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Growing up in Long Beach, Calif.—a port town full of U.S. Navy sailors, the local shipping industry, and mothballed World War II ships–left a lasting impression on ceramic sculptor Jon Gariepy.

These days he lives within an hour’s drive of the ocean and the San Francisco Bay, where boatyards and ships provide models for the work he creates, including another decaying ghost fleet anchored for decades in the Bay Delta.

This artist’s clay ships, boats and submarines list to one side and break into pieces.  They rust and run aground, all with an aura of somber nobility.  He says he loves boats and wants to express their “romance.”

Gariepy has exhibited throughout California, often near the ocean, and, in Michigan, near one of the vast Great Lakes.  He has won several awards for his work and has shown his work twice at the prestigious Ceramics Annual of America.

Also a painter, Gariepy—naturally—portrays ships and the sea on his large canvases.

Mentions:  Howard Pease, California Maritime Academy, Works & Conversation

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In this episode listeners will hear from the philanthropic side of the art world in our interview with a couple who have contributed millions of dollars as well as abundant goodwill and passion to the arts and the artists who create it.

Many years ago — before seven children, a famous international manufacturing business, a long and illustrious history supporting the arts, and a notable art collection — Barclay and Sharon Simpson launched their relationship at an arts festival in a California beach town.

Sharon grew up in a family that embraced the arts.  Barclay discovered the arts as an adult.  But he jumped into to his newfound interest with enthusiasm and energy.  For years he took drawing and painting courses.  Later he served as board chairman of the University of California, Berkeley, Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

For over 25 years the Simpsons have sponsored an annual award for graduating M.F.A. students at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, Calif., where Barclay was given an honorary doctorate.  On the school’s campus sits a sleek sculpture facility bearing the names of Sharon and Barclay Simpson, who paid for its construction.  And the couple operated their own art gallery for 13 years, helping to help launch the careers of young and talented artists.

The list of philanthropic work goes on, including support for a nationwide program to encourage child literacy in low-income areas and a seasonal outdoor Shakespeare festival.  Because of their belief in the power of the arts to boost positive growth and learning, the Simpsons have for years invested their personal wealth to benefit children, artists and communities.

Mentions:  Bruce Johnson, Alexander Archipenko, Tom Waldron, Ossip Zakine, Gerard Tsutakawa, Tola Inbar, Indira Johnson, Mary Bates, Bella Feldman, Alfio Rapisardi, Jim Cook, Jun Kaneko, Leslie Safarik, Kathe Kollwitz 

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In the village of San Martin Tilcajete about 26 miles from the city of Oaxaca, Mexico, there is a home studio run by Jesus Sosa Calvo, a master wood carver of alebrijes, the colorful, fantastical creatures for which the state of Oaxaca is known.  Sosa, his brother, sister, daughter and son all work to produce the painted figures, which are often carved from copal, an indigenous wood.

As with several villages in the state of Oaxaca, the residents of San Martin Tilcajete are known for a particular craft, in this case alebrijes, which they sell to stores and galleries in Oaxaca city and to visiting tourists.  Sosa’s Zapotec village is also known for its beautiful colonial church, ceremonial and cultural traditions, as well as its proximity to nearby archeological sites, including Mitla, a pre-Columbian urban center with carved stone friezes that have influenced the designs of regional artisans.

Sosa is one of Mexico’s better known carvers.  His work has been featured in books about the arts and crafts of Mexico and, especially, Oaxaca, an area recognized throughout the world for its rich crafts tradition.  He has worked with art students in the San Francisco Bay Area, both hosting them at his workshop and traveling to the U.S. for artist-in-residence programs.

Stan Peterson and Sosa share a friendship and a love of wood for its capacity to portray whimsical, evocative figures.  Peterson, a self-taught woodcarver from Oakland, Calif., received his B.A. in Fine Art from Portland State University and a M.S. in Special Education from Western States College.  His work has been exhibited in New York, California, New Mexico, Texas and the Pacific Northwest, and is included in many public and private collections, including the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

“I carve wood sculptures, which depict moments when something is about to happen,” writes Peterson, who has also spent more than 25 years teaching woodworking, including  carving, to the developmentally disabled.  “These are everyday moments, sometimes poignant, sometimes with an edge of humor.”

Peterson first met Sosa in Oaxaca, where the two artists quickly bonded.  In 2012 Peterson traveled to Bali on a foundation grant to study with a master carver of traditional masks.

Mentions:  Gloria Lopez Cordova

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In this short video Sculptcast Conversations presents Wanxin Zhang, a San Francisco sculptor who was born in China and studied at the LuXun Academy of Fine Arts before emigrating to the U.S.  He’s best known for his sometimes humorous, sometimes political interpretations of the famous terracotta warriors from the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor. Zhang’s work is represented in numerous public and private collections both nationally and internationally.

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When Fletcher Benton was 10, his mother recognized in her son a real talent for art.  So she hired a teacher and turned over to the boy a key to a room that became his own private studio.

Benton’s early instruction and interest stuck fast.  He graduated from Miami University in Ohio with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts.  After his World War II service he headed for North Beach in San Francisco, where he immersed himself in the emerging Beat Movement.  He worked as a sign painter by day and an abstract painter by night before landing a job teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute.  Benton later moved on to a professorship at San Jose State University, from which he retired in 1986.

In the 1960s he abandoned painting and began experimenting with kinetic art—completely unaware that it was on the verge of exploding into the art scene.  A chance connection launched Benton’s sculpture career, and he worked as a one of the world’s best-known kinetic artists for 13 years.  By the late 1970s, however, he was finished with kinetic art.  He turned instead to more traditional bronze and steel sculpture that emphasized geometric shapes along with letters and numbers presented with precision of form and finish.

At nearly 82, Benton still works four days a week with his three assistants in his 15,000-square-foot San Francisco studio that includes a large bright room for painting and his collection of models trains on a track that circles the ceiling.

Benton’s sculpture is installed around the world and appears in several collections, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Denver Art Museum as well as the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Massachusetts.

Mentions:  Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, David Park, Joan Brown

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photo copyright 1965–2012 Fletcher Benton/Artists Rights Society

© 2012, Sculptcast Conversations. All rights reserved.

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Steve Oliver owns a successful construction company in the San Francisco Bay Area.  He’s also a passionate supporter of the arts who has served as board chairman of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.  But he is perhaps best known in the art world for Oliver Ranch, a sculpture park in Sonoma County, about 70 miles north of San Francisco.

On 100 acres once devoted to grazing sheep, Oliver and his wife Nancy have installed 18 site-specific, one-of-a-kind sculptures by some of the country’s finest artists, including Ann Hamilton, Andy Goldsworthy, Bruce Nauman, Ellen Driscoll and Martin Puryear.

Steve works closely with the artists, providing technical assistance (such as the crane he shipped from Arizona to install a 245-ton Richard Serra sculpture) and a welcoming stay at the ranch that leads to deep and lasting relationships.  He leads public tours in summer and fall as fund-raisers for non-profit organizations.  Ann Hamilton’s mind-bending tower, installed in 2007, now hosts original performances of music and dance.

In 2009 the Olivers established a foundation that will assure the sculptures remain in place in perpetuity.

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For six weeks in 2011 a flotilla of white plastic called “Distant Mirrors” rocked on the tides of the Providence River in Providence, Rhode Island.  Ellen Driscoll, head of the sculpture department at the Rhode Island School of Design and an established sculptor in the reclaimed materials movement, glued and then stitched this installation in the shape of islands and the North American continent.  Given its origins, the piece showed surprising beauty both by day and night.

Driscoll says she “explores resource consumption and material lineage,” using castoff materials like plastic bottles compressed into a block by the Rhode Island Resource and Recovery Association — only a tiny portion of this small state’s massive waste stream. For the past five years these discarded plastics have served as her primary material for sculpture.

Her work is included in numerous major private and public collections, including the Whitney Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Driscoll has created numerous pieces of public art, among them 20 mosaic and glass works for three of New York’s Grand Central Station tunnels and a kinetic sculpture for the South Boston Maritime Park.

She has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and others.  Driscoll earned a BA in Fine Arts from Wesleyan University and MFA in Sculpture from Columbia University.  Her work is included in such major collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of Art.

Mentions: Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Barnaby Evans, WaterFire Providence, Elizabeth King, Andy Ness, Martin Puryear, Joseph Beuys

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Click for a bonus video showing Wolfe at work in his studio.

Bruce Wolfe’s sculpture career spans more than four decades.  He specializes in figurative portraits and has rendered works of such notable public figures as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the late U.S. representative and civil rights activist Barbara Jordan, former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz, former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist and legendary boxer Muhammad Ali.  For Thatcher’s statue, Wolfe traveled to England to sit with the the grande dame of British politics and take photos and measurements.

He studied art at San Jose State University and the San Francisco Art Institute.  Starting his career as an art director for a big advertising firm in San Francisco, Wolfe eventually turned to illustration and went out on his own.  One of his first sculpture commissions was of Kurt Adler, music director of the San Francisco Opera.

Wolfe has sculpted works that convey the personalities of mayors, city founders, college presidents,  major donors, college coaches, notable athletes, an opera directors, medical pioneers, and religious figures.  They stand, they contemplate, they sit, they observe in ways completely characteristic to the person represented.

Four of Wolfe’s 7-foot bronze figures can be found in niches of the historic chapel at the Old Mission in Santa Barbara representing St. Clare, St. Francis, Mary Magdalene and Christ.  His 9-foot statue of basketball great Magic Johnson is located at Michigan State University.

For each of his figures Wolfe researches exact dress and mannerisms, going so far as to collect clothing, jewelry and other items as well as visiting his subject’s home and workplace to ensure a wholly accurate presentation.  He starts work in clay, using the finished piece to create the mold for a bronze pour, then completing the project with a patina finish.

Mentions:  Richard McDonald, Lamar Hunt, Mario Lemieux, Artworks Foundry, Gladding McBean, George Shultz, Norman Shumway, Edgar Odell Lovette, Frank Gehry, John Hannah

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Brian Dettmer takes analog media — old instructional books, art books, science and engineering books, history books, comic books, medical texts, dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, cassette tapes — and with an X-Acto knife and hundreds of razor-sharp blades turns them into detailed and extravagantly layered sculptural works.

At Columbia College in Chicago, Dettmer originally focused on painting.  But after graduating in 1997 he worked in graphic design and signage.  Three years later he started tearing, cutting, fragmenting and gluing books, the medium that has earned him an international reputation.

Dettmer’s work has been shown in Slovenia, the Netherlands, Spain, England, Canada, Germany, Mexico and throughout the United States, including solo shows in New York, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, Atlanta and Barcelona.  He has also been featured in the CBS Evening News, The New York Times, The Guardian in the United Kingdom, Wired, National Public Media and more.

An exhibition of Dettmer’s work will open Oct. 20, 2012 and run through Jan. 5, 2913 at The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia in Atlanta.

Mentions:  Doug Beube, Tom Friedman

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In an upcoming interview, Joe talks with Bruce Wolfe, a San Francisco Bay Area sculptor known for his detailed bronzes of such notable figures as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan, the late civil rights leader.

© 2012, Sculptcast Conversations. All rights reserved.