Seriously. What’s going on with me? 3 blog posts in the span of a week?! How can this be? Will it keep up? Time will tell. However! I have a post to go with an old post today, which I was inspired to put up since I found photos of my chunks of Mary Blair (which sounds morbid, but I promise it’s not!).
My long time readers might recall a post, which you can find here, detailing the sad destruction, or possibly partial destruction of the fantastic Mary Blair mural in Tomorrowland.
I’m not certain if much of the mural remains, but I know that portions of the destroyed pieces were auctioned off. A friend of mine bought said chunks as a birthday present for me… which, in thinking about it, would be such a bad present for anyone who was not so marinated in Disney as I… and, being a huge Mary Blair fan, I thought they were pretty darn cool! Let’s hope they’re legit. I’ve never heard anything to the contrary about them. 
As you can see, they’re relatively thick, seemingly the same thickness as seen in the tiles shown in the photos from my previous post. They’re painted, a bit weathered, but they still have a nice sheen to them. I don’t know what portion of the mural they come from, though I think they probably had residence towards the bottom area.
Here is the backside for anyone interested. 
It would please me greatly if they brought the mural back, since they seem to be bringing back everything from our Tomorrowland of the past. Fingers crossed. :) Incidentally, did anyone see the floor in the Mary Blair area of the Walt Disney Family Museum? Fabulous!!! If they made that in rug form, it would be in my house right now!
5 comments:
What a cool "souvenir"! I think you'd probably go nuts trying to figure out where they came from on the mural.
Hi, Tink (Am I really writing to THE Tinker Bell? Fantastic!)
As you may have suspected, what's left of the Mary Blair Tomorrowland murals is indeed still behind the the present day 'Star Tours' murals on both sides of the corridor---
The pieces that you showed are from where the engineers had to punch thru the murals (I know--painful) in order to install the structural skeleton needed to hold the buildings' new facades (including the newer and considerably inferior artwork)--
I always have thought that if they had just been smart enough to just leave it alone (but with the required maintenance), that Tomorrowland '67 would now be considered a classic example of 'Retro Chic/Mid Century Modern)
A real shame.
Hi Kirk!
Thank you so much for writing!! Knowing a bit more of the backstory behind the pieces of mural is fantastic.
I could not agree with you more on the Mid-Century modern, idea, since the future seems to be lacking in design concepts, more or less.
Oh... and yes, in a way! ;) Tink has been a long-time nickname. I don't suspect it's going away anytime soon, which is really fine by me. :D
Ms. Bell,
I'm so glad I've found your blog! I've been dropping in on 'Gorillas' and 'Daveland' for years, but I don't know why I've never visited 'Aracuan' before---
More on the Murals: together they formed a work of art called 'The Spirit of Creative Energies Among Children.'
Mary was one of Walt's very favorite development artists/stylists, with many high-profile credits, both from the Studio and at WED...
If you're a fan of Mary's mural work, one still exists at the Jules Stein Eye Institute in Westwood...
Incidentally, a close friend of mine has a piece of glazed orange/vermillion tile from the huge smiling sun that dominated the southern wall (the Adventure Thru Inner Space building)...Tactile evidence that is was once really there...
I'm so happy you found my blog, too! The Aracuan appreciates your patronage. ;)
I adore Mary Blair. She's one of my all time favorite artists, and I take a lot of inspiration from her... although it doesn't much show in my own work. I look at her art to get creative juices flowing.
Walt sure knew how to cultivate genius!
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