Since I am on a run about angel images in Los Angeles, I just had to add photos from the Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels on Temple and Hill St. A monumental angel is over the entrance to this ultra-modern cathedral. If I remember correctly it is supposed to represent the Angel Gabriel. (Well, am I ever wrong!! I did some checking after I published this post and discovered that the figure is a representation of the Virgin Mary by sculptor Robert Graham. He also did the bronze doors for the cathedral.)
When you wander around the building and the plaza you will see, here and there, some old traditional images, such as a small shrine for Our Lady of Guadalupe. Overall, however, images, such as sculptures, are not used to “speak” to parishioners and visitors the way images are on the great cathedrals of Europe. There are clean architectural lines and, inside, pale wood everywhere.
But then there are the four very large angels–each of them must be 10 feet long– etched into the windows in the high soundwall in the cathedral plaza above the 101 Freeway.
I always think of them as guarding travelers who roll along the freeway forty feet below in cars–rather than in carts, as people might have done back in the middle ages. And angels protecting a freeway is a very L.A. image!
I have published two novels, one very steamy and sexy and set in San Francisco in the Sixties and the other an amusing vampire tale that starts with bald tires and newbie vampire armed with a make-up kit in Las Vegas.
