34 years! (707) 933-1300 info@sculpturesite.com
34 years! (707) 933-1300 info@sculpturesite.com
Sculpture Created from Plastic Junk
Since the mid-nineties, Phil Linhares from the Oakland Museum of California, my filmmaker friend William Farley, and artist David Best have been encouraging me to cast my plastic assemblage work in bronze. I was very reluctant, because I felt I had discovered a unique voice in the found materials that had become my signature medium. But one aspect of bronze appealed to me - unlike my plastic assemblages, the cast bronze could be displayed outdoors in parks, gardens, and in public spaces.
Deciding to give it a try, in 2006 I contacted Alan Osborne at the Art Foundry in Sacramento because of his history in working with artists like Nathan Oliveira, Peter Voulkos, and Robert Brady. I wanted to maintain the integrity of the original pieces, and Osborne assured me that by making molds of the plastic assemblages, the original works would not be lost.
Choosing which pieces to cast into bronze was not easy. Many pieces didn't look like they would translate well from their plastic form into metal, especially those with a lot of color. The work to be cast had to measure up to classic sculptural merits, and I had to make sure that it never crossed the line into kitsch. In the end I decided on six large, freestanding, monochromatic pieces. Osborne gave me additional encouragement by casting two additional smaller pieces for his personal collection.
Alan Osborne is an expert with patina and was very forthcoming in teaching me how to heat the surface with a torch while applying chemicals or pigments to add coloration to the metal. Because patinas can be applied in this painterly manner, each piece in my limited editions is unique.
The labor-intensive process for creating a bronze sculpture requires a team of skilled craftsmen. The original assemblage must first be disassembled in order to make initial molds of its parts. These molds are filled with wax, and then plaster molds are made from the resulting wax sculptures. Finally there is the bronze metal pour, much intense assembly, welding, grinding, and the patina finish.
It is important to me that the bronze sculptures keep the spirit and soul of the original work. I am very grateful to Alan Osborne and the Art Foundry for working with me to translate my artistic intent into bronze.
I have now come full circle. My first experience with sculpture was doing bronze castings with lost wax and Styrofoam before I enrolled at The San Francisco Art Institute in 1970. Rather than study sculpture as I had intended, I majored in filmmaking. I didn't return to making sculpture again until 1989, when I began making assemblages from found plastic.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2010-2012 "sculptureWALK - New Works in the Garden," a new leaf gallery | sculpturesite, Sonoma, CA
2011 "Animal Dreams - Animals as Visual Metaphors," a new leaf gallery | sculpturesite, Sonoma, CA
2010 San Francisco Art Fair, with Sculpturesite Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2009 Museum of Art & History, Santa Cruz, CA
2008 SFMOMA Artists Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2005 Triton Musuem of Art, Santa Clara, CA
2005 Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Cruz, CA
2005 Oakland Museum Sculpture Court, Oakland, CA
2005 d.p. Fong Galleries, San Jose, CA
2002 San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
2002 Center for Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA
2000 University of California, Santa Cruz, CA
1999 University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA
1998 Vancouver Museum, Vancouver, British Columbia
1997 Municipal Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1997 McAllen International Museum, McAllen, TX
1996 Oakland Museum of California, Oakland
1995 Galeria Mesa, Mesa, AZ
1995 Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA
1994 Capp Street Project, San Francisco, CA
1994 Works, San Jose, CA
1993 Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
1993 Rogue Community College, Grants Pass, OR
1993 Center for Arts & History, Lewiston, ID
1992 Arizona Museum for Youth, Mesa, AZ
1992 Long Beach Arts, Long Beach, CA
1992 Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
1992 Grants Pass Museum of Art, Grants Pass, OR
1991 Ohio State University, Mansfield, OH
1991 Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
1990 Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA
1990 Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA
1989 California Museum of Art, Santa Rosa, CA
1989 San Francisco City Hall, San Francisco, CA
Selected Public Collections
Berkeley Art Museum, University of California Berkeley, CA
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
di Rosa Preserve: Art & Nature, Napa, CA
Fresno Art Museum, Fresno, CA
Museum of Art & History at McPherson Center, Santa Cruz, CA
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA
Saginaw Museum of Art, Saginaw, MI
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, SD
Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA
University of Arizona, Memorial Student Union, Tucson, AZ
University of California Davis, Nelson Gallery, CA
University of California Santa Cruz, Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, CA
Education
1975 San Francisco Art Institute, MFA
1974 San Francisco Art Institute, BFA
1969-1970 Studied with Charles B. Johnson as apprentice sculptor