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Claremont Modern:
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OPENING RECEPTION
FRIDAY APRIL 13, 2012 6 - 9 PM
$10 donation suggested - Refreshments will be served.
Exhibition will be open Saturdays and Sundays
April 14, 15, 21, 22, 28, 29 from 12 - 4 pm
Claremont Heritage Ginger Elliott Exhibition Center
Garner House in Memorial Park.
840 N. Indian Hill Blvd.
Claremont, CA 91711
Info: (909) 621-0848 or info@claremontheritage.org
In the years following World War II, the community of Claremont, a college community in the Pomona Valley, emerged as one of the most important centers of art and craft activity in California. Known as the "City of trees and PhD's", Claremont embodies an almost utopian environment that is a wonderful mix of small town atmosphere combined with academic and cultural attributes.
Garrison Theater, Scripps College
A lively arts community since the early 1930's mainly due to the influence that a young visionary Millard Sheets brought to a fledgling art department at Scripps College. Inextricably linked were the artists, craftspeople and architects that Sheets retained to teach, and who later made Claremont home, influencing generations of artists and makers to come. Especially the period of 1945 -1975 when painters, sculptors, muralists, ceramists, enamel and mosaic artists, wood turners and furniture makers, fiber artists, and designers of every discipline dedicated themselves to creative pursuits with great passion, energy, and imagination, creating diverse works of considerable artistic merit. And they did so in a strikingly cooperative and collegial manner, sharing not only ideas, but trading work with each other and supporting each others efforts.
The work created in that time and place gave physical form to the informal and exuberant way of life that would become a hallmark of the region - a California lifestyle that garnered both national and international attention. Claremont became a veritable caldron of Modernism and as Karl Benjamin would later say, "the epicenter of the art world in Southern California."
The exhibit, "Art in Public Spaces - 1945 - 1975" will bring to light many hidden treasures placed throughout the City of Claremont. Murals such as "Genesis", 1960, located in Pomona College by Rico Lebrun, three thirty foot mosaics, 1964, by Millard Sheets and Dennis O'Connor depicting scenes from Shakespeare at Scripps College Garrison Theater where three colorful tapestries by artists Arthur and Jean Ames also reside , "Dove Fountain", 1963, by Betty Davenport Ford at the United Church of Christ, relief sculptures by John Edward Svenson that were originally commissioned for the Pomona College Seaver Botanical Building and now occupy the entrance of the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Gardens. Other public work will be featured by Albert Stewart, Harrison McIntosh, Milford Zornes, and Lindley Mixon who created ceramic inserts in the front retaining wall of Claremont United Methodist Church designed by Richard Neutra. The featured piece in the exhibition will be an 8 foot by 45 foot original mural painted by Paul Coates and Diane Divelbess for Hendricks Pharmacy.
