….and yon.

This photograph is titled “Verandah Grill artist Doris Zinkeisen poses with her Vignette ‘Jazz’.” I like this image a great deal. In no way does it represent any real artist at work. I know well what an artist should look like when in the throws of creativity. I always was covered from head to toe in paint. Globs if not smears. My more finely tuned friend Ba has been known to wear sweats sporting scatted bits of paint as proof she really is an artist.

The whole ship is like this image of Zinkeisen, a façade of perfection that amuses and enlightens but just fractionally behind the times. Zinkeisen’s murals as well as the stunning yet humorous Royal Jubilee Week by Thompson in the Observation Lounge inspire, stir the imagination, yet in no way compare to the best of the modern art being produced on either the continent or in New York.

The only works that push the envelope are the illustrative Lalique glass panels that line the Second Class Main Stairway. I have delighted in these since my first trip to the Queen Mary. My friend Ba and I had snuck below decks far from the tours and crept down this stairway just after the Mary’s arrival in Long Beach. That visit the darkness grew oppressive and the smell of burning wood and metals frightened us so that we never completed our trip to the bottom of this stairway. We fled to the sunlight in great relief but missed an adventure.

This trip, we did not find out if the stairs continued any further than D deck either. We resolutely entered the door marked “Employees Only,” and G photographed each panel to the best of his ability hampered only by our knowledge that we shouldn’t be there. At the final door, I opened it to find a security guard stationed to the left. We hurriedly shut the door and quickly climbed back up the stairs to an open deck.

For some reason, security guards appeared several times while we were in quiet legitimate spaces. Perhaps we were first into the engine room a particular day. We knew we were the last in the WWII displays. Those guards were unfailingly polite. We appreciated that.

The Second Class Main Stair glass panels comprise a history of transportation seen from the Moderne eye.

Here three speedboats push through their wire lined glass for eternity.

Other panels offere views of a carriage, or a velocipede, or a horse and rider dashing through their glass. Each panel blends well with the one next to it each tied together with rounded Deco lines. In this last image, three automobiles vie for space with a motorcycle. You can feel their speed as they dash through time. You appreciate the artist and what he is attempting. And just for a moment, you are there.

The two Queen Mary albums:

Gueen Mary December 2003: Upper decks and displays

Queen Mary December 2003: First Class Lounges, Verandah Grill, Second Class Main Stairway

A quiet day. Cold for southern California. We huddled together in one room until we have to go down to do laundry, to make lunch, to go walk. He plays games mindlessly; I make albums equally mindlessly. We make few days like this, together yet apart.