure.
WildlifeBrown pelicans, gulls and a whale on the horizon, all resident here.
ShisholopThe Chumash name for this place, before the Spanish one.

From the unveiling

The woodpecker argument

The mural was unveiled during a downtown Art Walk. O’Kelly was in the lobby at Frederickson’s request, with about twenty-five people in the room, explaining that the mural was historical — that everything in it was true, and everything in it was from Ventura.

A tall man at the back shouted across the room that the woodpecker is not from Ventura.

Everyone turned to see whether the artist would answer. He did.

“You see that guy down there? He’s an architect. He just came down from San Francisco on that boat, and he’s saying goodbye to his friends. That was his pet woodpecker — and it escaped.”

Michael O’Kelly, at the unveiling

The room laughed. The man walked off in a huff. “So you’ve got to be on your feet when you’re an artist,” O’Kelly says.

The disputed woodpecker: a pileated woodpecker with a red crest clinging to the tree trunk beside the First National Bank in the mural's upper register. — The bird in question. A pileated woodpecker — handsome, unmistakable, and not a species anyone expects to meet on California Street.

How it was made

Every figure on this wall was drawn by hand first

Before a single tile was fired, O’Kelly drew all thirteen feet of Las Palmas in pen and ink, at full size. Keep scrolling and the wall moves past you, top to bottom, the way he drew it.

Michael O'Kelly leaning over a drafting table, inking the full-size cartoon of the mural, surrounded by archive photographs of local buildings. — O’Kelly inking the full-size cartoon in the studio.

Pen and ink, then fire

Six steps from drawing to wall

O’Kelly works in cuerda seca — “dry cord” — a Persian technique of the ninth century that reached California by way of Spain and became the language of Spanish Revival tile. Unglazed resist lines hold each colour in its own field, so the glaze pools and the surface reads slightly raised, like a leaded window.

Michael O'Kelly, in a flat cap, bent over the full-size pen-and-ink cartoon of the mural with a marker in hand, a yardstick resting across the drawing. — Drawing Las Palmas at full size. Every building, saddle and sail on the wall is inked by hand before the drawing is ever transferred to clay.Photograph: studio archive

Research
Weeks in the Museum of Ventura County library. Saddles, canoes, clothing and building dates are checked against the record before a line is drawn.
Pen-and-ink drawing
The whole composition is drawn by hand at small scale, then enlarged to the mural’s exact finished size.
Traced to acetate
The full-size cartoon is traced onto acetate and separated into tile-sized units.
Screened onto terra cotta
A silk screen is burned from the acetate and the line is printed directly onto the raw clay. “Like making a T-shirt,” O’Kelly says.
Glazed to a colour sheet
The tiles go to the glazers with a painted sheet of forty colours to follow, each glaze laid inside its resist line.
Fired and set
Fired, then set tile by tile on the wall by the artist.

Twenty-two colours sampled from the surface — the glazers worked to a painted sheet of forty

Close detail of the fired surface: a horse's head in the mural, showing the raised unglazed resist lines holding separate pools of glossy brown, cream and slate glaze, with a grout joint running through. — The fired surface, close up: a horse’s head from the upper register.

Why an O’Kelly wall glows like stained glass

Forty glaze coloursEach one laid by hand inside its own raised line, so colours never bleed into each other.
A line you can see and feelThe unglazed resist stands slightly proud of the glaze, so the hand-drawn line survives the kiln as part of the surface.
A ninth-century techniqueCuerda seca came from Persia by way of Spain. It is why the mural reads like a leaded window from across the lobby.

See the whole process, step by step →

Press & recognition

What was written about it

24 Aug 2009
Artist’s mural tells history of Ventura
Brenda Loree, Ventura County Star — the installation reported in detail, with O’Kelly’s account of the silk-screen-on-terra-cotta method and the research behind the imagery.
2009
Beautify Ventura Award
60 California Street recognised by the City of Ventura, the mural cited among the building’s contributions to the downtown streetscape.
2015
Mayor’s Arts Award — Artist in the Community
O’Kelly honoured at the eleventh annual Mayor’s Arts Awards, Museum of Ventura County.

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See it

Visiting Las Palmas

Address

60 California Street
Ventura, CA 93001

Open in Maps →

Where exactly

The entry lobby, immediately inside the California Street doors, on the left-hand wall. The plaque outside reads Sixty California.

Access

Free, during business hours. No appointment needed — but it is a working entrance, so let people through.

Nearby

The Main Street building facades and the Mission mural are a five-minute walk. See the downtown tile walk →

The commission

A building that wanted to make a difference

Sixty California Street was built to pull downtown Ventura’s Art Deco inheritance together with the architecture around it — a building meant to give something back to the street rather than simply fill a lot. Having gone that far, Frederickson wanted the entrance to finish the job.

O’Kelly’s brief to himself was narrower than a history lesson: not the whole story of the town, but enough of it to hold someone crossing a lobby. He chose four or five buildings that stood out to him architecturally — Frederickson’s own among them — and set them against the two eras that made the place: the Spanish period, and the wharf.

Then he worked the client into it. A dog at the feet of the crowd. A steamer named for a wife. None of it is announced; all of it is there.

He calls the result public-private art: privately paid for, permanently on public view, three steps off the sidewalk.

The building

Sixty California

A Class A office building on the corner of California and Santa Clara, three blocks from the pier the mural is about. Cast stone at the base, cream stucco above, and an Art Deco canopy over an iron gate worked in rising sunburst.

60 California Street, Ventura: a four-storey white building with a pointed corner tower and dark roof, flags over the street, and the striped awning of Lure Fish House at street level. — 60 California Street. Dan Frederickson’s building on California Street, home of Lure Fish House. The entrance is under the flat steel canopy, and the mural is immediately inside, on the left-hand wall.

Las Palmas in place on the lobby wall at 60 California Street, framed in dark tile against a woven grey wallcovering, above a black-and-white marble floor, with the building directory to its left. — The mural in place. Floor to ceiling on the lobby wall, framed in dark tile, the first thing you see inside the door.

The exterior sets up the mural before you reach it. Rusticated cast stone, a stepped corner bay, the flat steel canopy and the fan motif in the ironwork all belong to the same downtown Deco vocabulary O’Kelly then quotes in glaze: the arch, the octagonal medallions, the hard geometry holding soft colour.

Inside, the mural runs floor to ceiling on the left wall of a small entry — not a gallery, a doorway people walk through on the way to work. That is the point of it.

Street level at 60 California Street: Lure Fish House under a grey-and-white striped awning reading Fresh Fish, Seafood, Oyster Bar, behind a white iron railing, with a period street lamp and palm trees. — At street level. Lure Fish House fills the ground floor on California Street. Building photographs courtesy of Dan Frederickson.

Walking up to 60 California Street, September 2026.

Detail of the etched elevator doors at 60 California Street: a fine incised line drawing of a neoclassical building with a colonnaded portico standing on a terrace, and beneath it the crouching figure of Atlas carrying his burden.

Across the lobby: Atlas Shrugged

Opposite the mural, Frederickson had a scene after Ayn Rand’s novel etched into the elevator doors — a colonnaded building above, Atlas stooped beneath it. It is not O’Kelly’s work, but it is part of the same idea: a lobby that says something about who built it.

“This is a Class A office building,” Frederickson says. “I also focused on custom work here.”

In the client’s words

Dan Frederickson on working with O’Kelly

“What I like about Michael’s work is the professionalism of it, but also the custom aspect. He’s very, very creative — and he works with you to customise the type of thing you might want for yourself.”

“For commercial businesses, for office buildings, I think you can make a statement that reflects what’s going on in the community you’re serving.”

Dan Frederickson — developer, 60 California Street, Ventura

Dan Frederickson and Michael O'Kelly standing in the entry lobby at 60 California Street, with Las Palmas on the wall between them. — Dan Frederickson and Michael O’Kelly in the lobby at 60 California Street, 2026.

Close detail of Las Palmas: riders and townspeople in period dress beneath palms and the city seal, in hand-glazed tile.

Michael O'Kelly inking the full-size drawing for the mural.

Commissions

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O’Kelly designs each commission with the client, in the studio, from the first pen-and-ink drawing to the last tile set on the wall. Residential, civic and commercial work throughout California.

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