Work
Natsoulas' works generally depict people, often engaged in whimsical activities. The physical features of the subjects are often exaggerated to give them a sense of humor or playfulness. [2]
"His figures range from commissioned works to ceramic portraits of celebrities, sometimes depicted in period costume. Details and themes are influenced by images from popular culture, absurdist television shows, people, toys, cartoons, plays, and nostalgic movies. Natsoulas began making larger-than-life, exaggerated ceramic busts in 1997. He uses a similar sculptural technique to Arneson: his sculptures lack depth from front to back. His figures are caricatures, often with enlarged heads. His approach to the work is influenced by Robert Arneson, his former teacher at the University of California, Davis." [3]
Natsoulas also makes large objects for public spaces. A life-size painted bronze titled Balancing Act Too (1993) has stood in Sacramento's Plaza Cervantes since 2015. [4] The double sculpture The Joggers (1986) stands in front of Davis' historic City Hall, formerly home to the Fire Department and later the Davis Police Department. Another sculpture stands in the University of Davis library. [5]
Natsoulas: I remember what Bob Arneson said to us as students, “Always push your work, never be satisfied, it's art, Experiment!” [6]
Kurt Edward Fishback is an American photographer noted for his portraits of other artists and photographers. Kurt was born in Sacramento, CA in 1942. Son of photographer Glen Fishback and namesake of photographer Edward Weston, he was exposed to art photography at an early age as his father's friends included Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Wynn Bullock. Kurt studied art at Sacramento City College, San Francisco Art Institute, Cornell University and UC Davis where he received his Master of Fine Arts Degree studying with Robert Arneson, Roy DeForest, William Wiley and Manuel Neri. Ceramic Sculpture was the first medium that gained him high visibility in the Art World. Kurt took up photography in 1962 when he asked his Father to teach him. After finishing graduate work and teaching fine art media at several colleges, Kurt was asked to teach at his father's school of photography in Sacramento. The series of artist portraits which now number over 250 were begun in 1979.
Manuel John Neri Jr. was an American sculptor who is recognized for his life-size figurative sculptures in plaster, bronze, and marble. In Neri's work with the figure, he conveys an emotional inner state that is revealed through body language and gesture. Since 1965 his studio was in Benicia, California; in 1981 he purchased a studio in Carrara, Italy, for working in marble. Over four decades, beginning in the early 1970s, Neri worked primarily with the same model, Mary Julia Klimenko, creating drawings and sculptures that merge contemporary concerns with Modernist sculptural forms.
Robert Carston Arneson was an American sculptor and professor of ceramics in the Art department at University of California, Davis for nearly three decades.
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David Gilhooly, was an American ceramicist, sculptor, painter, printmaker, and professor. He is best known for pioneering the Funk art movement. He made a series of ceramic frogs called FrogWorld, as well as ceramic food, planets, and other creatures.
Funk art is an American art movement that was a reaction against the nonobjectivity of abstract expressionism. An anti-establishment movement, Funk art brought figuration back as subject matter in painting again rather than limiting itself to the non-figurative, abstract forms that abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko were depicting. The movement's name was derived from the jazz musical term "funky", describing the passionate, sensuous, and quirky. During the 1920s, jazz was thought of as very basic, unsophisticated music, and many people believed Funk was an unrefined style of art as well. The term funk also had negative connotations because the word had an association with a foul odor. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Funk was a popular art form, mainly in California's Bay Area in the United States. Although discussed as a cohesive movement, Funk artists did not feel as if they belonged to a collective art style or group. This is because while its artists shared the same attitudes and created similar works, they were not necessarily working together.
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Viola Frey was an American artist working in sculpture, painting and drawing, and professor emerita at California College of the Arts. She lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area and was renowned for her larger-than-life, colorfully glazed clay sculptures of men and women, which expanded the traditional boundaries of ceramic sculpture.
Clayton George Bailey, was an American artist who worked primarily in the mediums of ceramic and metal sculpture.
The Nut Artmovement was an artistic movement centered in Northern California, that flourished primarily in the late-1960s and early-1970s.
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Michelle Gregor is a San Francisco-based figurative sculptor. She works in mid-fire stoneware ceramic and porcelain.
Maija Peeples-Bright is a Latvian-born American and Canadian painter, ceramist, and arts educator. She is known as one of the pioneers of the Funk art movement in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s. Maija Peeples-Bright has gone by the names Maija Zack, Maija Woof, Maija Bright, and Maija Peeples.
Jim Melchert was an American visual artist, arts administer, and professor. He is known for his ceramics and sculptures. Melchert was part of the Funk art movement.
Lisa Reinertson is an American sculptor who works in ceramics and bronze.
Irene Pijoan was a Swiss-born American painter, sculptor, and educator. She was active in the San Francisco Bay Area and taught at the San Francisco Art Institute for more than 20 years.
Daniel Cotton Snyder, is an American sculptor, ceramicist, and educator. He lives in Berkeley, California.
