In remembrance…Nathan Oliveira and Beth Van Hoesen

Two well-known and well-respected Printmakers passed away in 2010. Both of them were honorary members of the California Society of Printmakers.

Nathan Oliveira

Nathan Oliveira, 1928-2010, born in Oakland, CA, exhibited with Bay Printmakers Society beginning in 1956. In 1968 Bay Printmakers and California Society of Etchers merged to become California Society of Printmakers. Oliveira  was awarded Honorary Lifetime Membership in CSP in 1993. A few images of his prints are located here with a long list of his exhibitions.

Beth Van Hoesen

Beth Van Hoesen, 1916-2010, is first mentioned in the CSP archives in 1958 when she helped organize a few exhibits, and in 1959 she was President of the Society. She was awarded Honorary Lifetime Membership to the CSP in 1996. A few of her etchings that were published by Crown Point Press in 1965 can be viewed on the Annex Galleries website. Some nice illustrations of her animal paintings and prints are seen on her Facebook page, as well as on the Nancy Dodds Gallery website.

Filed under: Historical, Link, Members, Remembrance, Beth Van Hoesen, Nathan Oliveira, Obit

Reminder: 98th Annual Exhibition, tonight!

Tonight is the opening reception for the California Society of Printmakers’ 98th annual membership exhibition at the Alameda Library.
Three featured artists: Maryly Snow, Herlinde Spahr, and Bonnie Boller will each do a short presentation on their printmaking techniques and/or subject matter.

Alameda Library
1550 Oak Street
Alameda, CA 94501
6:30pm – 8pm
Free parking is available in the back lot

Filed under: East Bay, From the Editor, Historical, Show Announcements, Alameda Library, Annual Exhibition, Bonnie Boller, Herlinde Spahr, Maryly Snow

What we’ve been up to…

After 3 hours of hard labor, CSP President Anthony Ryan and Historian Maryly Snow (acting as photographer) celebrate completing phase #1 of weeding and organizing the unofficial BASK archive (newly installed at a storage locker after years in Peter McCormick’s garage). There are about 100 copies of the monograph Master of Line — Winkler, one of the charter members of California Society of Etchers; back issues of journals, some print donations and CSP photographs in the flat files. The official BASK archive is at the Bancroft Library.

Filed under: From the President, Historical

Karl Kasten: A Rememberance by Kevin Radley

If you drive or look east you begin to see the blue abstraction of the Sierra Foot Hills. There is a theory in art that the further away an object is the more abstract it is and because of the distance the color of the object turns blue for the light is cooler.  The closer one gets the more vivid the shapes become, and the clarity of color comes clearer warmer, more vivid. This is what my relationship with Karl Kasten was for the last ten years. First from a distance and in time the colors became richer and warmer and the details became clearer. I saw how remarkable an artist, a teacher and a man he was.

Nearly every day at 11:30 Karl came into the Art Department office to check his mail, chat with folks and make some phone calls and say Hi. It was easy to talk with him. It didn’t take him long to find out that I ran the noon lecture series for the department. It didn’t take long for him to drop the question, “So Kevin, how about I do a lecture one of these days. The students would love it.” Karl wasn’t shy to ask for anything, and he was nearly impossible to say no to. So I scheduled him for a noon talk and hoped for the best. That wasn’t something I needed to worry about, especially filling the room with attendees. Karl seemed to have his own audience of friends family, colleagues, folks he had over lunch, and perhaps a dealer or two. As for the talks themselves, they were less like lectures than intricate weavings of the ideas of the history of art, from Lascaux to Matisse, from Cezanne to post-modernism, from the ying /yang symbol to his theories of pictorial composition, from the beauty of egg tempera to the physical splash of abstract expressionism, from the early formation of the newly developed UC Berkeley Art Department in the 1920’s to The Berkeley School, and always mentioning his lifelong mentor Worth Ryder, and the remarkable array of artists that influenced Karl throughout his artistic life: Hans Hoffman, Wilem De Kooning, Chiura Obata, and John Haley among so many others.

As the cycle of life tells us, our history is what provides us with the reasoning for the moment we live in. I too love that department: it gave me the reason to be, to work, to teach to shape the future. There was a kinship I had developed with Karl through a couple of earlier lectures he presented. So in 2007 I popped the plan. I told him I wanted to show his work in the gallery as a retrospective and an homage to the early years of the Art Department and in the place that was named after his great mentor and the house he had helped build, The Worth Ryder Gallery. Karl loved the idea. I really didn’t know much about Karl’s work, but I was certain that the exhibition would be sensational, and we both relished the idea of bringing a historical perspective to the department.

Filed under: Article, Historical, "Karl Kasten" "Kevin Radley"

Karl Kasten, 1916- 2010: An Introduction by Maryly Snow

I published a short article on Karl Kasten in the Spring 2008 NewsBrief. Reading it over today, after a moving memorial luncheon for him, I realize that my article is flawed: it has the facts, but doesn’t begin to convey the enthusiastic generosity of spirit and joyful love of art that is Karl’s hallmark. This revised version is an appetizer to whet your appetite for a few more substantive articles on Karl that will follow from people who really knew him well.

Karl in July 2009 standing in front of his prize-winning 1938 piece,
“The Berkeley Campus”, permanently installed In the O’Neill Room,
Faculty Club, University of California, Berkeley.

That Was Then: Origins of the Bay Printmakers Society.

I went to visit CSP member Karl Kasten in August of 2007 to ask him about the founding of the Bay Printmakers Society (BPS). CSP had Our predecessor organizations, California Society of Etchers (CSE) and Bay Printmakers Society (BPS). They merged in 1968 to create the California Society of Printmakers (CSP). Karl was president of both organizations, the last year of BPS and at the first year of CSP.

What I wanted to know was why BPS had started up in 1955, when California Society of Etchers (CSE) was still in existence?  The archival records in the CSP Archives at the Bancroft Library don’t seem to address this question.

I had been to Karl’s house once or twice before many years ago. As I entered and saw the layout of the living room to the right, the dining room to the left, with the foyer and staircase in the center, I remembered the Kasten art-infused environment, and was really glad to see it again. Art everywhere. Gauguin, his love, Gauguin’s teacher Emile Bernard, African masks, Egon Schiele. Worth Ryder sketches and paintings, Rolf Eiselin, John Ihle, Kenji Nanao. Kandinsky. More, lots more. Of course, selections from Kasten’s work, including his most recent collographs and paintings.

Filed under: Article, Historical