Jo Mora

In 1921, the Mora family relocated to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, the largest art colony on the West Coast, making it their primary residence. He constructed a Craftsman-style home, which is located on the west side of San Carlos Street, the third house south of 1st Avenue.[14][15]

Mora received a commission for the bronze and travertine Cenotaph, for Father Junípero Serra in the Memorial Chapel at the west end of Mission Carmel.[11][16][17][18]

Mora served on the board of directors of the Carmel Art Association, where his sculptures were exhibited between 1927 and 1934. He co-established Carmel's first private art gallery which was operated by resident artists.[19]

Jo Mora is a serious sculptor, a responsible amateur actor; when mixed up with pen and ink, a humorist! Comic strips was once his trade. He was famous at it. That was years ago but his art of cartooning bloomed again when in recent years he produced the well known Mora Map of the Monterey Peninsula. Most successful with bronze statue creations which decorate many gardens in East and West. If he has a specialty in figures it is cowboys. He knows his West. Jo Mora will ever be famed for his portrayal of Pancho Lopez, The Bad Man, at Carmel Playhouse. He does everything well and is handsome while doing it. He is happily married-alas!

— Carmel Pine Cone[20]

During the Great Depression, Mora created the "Carmel Dollar" as part of Carmel's program, offering unemployed residents scrip for public service, exchangeable for groceries and essentials; a three-cent stamp on the certificate's back acknowledged their efforts. When full, merchants accepted the certified scrip for goods or a dollar.[21][22]

Monterey County Courthouse

Architect Robert Stanton collaborated closely with Mora on multiple projects. In 1937, Stanton was the architect for the Monterey County Courthouse, which incorporated Mora's bas-relief panels, column caps, and figurative heads on both the building's exterior and its interior courtyard.[23]

Statue of Junipero Serra in Carmel Woods.

On July 22, 1922, for the opening day of the Carmel Woods subdivision, Mora had carved and painted a wooded statue of Padre Junípero Serra, which was installed within a small wooden shrine, surrounded by plants and a pair of wooden benches at the entrance to the development, at the intersection of Camino del Monte and Alta Avenue.[24][25]

In 1925, he designed the commemorative half dollar for the California Diamond Jubilee. During this period he also illustrated a number of books, made large murals, and published charts, maps (cartes) and diagrams of the West and Western themes. Beginning in 1937, Mora wrote and illustrated children's books about the West. In 1939, a Works Progress Administration project was completed, with Mora bas-relief sculpture adorning the King City High School Auditorium building.

In 1931 Jo, his wife, and daughter Patricia moved to nearby Pebble Beach into a newly built home. Five years later in the adjoining large studios he completed his massive diorama, Discovery of the San Francisco Bay by Portola, for the California Pavilion at the 1939-40 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. At a length of almost 100 feet, with 64 sculptures of Spaniards and Indians and over 200 animals, it was said "to surpass anything of its kind at the Fair."[26][27] He fashioned smaller dioramas for the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, Oklahoma, and the Sutter's Fort Museum in Sacramento, California.[28][29]

"El Paseo" Jo Mora Sculpture

In 1928, Mora made the "El Paseo" sculpture in the courtyard of the El Paseo Building on Dolores Street and 7th Avenue in Carmel. The sculpture was recorded with the National Register of Historic Places on January 20, 2002, as an example of the artistic and cultural contributions of Mora to Carmel in the 1920s. It is a terracotta sculpture of a Californio man and a Señorita woman.[30]

In the early 1930s, Mora was commissioned by Earl F. Graft to decorate the Carmel Dairy Building in Carmel. Mora made three large interior dairy murals above a soda fountain (no longer present) and a sculptured a metal lamp in the shape of a cowbell that still hangs above the buildings front door. He showed animal figures dressed as humans, many recognizable as local Carmel residents. He also designed the menus, Christmas cards, and milk bottles, with these animal characterizations, and a cow that served as the logo. The Santa Rosa Republican described Mora's work with an article having the title: "Carmel's Prosaic Dairy is Art."[31][30]

Between 1908 and the late 1940s his sculptures, illustrations,[32] watercolors and etchings were frequently exhibited across the United States.[11][33][34]