Directory of Artists:
Badfinger - Pete Ham (1947-1975) & Tom Evans (1947-1983). The classic rock band, Badfinger, was both exceptionally talented and star-crossed. Its chief songwriters and performers, Pete Ham and Tom Evans, were also artists in other genres besides music. Here for the first time, never-heard demos are tied to Ham’s and Evans’ private drawings to reveal the depth of their artistry.
Read more →Marc Abrahms’ (1948-2015) was a successful businessman in the insurance industry. He was also possessed of an outstanding talent: photography. Widely travelled, he captured vivid, compelling images of landscapes, people, vehicles, buildings, waterways, plants and animals, color and light, and more.
Read more →Leopold Allen (1945-1989) was an artist for the American Ballet Theatre whose artistry was to "make up" ABT’s dancers to embody and project the roles they were performing. From the evil fairy, Carabosse, to the luminous Sleeping Beauty, and hundreds of characters in between, Leopold designed and applied the makeup, wigs (and often the shoes) of ABT’s dancers.
Read more →Ben-Zion (1897-1987) devoted his life to beauty in all its manifestations: from the visual, to the literary, to the musical. He threaded nature, still life, the human figure, the Hebrew Bible, and the Jewish people into his work. A founding member of “The Ten,” he remained independent in his views and his art throughout his very active, long life.
Read more →Jamie Bernard (1987-2010) was a prodigious young writer and artist who filtered contemporary culture through a prism of youth and alienation, supported by keen observation and a consuming passion for literature, history, and international affairs.
Read more →Hayden Carruth (1921-2008) never grew out of two passions he developed at a very young age: poetry and jazz music. Despite his lifelong struggles with mental health, he never stopped writing and jazz’s influence can be seen throughout his work. Penning more than of 30 published books of poetry, prose, criticism and essays, we see here how his poems give readers some shelter from the storms of life.
Read more →Edwin H.K. Chau (1929-1988) brought East and West together in his paintings to create beautiful images that blend contemporary/traditional subject matter and east/west vision and methods. Born and trained as an artist in Hong Kong, he brought his family to Canada in his early 40s. He would become a successful, full-time artist and art teacher in the Toronto area whose unique cross-over techniques and perspective would give a timeless quality to his works.
Read more →Helen Corning (1921-2011) painted exquisite abstractions - large canvases revealing a spare palate of earth tones and a layered simplicity honed over 60 years of painting. Her life and her life’s work were proudly described by her lapel pin: ART SAVES LIVES.
Read more →Joe was a multi-talented and prolific artist who was not constrained by artistic trends or medium; he created works of art in wood, concrete, ceramics, oils and acrylics. Joe began to "make art" as a young child and continued to do his work until his death in 2020. He was admired and respected by his teachers, students and fellow artists and was referred to as "an artist's artist", by all who knew him.
Read more →Elizabeth Fairgrieve, born July 10, 1947, was an exceptionally caring, compassionate, funny, charming, and talented human being. She worked as a Registered Nurse, extending that caring to others. After marrying her devoted husband in 1984 she began working as an artist, studying Sumi-e under Koho Yamamoto. Her work combines Sumi-e, calligraphy, abstract expressionism, and automatic painting, and expressed who she was. Elizabeth left behind her creative legacy in May 2020.
Read more →Charles Key Furr (1928-2014) was born in Amarillo, TX. He lived, studied, taught and painted in Mexico, Europe and the Southwest U. S. for over 60 years. He studied fine arts and anthropology in Texas, Colorado, New York, Boston, Italy and Mexico D.F and teaching in New Mexico, and Colorado. Charles exhibited work in PA, NM, TX, CO, Italy, and Mexico.
Read more →Leslie Gillette Jackson (1921- 2013) was a painter and poet, expressing masterful words and works with uncommon elegance, intelligence and perceptiveness. Distinguished by their unique use of form, texture, shape, color, and words, and by the profound thinking behind her words and works, her works include acrylic and watercolor, ink, pencil, crayon and collage, “icons” and triptychs – vibrant works on wood that combine these elements - and collections of poetry and drawings.
Read more →Andrew Gold (1951-2011) possessed prodigious talent, found rarely in each generation: a passionate singer, a astute songwriter, a creative producer, and a virtuoso on multiple musical instruments. He was also skilled with drawing and fashioned many works on paper, including self-portraits, studies, cartoons, illustrated commentaries, and more. On POBA, we see some of his never-released demos and recordings as well as original works on paper.
Read more →Duayne Hatchett (1925-2015) was a prolific sculptor, painter, printmaker and University at Buffalo professor whose artwork reflected a constant drive to experiment and a profound curiosity about the world around him. In 1967 one of his sculptures was featured on the cover of the Whitney Annual. His work is in a number of museum collections, including the Whitney, Smithsonian, the Albright Knox, and Carnegie Museum of Art.
Read more →Josh Holland (1921-2011) studied at the Art Institute in Chicago and kept sketchbooks for 75 years. Following a seminal 33-year career in meteorology, he returned to art as a primary focus in 1981. A realist, he painted beauty he saw in people and places, visibly exploring relationships in space.
Read more →Anabel Schreiber Holland (1923-2011) studied art at the Corcoran School in Washington, DC, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Drawing and painting came naturally to her. Her work was ebullient and inventive, transformed by her fragile health and complex family life.
Read more →Norma Holt (1918-2013) was a prolific photographer whose focus on children, women and the working poor in New York, the larger U.S., and internationally, revealed the everyday faces of humanity during tumultuous, often pivotal moments in history. From the streets of New York to the Israeli-Arab conflict and a fishing community in Cape Cod, Holt captured real people in simple, powerful images.
Read more →Friedolin Kessler (1913-1995) was a resident camp artist of the Missouri (and later) San Jose, CA CCC where he remained a prolific artist and teacher. Friedolin was accomplished in oil painting, watercolor, charcoal, linoleum cuts, photography, and wood mosaics. His entire life was about art.
Carol Kessler (1916-2004) was an artist and designer in San Jose, CA for over 60 years. Adventurous in life and on the canvas, Carol created drawn works in oil, acrylic, pastel, watercolor, collages, graphic arts, fiber arts, wearable arts and became especially proficient in the demanding work of serigraphy (silk screening). She also was a pioneer in culinary arts, viewing this an art form on its own. Her work in fiber arts remains groundbreaking to this day.
Michael Malpass (1946-1991) was a gentle giant, a man possessed of both great presence and immense strength who wielded these powers in the pursuit of beauty. His body of work was eclectic, but he was best known for his sculpture, especially the spheres he forged from found industrial objects. His career saw him continually broaden the scope of his creative efforts – at the time of his untimely death he had created 300 sculptures, as well as extensive artworks in other mediums.
Read more →Daniel Mincer (1953-1981) grew up immersed in both the music and visual arts of the 1960s-1970s. He was an active and engaged young artist who worked fluently in several media including oil, pastel, batik and charcoal/pencil. His subjects were derived from daily life, including still compositions, photographs, self-portraits and nudes. His works reveal a compelling mix of visual clarity, technical proficiency and strong emotional content.
Read more →Louis Nardo (1946-2009) possessed an artist’s soul, a painter’s vision and a craftsman’s hands. He was exceptionally skilled at painting, woodworking, ceramics, graphics and 3D animation, and most powerfully in his photography. Nardo’s images show reverence for the thing itself (“eo ipso”) - the simple day-to-day objects that through his camera’s eye are captured with astonishing brilliance, relief, and vividness.
Read more →Tara Peckham is an artist working in multiple mediums, primarily painting and photography. All of their work navigates the balance between the self and the other. In blending reality and fluidity, structure and play, sensory memories and dreams, their work has become an act of self analysis and meditation. The colours and subjects they use have been heavily influenced by their cultural background.
Read more →David Prifti (1961-2011) lived his life with passion, relentless energy and an unfaltering appetite for art and learning. A dedicated father, husband and an inspirational teacher, he was famous for saying “Do something for your art every day!” As these works show, he relished and captured personal connection. Prifti created two distinct bodies of work, Photographic Assemblages and Tintypes, which show us his mastery of the wet plate collodion method of the 1850s.
Read more →From an early age, the arts were an important part of Lorna Ritz's life. She dueted flute with her Mother, a concert pianist, who enrolled her in art museum classes when she was six. Lorna received a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She taught and exhibited at art schools, universities, galleries, and studios around the world. Lorna's work exhibit her belief that how colors relate is everything: the color finds the light, creates the shape.
Read more →Pamela Roberts (1953-1998) was a largely self-taught artist in L.A., whose interests spanned punk music, tattoo art, and finally, her own unforgettable paintings. At the time of her death, she was gaining well-deserved recognition as an “urban outsider.” Her work is characterized by a unique combination of beauty, warmth, sweetness, and wit.
Read more →Daryl Rosen (1951-1973) lived a life on the move, expressing herself from an early age in art and adventure with all the exuberance, hope and passion of the young. She was not blessed with a long life, and the circumstances of her death - quick, hard, and utterly unexpected - left little time for her works to be organized, saved or preserved. POBA is fortunate to have been given access to a small, surviving trove of her watercolors, oils, and sculpture.
Read more →Bernice Massé Rosenthal (1938 - 2022) began work as a Registered Nurse in Boston. There she met a crowd of young artists and decided to go to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her focus was on stone sculpture and painting. She was awarded the Fifth-Year traveling fellowship which she took in Greece. Lots of stone in Greece. She was hooked. Bernice became an artist.
Read more →Toni Fields Schiff (1931-2013) became a painter late in life, and most notably, after she became blind in her 50s and developed Parkinson’s disease in her 60s. Undaunted, Toni created strong, colorful, and detailed works that range from the delicious to the mysterious. Her paintings are a pleasure to view both from the outside and through a canvas window into the artist’s mind.
Read more →Barbara Shilo (1923-2015) drew evocative paintings using real and symbolic subject matter to express her concerns for social justice. She is best known for her exhibit, Silent Voices Speak, a vivid depiction of Jewish life leading up to and during the Holocaust.
Read more →Eugene “Gene” Spatz (1943-2003) was a pioneer of the paparazzi movement in America. A keen observer from a very young age, he wielded his camera to give the public captivating insight into the fabulous lives of New York, Hollywood and other celebrities during the 1970s and 80s. The range of personalities and styles in his photos is vast, including the likes of Andy Warhol, Robert DeNiro, Muhammad Ali, John Lennon, Mary Tyler Moore, members of the Kennedy family, and many more.
Read more →George Tate (1920-1992) captured the giddiness and hope of a place and time with mesmerizing depictions of mid-century Southern California and Las Vegas. From the 1950s on, his photos show both the ordinary features and extraordinary vibrancy of the southwest, including Vegas and southern California, with its hustle and bustle, Hollywood hopefuls, beach life, and the swooping car life that presaged California’s new suburbs.
Read more →Clark Tippet (1955-1992) was one of the most acclaimed dancers and most promising choreographers of ballet in modern American dance. As Principal Dancer for the American Ballet Theatre (1976-1990), he danced in and with some of the greatest talents of his day including Baryshnikov, Tharp, and Parsons, and created numerous works for ABT and other dance companies.
Read more →Horst Trave (1918 – 2012) was an influential artist in the San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionists and led a multi-faceted and adventurous life in his own right. Idealistic and always self-effacing, the German-born Trave painted thousands of works over some sixty years that also saw him in the roles of anti-fascist draft evader, US soldier in the Intelligence Department, student, arts teacher, home builder and husband.
Read more →Eli Waldron (1916-1980) was a remarkably talented literary and visual artist, whose articles, short stories, poems and drawings reveal penetrating wit, wry humor, uncanny imagination, and an enduring artistic and social sensibility. Part of a literary circle that included Richard Gehman, Hollis Alpert, Josephine Herbst, S. J. Perleman, and J. D. Salinger, Waldron was published both during his lifetime and posthumously.
Read more →