The Loft at Liz’s presents Craft Meets Art & Design.
This exhibit is a PST inspired show featuring some of the most critically acclaimed artists
working in southern California from 1945 – 1980.
The Loft will host LAMA (LA Modern Auctions) and Reform Gallery including works from artists:

Ed Ruscha, John Kapel, Charles Arnoldi, John Nyquist, Max Finkelstein, John Baldessari,
Garry Knox Bennett, Pamela Weir-Quiton, and Jerome & Evelyn Ackerman.

This collection features not only works under the categorical setting of The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time guidelines but also contemporary works from these living artists.

]]> http://theloftatlizs.com/blog2/craft-meets-art-design-pst-inspired/feed/ 0 http://theloftatlizs.com/blog2/charles-arnoldi-2/ http://theloftatlizs.com/blog2/charles-arnoldi-2/#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:16:40 +0000 liz http://theloftatlizs.com/blog2/?p=7109

Charles Arnoldi, also known as Chuck Arnoldi and as Charles Arthur Arnoldi is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was born April 10, 1946 in Dayton, Ohio.

While visiting a girlfriend’s grandmother in New York, he took the opportunity to view works by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Observing their smudges, smears, and imperfections, he sensed that he too was capable of such work, and decided to attend art school. Arnoldi attended junior college in Ventura, California, where a professor convinced him to apply to the Art Center in Los Angeles. He was accepted with a scholarship, and enrolled in commercial illustration classes. It was the late 1960s, and Arnoldi recalls a stifling classroom environment where male students were required to wear ties. After only two weeks, he left and transferred to the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1968, where he remained for eight months before deciding to abandon his formal education and complete his training through his art practice. Arnoldi began using actual tree branches as a compositional element in his works, combined with painting to create stick constructions. These works did not endeavor to create illusions but rather inhabited physical space.

In the early 1970s, the artist attracted attention for his wall-relief wood sculptures, holding his first solo exhibition at the Riko Mizuno Gallery in Los Angeles in 1971. The following year he was included in Documenta V, Kassel, Germany, 1972. The use of wood has remained a feature of Arnoldi’s oeuvre, although since the 1980s he has often employed it in combination with other media.

As an artist in the 1950s, I first started carving in wood, then welding. The created works were based on biblical themes, fossil forms and images from nature. I began utilizing twenty five years of machine shop experience in 1963, the next phase of my art.

When machining aluminum, light, reflected from its etched surfaces causes movement and color changes. This phenomenon became a new form in the creating of my work. The aesthetics of precision became part of my art. I looked for a pure image that is derived from modern materials. To me, machined aluminum reflects the spirit of our times, the computer, the automated product, and the poetry of space. I try to capture that one fleeting image of a memory, a thought, and fuse it into a lasting reality of sculpture.

I use modules in common with industry: triangles, squares, rectangles, hexagons and circles. Machined textures and consequent development of unitized images in metal or painted wood, gives me an infinite number of combinations in the designs of my work.

Since 1955 I have worked in series, whether wall hangings or free standing structures, exploring a variety of styles and mediums, using many images and disparate materials, but one distinctive characteristic is paramount: the viewer becomes the kinetic force activating the elements of color and dynamics in the composition of the works.

Since 1965, Pamela Weir-Quiton has made functional wood sculpture. Her art has progressed from simple doll and animal iconography to complex architectural commissions of extreme scale and structural sturdiness. Little dolls became 13′ wooden caryatids and giant 36′ cardboard tube dolls, while animal boxes and adult sized rockers morphed into my first wooden playground. Along with this growth in the scale and breadth of my work, came expanded creativity.

“I had always drawn from my imagined mind, but with the Modesto commission began on site photo research resulting in life-size sculpture. Real life cows translated into abstract geometric shapes with the essence of “cow” exuding experientially, not just iconographically. This transition became a defining moment for her art, opening to an ever-widening arena for inspiration.

Finding a photo of tiger tamer, Mabel Stark, a new trajectory for my work ensued. Marrying Mabel’s image with the influence of vintage wooden toys, I launched into an epic body of work that became the pinnacle of magical playgrounds where children’s imaginations could run wild.

After the grand scale and complexity of three playgrounds, I sought simplicity. Seeing my first Navajo sand painting rug was a visceral experience; inspiration, along with ebony and bits of scrap, led to prototypes for the original Yea Dolls in only a few short hours. I felt like I had stumbled into an archeological dig as more and more figures appeared – Yea Dolls, Man-Icons, Chairman-Icons, Bridge-Tables, Blanket Benches, Clothes Horses – an entire civilization of primitive stick people manifested.

Coming full circle, I was recently commissioned to create two of my original doll chests from college. I seized the opportunity to construct two quintessential pieces at seven feet tall, with drawers down the front of their striped torsos. These dolls represent the culmination of forty years of working with wood and embody all of the ideas that have driven my creative process: iconography, high contrast, geometric shapes, patterns, playfulness, functionality, precision, durability and quality.

After all these years, I still get excited when inspiration strikes and look forward to discovering where the next forty years will lead.”

Garry Knox Bennett (b. 1934, Alameda, CA) is a furniture maker who works in Oakland, CA. He attended the California College of Arts and Crafts where he learned to paint and sculpt. In the 1960s, he used the skills he learned to found a metal plating business, specializing in handmade jewelry.

In the 1970’s he began making clocks which expanded into furniture design. He is most well known for his chairs and use of conventional woods and unusual materials such as plywood, aluminum, steel, and plastics. Bennett’s work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Arts and Design, De Young Museum, Fine Arts Museum, Mint Museum of Arts and Design, Montreal Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Oakland Museum, Racine Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2001, he had a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City.

For 50 years, Los Angeles-based artist/designers Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman played a central role in the distinctive aesthetic of California mid-century modernism. Employing their deep knowledge of fine art, traditional craft, and design, the couple created a body of work remarkable for its diversity of styles, techniques, and materials.

Jerome (“Jerry”) and Evelyn Ackerman brought their creativity, optimism, versatility, and hard work together in a shared life and career spanning five decades. In joining their complementary talents, Jerome and Evelyn strove to make beautiful yet affordable and accessible designs for homes and offices. Their life represents a true marriage of art and design that resulted in a prolific output of ceramics, mosaics, textiles, woodcarvings, hardware, and metal that embodied a modernist sensibility.

The creative direction of their work grew out of the principles of the Bauhaus, a design movement based on an influential German art and design school that flourished from 1919 to 1933. Building on the Bauhaus belief that fine and applied arts are equally important, the Ackermans integrated their training in fine art and craftsmanship over the course of their long and prolific professional career. Their signature design style moved from abstract modernism to figurative stylization. Playing a central role as designer-craftsmen, Jerome and Evelyn Ackerman helped to shape what is now known as California mid-century modern style.

The Ackermans hold the rare distinction of being included in every exhibition (1954 to 1976) of the prestigious “California Design” series, held primarily at the former Pasadena Art Museum. The couple has been the subject of numerous articles in the local and national press and their pieces are in many public and private collections. The first major retrospective of their work, “Masters of Mid-Century California Modernism: Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman,” was on view at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego through January 10, 2010.  The Loft proudly features their works for our show “Craft Meets Art and Design”.

John Kapel – Born June 17, 1922, Cleveland, OH

A leader of the modern California crafts movement, John Kapel effortlessly blended studio furniture making with industrial design. After earning a bachelor’s degree at the Ohio Wesleyan University (1947), he trained for two years in Prague, then-capital of Czechoslovakia, and returned to the U.S. to earn an MFA in industrial design at Cranbrook (1950).  Kapel joined the George Nelson Design Office in New York in 1952, but inspired by the work of furniture designer and woodworker Sam Maloof, he moved to California two years later with his wife, sculptor Priscilla Kapel. The couple built a house in Woodside, thirty-five miles south of San Francisco, which included a woodworking and cabinetmaking studio.  Kapel began to produce prototypes for local furniture manufacturers while taking studio commissions for handmade chairs, cabinets, and tables, primarily of wood but with other materials as well, such as Formica, cane and leather.  He worked for more than twenty years for the firm Glenn of California and with the Japanese company Kosuda Furniture, which manufactured Kapel’s work internationally.  Kapel also created custom furniture, cabinets, doors, and wall pieces for private clients, often in collaboration with his wife, and participated to numerous exhibitions in California.

Long Beach woodworker John Nyquist, 72, has hand-built his legacy among aficionados of midcentury design. Though Nyquist still isn’t a household name among the general public, collectors of classic California design have sought his work for almost 50 years, drawn to painstakingly crafted furniture whose hard angles are softened by gentle curves and sloping lines.

In May, the auction house Wright sold a single 1960s ladder-back chair by Nyquist for $7,200 – confirmation that his work has joined the canon of classic West Coast crafts.

Ruscha was born into a Roman Catholic family in Omaha, Nebraska, with a younger sister, Shelby, and a younger brother, Paul. Edward Ruscha, Sr. was an auditor for Hartford Insurance Company. Ruscha’s mother was supportive of her son’s early signs of artistic skill and interests. Young Ruscha was attracted to cartooning and would sustain this interest throughout his adolescent years. Though born in Nebraska, Ruscha lived some 15 years in Oklahoma City before moving to Los Angeles in 1956 where he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute (now known as the California Institute of the Arts) under Robert Irwin and Emerson Woelffer from 1956 through 1960. While at Chouinard, Ruscha edited and produced the journal “Orb” (1959–60) together with Joe Goode, Emerson Woelffer, Stephan von Huene, Jerry McMillan, and others. Ruscha spent much of the summer of 1961 traveling through Europe. After graduation, Ruscha took a job as a layout artist for the Carson-Roberts Advertising Agency in Los Angeles. He was married to Danna Knego from 1967 to 1972. They remarried in 1987.

By the early 1960s he was well known for his paintings, collages, and photographs, and for his association with the Ferus Gallery group, which also included artists Robert Irwin, John Altoon, John McCracken, Larry Bell, Ken Price, and Edward Kienholz. He worked as layout designer for Artforum magazine under the pseudonym “Eddie Russia” from 1965 to 1969 and taught at UCLA as a visiting professor for printing and drawing in 1969.

Although Ruscha denies this in interviews, the vernacular of Los Angeles and Southern California landscapes contributes to the themes and styles central to much of Ruscha’s paintings, drawings, and books. Examples of this include the book Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), a book of continuous photographs of a two and one half mile stretch of the 24 mile boulevard. Also, paintings like Standard Station, Large Trademark, and Hollywood exemplify Ruscha’s kinship with the Southern California visual language. Two of these paintings, Standard and Large Trademark were emulated out of car parts in 2008 by Brazilian photographer Vik Muniz as a commentary on Los Angeles and its car culture.

His work is also strongly influenced by the Hollywood film industry: the mountain in his Mountain Series is a play on the Paramount Pictures logo; Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights (1962) depicts the 20th Century Fox logo, while the dimensions of this work are reminiscent of a movie screen; in his painting The End (1991) these two words, which comprised the final shot in all black-and-white films, are surrounded by scratches and streaks reminiscent of damaged celluloid.

In 1962 Ruscha’s work was included, along with Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Dowd, Phillip Hefferton, Joe Goode, Jim Dine, and Wayne Thiebaud, in the historically important and ground-breaking “New Painting of Common Objects,” curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum. This exhibition is historically considered one of the first “Pop Art” exhibitions in America.

Ruscha had his first solo exhibition in 1963 at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. In 1966, Ruscha was included in “Los Angeles Now” at the Robert Fraser Gallery in London, his first European exhibition. In 1968, he had his first European solo show in Cologne, Germany, at Galerie Rudolf Zwirner. Ruscha joined the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1970 and had his first solo exhibition there in 1973.

In 1970 Ruscha represented the United States at the Venice Biennale as part of a survey of American printmaking with an on-site workshop. He constructed Chocolate Room, a visual and sensory experience where the visitor saw 360 pieces of paper permeated with chocolate and hung like shingles on the gallery walls. The pavilion in Venice smelled like a chocolate factory. For the Venice Biennale in 1976, Ruscha creates an installation entitled Vanishing Cream, consisting of letters written in Vaseline petroleum jelly on a black wall. Ruscha was the United States representative at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, showing the site- and occasion-specific a painting cycle Course of Empire.

He has been the subject of numerous museum retrospectives, beginning in 1983 with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1989, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2000, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in 2001. In 2004, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney mounted a selection of the artist’s photographs, paintings, books and drawings that traveled to the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome and to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

In 1998, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles organized a retrospective solely devoted to Ruscha’s works on paper. In 2004, The Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited a second Ruscha drawing retrospective, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and then to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

“If I saw the art around me that I liked, then I wouldn’t do art.”

John Anthony Baldessari (born June 17, 1931, National City, California) is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California.

Initially a painter, Baldessari began to incorporate texts and photography into his canvases in the mid 1960s. He has created thousands of works that demonstrate—and, in many cases, combine—the narrative potential of images and the associative power of language within the boundaries of the work of art. His art has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe.  His work has had a huge influence on Cindy Sherman, David Salle, and Barbara Kruger among others.

In 1959, Baldessari began teaching art in the San Diego school system. He kept teaching for nearly three decades, in schools and junior colleges and community colleges, and eventually at the university level. In 1970, Baldessari began teaching at CalArts. His first classes included David Salle, Jack Goldstein, James Welling, Barbara Bloom, Matt Mullican, and Troy Brauntuch. While at CalArts, Baldessari taught “the infamous Post Studio class”, which he intended to “indicate people not daubing away at canvases or chipping away at stone, that there might be some other kind of class situation.” The class, which operated outside of medium-specificity, was influential in informing the context for addressing a student’s art practice at CalArts.  He quit teaching at CalArts in 1986, moving on to teach at UCLA, which he continued until 2008.