I believe Plein Air Painting is a great way to discover the sides. Here I went to the Moreno Valley side of Box Springs Mountain in California.
Box Springs Mountain is said to have gotten its name during the 1880s. Teamsters with horse-drawn wagons would stop at a natural spring in an arroyo of the range to water their horses. A teamster surrounded it with a box to maintain water access, later giving the spring and range their names.
The letter "C" is embedded on the Riverside-facing side. The "Big C" was built in 1957, mostly by UC Riverside students. E.L. Yeager donated the materials for it. The "C" is approximately 1,500 feet above the UCR campus, and was the world's largest poured-concrete block letter,132 feet high by 70 feet wide.
The letter "M" was embedded on the Moreno Valley side of the mountain in 1966 as a symbol of Moreno Valley High School which was then in the town of Sunnymead. The City of Moreno Valley was officially incorporated as a municipality on December 3, 1984 comprising Sunnymead, Edgemont and the little town of Moreno. The mountain with "M" were included on the new city logo.
Box Springs Mountain has large populations of snakes, lizards, coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, bears, deer and burros, some of which wander into the populace below. There are several large eucalyptus trees that were planted at its base that originally marked sources of water.
The terms California Impressionism and California
Plein-Air Painting describes the large movement. of 20th century
California artists who worked out of doors (en plein air), directly from
nature in California, United States. Their work became popular in the
San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California in the first three
decades after the turn of the 20th century.
Considered to be a regional
variation on American Impressionism, the painters of the California
Plein-Air School are also described as California Impressionists; the
terms are used interchangeably. And this is my version of it.
