Episode 7: Tom Franco and Julia Lazar, the Firehouse Collaborative

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They’re a team in life, art and com­mu­nity build­ing.  Tom Franco and Julia Lazar are the co-directors and force behind the Fire­house Col­lab­o­ra­tive, a Berke­ley, Calif., non-profit that pro­vides space for local artists to live, work, sell, per­form and celebrate.

Franco, the mid­dle son of three from a highly cre­ative fam­ily (his broth­ers James and David are Hol­ly­wood actors, his mother is a writer and his father was an artist), is a sculp­tor who works with found objects.  Lazar, a for­mer chef from Aus­tria, is the food, design and visual cre­ator behind the col­lab­o­ra­tive, which will soon mar­ket a line of her custom-brewed kom­bucha, an effer­ves­cent fer­mented bev­er­age known for its health benefits.

Cur­rently, the Fire­house Col­lab­o­ra­tive oper­ates six loca­tions in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area that include three gal­leries, three micro store­fronts and a bazaar, four groups of stu­dio space, and two groups of shared apart­ments.  Add to that mix paint­ing and draw­ing groups, an edi­ble gar­den, a print shop, ceramic stu­dio, record­ing stu­dios, glass shop and wood shop plus social events and per­for­mance space for rent.

In terms of sculp­ture, Franco, a grad­u­ate of Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts in Oak­land, Calif., col­lects every­day, dis­carded objects and then applies glue and brightly col­ored house paint, deliv­er­ing his mes­sage about the detri­tus of con­sumer cul­ture in which we’re all steeped.  He says his pri­mary art influ­ences are sculp­tors William D. Iac­ulla and Nancy Graves.

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Episode 6: Kevin Box, Metal Sculptor and Karn Vongsingthong, Foundry Owner

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In this episode, Joe dis­cusses the prac­ti­cal­i­ties and busi­ness con­sid­er­a­tions of work­ing with an over­seas foundry.

Kevin Box started out in print­mak­ing then tran­si­tioned to sculp­ture, devel­op­ing a tech­nique of cre­at­ing his designs in paper then cast­ing them in bronze for an origami aes­thetic.  He spent sev­eral years work­ing in foundries before trav­el­ing to Thai­land to man­age a sculp­ture project, where he met the Von­s­ingth­ongs and began a cast­ing part­ner­ship that allows him to cre­ate qual­ity work with flex­i­bil­ity of scale.  His pub­lic com­mis­sions are installed in sev­eral South­west loca­tions as well as Cal­i­for­nia, Okla­homa, Arkansas and Minnesota.

Thai Metal Crafters Co., LTD., or TMC, was founded in 1992 by Suk­itch Von­s­ingth­ong,  who left a French foundry with a team of five metal crafts­men to estab­lish his own facil­ity in Thai­land.  Join­ing his father in 2007, Karn Von­s­ingth­ong brought his busi­ness edu­ca­tion to TMC.  The foundry is a 45-minute drive from down­town Bangkok.

The Von­s­ingth­ongs now super­vise 90 work­ers in a 150,000-square-foot facil­ity, offer­ing cast­ing, mold­mak­ing, chas­ing and patina ser­vices.  They pour bronze and stain­less steel for sculp­tors around the world, ship­ping the fin­ished pieces in containers.

 Men­tions:  Alice Aycock, Ran­som & Randolph

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Episode 5: John Toki, Sculptor, Businessperson, Teacher and Community Leader

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“John Toki at Work”

John Toki knew and stud­ied with some of the San Fran­cisco Bay Area’s lead­ers in the fine art ceram­ics move­ment — Stephen De Stae­bler, Ron Nagle, Peter Voulkos, Clay­ton Bai­ley and many more.

He met many as a young boy, the son of Rayer and Leslie Toki who started Leslie Ceram­ics Sup­ply in Berke­ley, a Mecca for sculp­tors and pot­ters look­ing for high qual­ity mate­ri­als and solid advice.  Through­out his child­hood, John Toki’s par­ents wel­comed artists into their home, giv­ing their son a real­is­tic view of what it was like to make one’s liv­ing pro­duc­ing art.

Toki went on to earn his B.F.A. at Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­sity, Hay­ward, (now Cal-State East Bay) where fam­ily friends Ron Nagle and Clay­ton Bai­ley taught.  He com­pleted his M.F.A. in ceram­ics at Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of Arts and Crafts (now Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts), where Toki later taught the fine art of clay for 13 years.  At the same time he learned the impor­tant busi­ness and inno­va­tion skills that has kept  Leslie Ceram­ics in oper­a­tion for 50 years, even­tu­ally becom­ing owner and com­pany pres­i­dent.  He is the inven­tor of the Toki Kiln and improved elec­tronic tem­per­a­ture con­trollers as well as over 400 glazes.

Toki is the co-author of sev­eral notable books on ceramic sculp­ture, includ­ing the fifth edi­tion of the clas­sic “Hands in Clay” with Char­lotte Speight, and is cur­rently serv­ing as a con­sul­tant to New York painter Chuck Close on a ceramic tile project.
An active leader in the Bay Area sculp­ture com­mu­nity, Toki recently served as a pan­elist at a Stephen De Stae­bler ret­ro­spec­tive event at the De Young Museum in San Fran­cisco.  With John Nat­soulas of the Cen­ter for the Arts in Davis, Calif., Toki is orga­niz­ing the Ceram­ics Annual of Amer­ica, a three-day Sep­tem­ber 2012 event at Ft. Mason in San Fran­cisco that will fea­ture about 100 sculp­tors, includ­ing sev­eral from other parts of the world.

Toki’s own large-scale ceramic sculp­tures have been exhib­ited in Cal­i­for­nia, Ari­zona, Ohio, Mary­land, Wis­con­sin, Japan and the Nether­lands.  A recent piece, installed in Davis, Calif., comes equipped with an elec­tric chip for smart phones that allows the viewer to con­nect with a website.

Men­tions:  John Wor­ley, Char­lotte Speight, Roberta Laid­man, Euro­pean Ceramic Work­cen­tre, John Michael Kohler Arts Cen­ter, Viola Frey

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Episode 4: Ruth Braunstein, Gallery Owner

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Ruth Braun­stein, 88, was one of the first gallery own­ers to rec­og­nize the cre­ative energy per­co­lat­ing in Cal­i­for­nia around ceramic art.  Ignor­ing the “craft” label and what she called the “second-class cit­i­zen­ship” of this art form, she rec­og­nized tal­ent when she saw it.  Braun­stein imme­di­ately spot­ted the poten­tial in such artists as Peter Voulkas, Jim Melchert and Manuel Neri, who would go on to dis­tin­guished careers as sculptors.

A for­mer pro­fes­sional dancer who once stud­ied with Martha Gra­ham and Merce Cun­ning­ham, Braun­stein started her first gallery in 1961 with $500 from her hus­band and no back­ground in art whatsoever.

But she was blessed with a sharp eye and a pref­er­ence for con­tem­po­rary art.  After five years in Tiburon, then a sleepy town on the San Fran­cisco Bay north of the Golden Gate Bridge, she moved her gallery to San Fran­cisco.  There her busi­ness thrived until Novem­ber 2011, when she decided to shut down the Braunstein/Quay Gallery’s bricks-and-mortar oper­a­tion but keep an online presence.

Dur­ing Braunstein’s years in San Fran­cisco she brought inno­v­a­tive ideas to the gallery busi­ness, start­ing the San Fran­cisco Art Deal­ers Asso­ci­a­tion and serv­ing as its first pres­i­dent.  She also came up with the idea for Intro­duc­tions, a pro­gram that for 25 years pre­sented work by artists never before shown in San Fran­cisco gal­leries, as well as First Thursdays.

“First Thurs­days offered wives a night out with their hus­bands when they could have din­ner, visit gal­leries and buy art,” Braun­stein said.

In 2010 she helped launched Art­Care, a joint project between the San Fran­cisco Art Deal­ers Asso­ci­a­tion and the San Fran­cisco Art Com­mis­sion to restore pub­lic art in the city.  Braun­stein and her group helped raise $90,000 to clean and refin­ish pub­lic art.  First on the list was a two-story bronze piece by Peter Voulkas, an artist with whom Braun­stein shared a long and pro­duc­tive busi­ness rela­tion­ship as well as a friendship.

Her work in San Fran­cisco earned her the 2010 San Fran­cisco Fine Art Fair life­time Achieve­ment Award.

Men­tions:
John Altoon, Jeremy Ander­sen, Ruth Asawa, Bruce Con­ner, Fred Ever­s­ley, Keith Har­ing, John Mason, Jim Melchert, Ron Nagle, Manuel Neri, Win Ng, Ken­neth Price, Richard Shaw, Rod­ney Strong, Braunstein/Quay Gallery, Art­Care

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Episode 3: Debra Koppman, Sculptor

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Debra Kopp­man earned her MA at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, and her doc­tor­ate in Stu­dio Arts at New York Uni­ver­sity.  She has served in fac­ulty posi­tions in Mex­ico and Nicaragua, where she taught art and devel­oped cur­ric­ula.  Her research into mul­ti­cul­tural aes­thet­ics has taken her to Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Spain, Por­tu­gal, Israel, India, Thai­land and Turkey.

She has writ­ten for numer­ous schol­arly pub­li­ca­tions about art, aes­thet­ics and edu­ca­tion and also for wrote for Artweek mag­a­zine from 1997 to 2009.  In addi­tion, she has designed the­ater sets and led eight pub­lic mural projects.

Kopp­man has fre­quently taught in schools as an artist in res­i­dence as well as at the col­lege and uni­ver­sity level.  She is the recip­i­ent of numer­ous grants and fel­low­ships, includ­ing a Ful­bright.  Her work has been exhib­ited in Cal­i­for­nia, Ore­gon, Wash­ing­ton, New York, Den­mark, Peru, Argentina, Nicaragua and Mexico.

To see more work, visit Debra Koppman’s web­site.

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Episode 2: Deva Rajan, Sculptor and Builder

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Deva Rajan arrived at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley in 1960 after a year in Mex­ico on an arche­o­log­i­cal dig, another year study­ing in Flo­rence, Italy, and a stint at Pomona Col­lege, where he earned an art his­tory degree.

In the early 60s, the Uni­ver­sity California’s art depart­ment was hotbed of tal­ent led by fac­ulty mem­bers such as sculp­tor Peter Voulkas.  Rajan stud­ied along with Stephen De Stae­bler, Jim Melchert and other sculp­tors who would even­tu­ally estab­lish them­selves in the inter­na­tional art scene.  In 1962 Rajan earned an M.A. in sculp­ture.  In 1963 his cast alu­minum and iron piece was exhib­ited at the Bien­nale de Paris.

But later Rajan turned from fine art sculp­ture to fine build­ing, found­ing Canyon Con­struc­tion, a San Fran­cisco Bay Area firm noted for help­ing to pio­neer green build­ing prac­tices.  His own home, a sculpted wood aerie in the red­wood for­est of Canyon, Calif.,  was fea­tured in the book, “Hand­made Homes: The Nat­ural Way to Build Houses,” by Art Boer­icke.  Over the years artists such as Voulkas and De Stae­bler called on Rajan’s exper­tise to build safe, func­tional studios.

Men­tions: Greene and Greene, Bernard May­beck, Bruce John­son, Jim Kirk­wald, Dan Richards, Seth Melchert, Jim Grant.

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Episode 1: Clayton Bailey, Sculptor

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At the end of 2011 and early 2012, Clay­ton Bai­ley was hon­ored by the Crocker Art Museum in Sacra­mento, Calif., with a ret­ro­spec­tive show that cov­ered 50 years of his dis­tin­guished career as one of the country’s most inven­tive and humor­ous artists.  With tongue firmly in cheek, Bai­ley has tweaked the funny bone and social con­science of view­ers with his wildly imag­i­na­tive inven­tions.  Espe­cially known for his life-size robots, Bai­ley has built more than 100, most con­structed from found parts, includ­ing a robot cos­tume he used to wear to entice vis­i­tors to his “The Won­ders of the World Museum” in Port Costa, Calif.  The museum now fills his large home studio.

Bai­ley grew up in Wis­con­sin, where he earned under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate degrees in art and art edu­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin.  He spent 32 years as a uni­ver­sity art pro­fes­sor, retir­ing from Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­sity, East Bay, where he’s now a Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Ceramics.

His work is rep­re­sented in such col­lec­tions as the Los Ange­les County Museum of Art and the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion, and has been shown through­out the U.S., at the Pom­pi­dou Cen­ter in Paris, in Bel­gium, Brazil and Greece.  Bai­ley is the recip­i­ent of numer­ous fel­low­ships and grants—two from the National Endow­ment for the Arts—and his own U.S. patent for a “nov­elty squirt­ing cup.”

Another Bai­ley distinction—his mous­tache, untouched by a razor for 34 years, stretches two feet from tip to tip when fully waxed.

To see more, visit Bailey’s web­site.

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