Basking in the 'Golden State of Craft'

This is the third in a series of posts about the Getty Institute's Pacific Standard Time initiative by Joyce Lovelace, our L.A. correspondent. Her previous posts were Getty Exhibitions Open, and the Stars Come Out and The House that Sam Built.

Saturday night was the opening of "Golden State of Craft: California 1960 – 1985" at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, which is putting on the exhibition in partnership with Craft in America. This time I brought my son. He's 16 and into sports and guitar, but has a good eye and an open mind. He's at a wonderful age to experience art, and it's fun to see it through his eyes.

L.A.‘s first and only museum devoted exclusively to craft, CAFAM always puts on a great opening party, and this one was extra-festive, packed with distinguished guests. Jo Lauria, curator of "Golden State" (and author of California Design, one of my favorite books). Carol Sauvion, who has worked tirelessly to commemorate our finest makers in her Craft in America documentary series (new episode premieres October 17 on PBS). The famous Claremont potter Harrison McIntosh - he's also in the Sam Maloof show - and his wife, Marguerite. Eudorah Moore, organizer of the influential "California Design" shows at the Pasadena Museum of Art back in the day, and a force of nature still. (She gets special honors in "Golden State" along with that other great lady of California craft, CAFAM's founder, the late Edith Wyle.) The modernist designer-craftsmen Jerome and Evelyn Ackerman, still one of the cutest couples in craft after 63 years of marriage, came with their daughter, Laura Ackerman Shaw. Laura kindly made time for my son, telling him that growing up, she was sometimes bored by all the art openings her parents dragged her to, but boy, does she cherish those memories now.

Happily, my son was genuinely intrigued by everything he saw. Guiding him through became an educational exercise for me, as I tried to convey, in concise, age-appropriate language, the importance of so many defining objects: an opulent ceramic vessel by Adrian Saxe ("Can you believe this is clay?"); an edgy sculpture by Robert Arneson ("His work had a lot of political and sexual stuff in it"); a fairy-tale-castle carved wood door by Svetozar Radakovich ("Doesn't this look like something out of Lord of the Rings?); exquisite roach clips by Garry Knox Bennett ("Those were the hippie days, and this was, uh, functional art"); a sculptural basket woven of newsprint by Ed Rossbach ("He decided, wouldn't it be cool to turn a newspaper into art?"); a wall piece entitled A Whale of a Necklace ("Pretty big for a necklace, right? Look at the artist's name: Arline Fisch.").

One thing I found myself saying repeatedly was, "You have to understand, nobody had ever done anything like this before."

Also opening that night was "The Alchemy of June Schwarcz." Alchemy indeed. My son was quite taken with these enchanting enamel vessels, which Schwarcz, now 92, has conjured up in her studio in Sausalito for almost 60 years. We marveled at the astonishing variety of forms, patterns, surfaces and colors she had mastered, and the brilliant way she combined these elements into objects that were each unique, but obviously all the vision of one artist. They were crimped and folded, pinched and pocked, shiny and smooth, in colors that made you think of a box of Crayolas (the big, 64-count one). We decided she must have had great fun playing with all her special effects, endlessly dreaming up new ones and figuring out how to make them happen.

Then we played a game: if you had to choose one, just one, to take home, which would it be? I agonized before settling on a tall, refined golden vessel decorated with a few beadlike bubbles. My son's pick was blue-black and roughly textured on the outside and, he noted accurately, "blood red" within. We agreed it was very rock-and-roll, which I hope Ms. Schwarcz would accept for the high praise it is.

Greatest Generation
"Pacific Standard Time" has only just begun. There's so much more to see, and I can't wait. This week I'm headed to the Santa Monica Museum of Art for "Beatrice Wood: Career Woman" and to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for "California Design 1930-1965: ‘Living in a Modern Way.'" Also this month, "San Diego's Craft Revolution" opens at the Mingei International Museum, while the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts has a three-man show, "In Words and Wood: Sam Maloof, Bob Stocksdale and Ed Moulthrop" (focused on - what else? - their friendship).

These makers are craft's Greatest Generation. They deserve our respect and thanks for the magic they dreamt up and, through hard work and perseverance, made real with their hands. They make me proud to be a Californian, and proud to be part of this amazing field.

Joyce Lovelace is American Craft's contributing editor.