Friday, April 14, 2006

REMINDER: Volunteer Appreciation Party on Wed. April 19 from 5:30 - 7:30 pm

Please don’t forget that Tacoma Art Museum’s annual Volunteer Appreciation Party is on Wednesday, April 19 from 5:30 - 7:30 pm in the first floor Event Space at the museum.

 

Contact: Jana Wennstrom at 253.272.4258 x 3030 or Jwennstrom@TacomaArtMuseum.org if you have any questions. (and to RSVP)

 

Thank YOU!

 

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

Thursday, April 13, 2006

FW: TRAINING REMINDER: Tues. April 18, 6-9 pm - Essence of Line Drawing Class

Here is the Mapquest map for the location of next Tuesday’s training at Pacific Avenue S 24th Street:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?email=1&mapdat

 

 

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 


From: Heide Fernandez-Llamazares
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 2:56 PM
Subject: TRAINING REMINDER: Tues. April 18, 6-9 pm – Essence of Line Drawing Class

 

Our next training session is on Tuesday, April 18 from 6:00-9:00pm (NOT Wednesday like some of my emails have recently said).

This will be an actual Drawing Techniques Class to prepare us all for Essence of Line: French Drawings from Ingres to Degas

 

Location of Drawing Class:

The Essence of Line drawing workshop is NOT going to be at Tacoma Art Museum.

It is going to be taught at the Tacoma Academy of Fine Art on Pacific Avenue and South 24th Street, and we will meet there at 6:00 pm. The building straddles Commerce and Pacific, but the Tacoma Academy of Fine Art entrance is on Commerce Street. Parking is available on Commerce Street in front of the building, and along the side of the building on South 24th Street. The evening will be longer than usual – from 6-9 pm. The purpose of the training is to introduce you to a variety of materials used in the Essence of Line exhibition. Hans Nordlund is the instructor. We can arrange to meet here and go together if people want to.

 

Carri and I will be there a little early, outside the building to make sure everyone finds it.

See you there!

 

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

 

Viktor Schreckengost's Jazz Bowl

Here are some answers to recent questions from docents about the Jazz Bowl.

These answers were provided by Patricia McDonnell and Zoe Donnell, who also works in Curatorial.

 

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Jazz Bowl:        

http://www.viktorschreckengost.org/ThreeWorlds/FineArts/JazzBowls

www.viktorschreckengost.org

 

 

Is the bowl that we have in GAT the exact bowl (the original) that he made for Eleanor Roosevelt?  

No. The bowl was made in multiples from the start. So there is no single, original bowl.

 

“A week after the bowl was shipped, the gallery called to say that the lady who ordered it was so pleased that she wanted to order two more. She said that her husband Franklin loved it, too. One was to be sent to her house in Hyde Park, New York, and the other was to the White House in Washington. The lady was, of course, Eleanor Roosevelt. So I knew, too, that FDR was running seriously for president.... We did two versions of the bowl. One was the famous bowl. It was expensive--$50, a high price then. The other, we referred to as the 'Poor man’s bowl' and was not etched, but just painted. ... And no, I don’t have one. Guy Cowan produced about 50 more after Eleanor Roosevelt’s order.”

-- Quoted in "Viktor Schreckengost: An American Design Giant," The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles (January 2001), pp 27-29 by Mark Favermann

http://www.viktorschreckengost.org/ThreeWorlds/FineArts/JazzBowls

 

How many copies/versions of the bowl did Viktor Schreckengost make?

We don’t know.

According to the above quote, it seems that about 50 bowls were produced initially, in the style we have in the Great American Thing – three different styles were eventually made at different price-points and using slightly different techniques.

Also, a reproduction of the Jazz Bowl is being made for Viktor Schreckengost’s 100th birthday this year (2006). See http://www.viktorschreckengost.org/nce/lectureseries/copy_of_jazzbowl.  

 

Were the bowls made by Viktor Schreckengost or did he just design them?

As far as I [Zoe] can tell from my brief research, the bowls were designed by Schreckengost but not necessarily made by him. The Cowan Pottery website seems to say that the artists designed the objects, and the pottery studio produced them.  

 

Cleveland Museum of Art – New Yorker or The Jazz Bowl

Viktor Schreckengost (American, 1906), made by Cowan Pottery Studio (American) ca. 1930.

http://www.clevelandart.org/explore/work.asp?searchText=jazz+bowl&recNo=0&tab=2&display=

Schreckengost produced the Jazz Bowl in 1930, when he worked for Cowan Pottery in Rocky River, Ohio. The first Jazz Bowl (currently unlocated) was produced for Eleanor Roosevelt to celebrate her husband's recent election as governor of New York. Ralph Cowan liked the design so well that he then produced a small edition of similar punch bowls. When Art Deco began to be rediscovered in the 1980s, the Jazz Bowl quickly emerged as one of the masterpieces of this 1930s style.

The design of the Jazz Bowl was created by scratching through a covering of black slip to reveal the white clay underneath, after firing, the whole bowl was covered with a rich glaze of Egyptian blue; and then fired again. The result is a design of amazing vibrancy that glows like a stained glass window. Rendered in a jazzy, cubist style, the images on the bowl were inspired by a visit Schreckengost made to New York. Included are skyscrapers, a luxury ocean liner steaming on the Hudson River, Times Square (with its neon lights), the Cotton Club, and Radio City Music Hall, with its magnificent Wurlitzer organ. A drumhead featuring the word "Jazz" prompted the bowl's popular name.

One note of warning, another website said that the Jazz Bowl was commissioned to celebrate FDR’s presidential (not gubernatorial) run. So there is some murkiness out there!

 

Cleveland Museum of Art – Cocktails and Cigarettes Punch Bowl

designed by Viktor Schreckengost (American, 1906), made by Cowan Pottery Studio (American) 1931.

http://www.clevelandart.org/explore/work.asp?searchText=jazz+bowl&recNo=1&tab=2&display=

Shortly after producing the Jazz Bowl, Schreckengost created a second punch bowl featuring cocktails and cigarettes. It was this bowl that Schreckengost exhibited at the Cleveland Museum of Art's May Show in 1931, where it won first prize in ceramics. The bowl was purchased from the show by S. Livingston Mather, a descendent of the famous 17th-century Puritan moralist, Cotton Mather.

 

About the “sgraffito” technique:

http://www.markbassett.com/cowan.htm

The sgrafitto technique – which R. Guy Cowan called "Dry Point" – involves covering a plain bisque-fired plate with black engobe, a mixture of slip and black pigment. Viktor then used a group of sharp tools to draw the design on this ceramic canvas by scratching away some of the engobe. When the drawing was complete, the piece was dipped into Cowan's brilliant Egyptian Blue crackle glaze.

 

Lastly, Zoe found this info on the Schreckengost website (www.viktorschreckengost.com). It gives more of an idea of quantities produced (and of the variations):

Viktor Schreckengost created The New Yorker (nicknamed The Jazz Bowl) at Cleveland’s Cowan Pottery at the behest of Eleanor Roosevelt. Drawing on his trips to Manhattan, Viktor etched the bowl with New York themes: from soaring buildings and jazz motifs to ocean liners and café scenes. He finished it with a cobalt blue glaze to capture the "funny blue light in New York in 1931 when Cab Calloway's band was playing." The result was a striking vision of New York City in the Jazz Age.

There are three different shapes of bowls within the New Yorker series of pieces. The wall of the original bowl is roughly parabolic, although, like the flared that followed, different decorations were applied. The flared bowls are slightly smaller than their parabolic predecessors. This design fit better in the kiln and was therefore more easily reproduced. The decorations for both were created using sgraffito, or hand-scratching the design through black engobe. The third style, called the poor-man's bowl, was significantly cheaper to produce because the designs were cast in relief and the engobe was removed on the production line by scraping. Recognized only recently as companions to the bowls, matching plates were decorated with the same themes as their mates.

While no one knows exactly how many Jazz Bowls were created, it is roughly estimated that fifty examples of each shape were produced. The Jazz Bowl’s renown – and value – has only grown over time: the most recent sale topped $254,000 at Sotheby’s. Bowls and plates are now found in the permanent collections of many of the nation’s most prominent museums.

 

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

 

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

TRAINING REMINDER: Tues. April 18, 6-9 pm - Essence of Line Drawing Class

Our next training session is on Tuesday, April 18 from 6:00-9:00pm (NOT Wednesday like some of my emails have recently said).

This will be an actual Drawing Techniques Class to prepare us all for Essence of Line: French Drawings from Ingres to Degas

 

Location of Drawing Class:

The Essence of Line drawing workshop is NOT going to be at Tacoma Art Museum.

It is going to be taught at the Tacoma Academy of Fine Art on Pacific Avenue and South 24th Street, and we will meet there at 6:00 pm. The building straddles Commerce and Pacific, but the Tacoma Academy of Fine Art entrance is on Commerce Street. Parking is available on Commerce Street in front of the building, and along the side of the building on South 24th Street. The evening will be longer than usual – from 6-9 pm. The purpose of the training is to introduce you to a variety of materials used in the Essence of Line exhibition. Hans Nordlund is the instructor. We can arrange to meet here and go together if people want to.

 

Carri and I will be there a little early, outside the building to make sure everyone finds it.

See you there!

 

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 

 

FW: I hate flowers.

I think Barbara’s comments about this quote are very relevant. (see below)

I just thought the quote was funny, especially when we see so many visitors who love and gush over Georgia O’Keeffe’s flower paintings.

 

I saw the quote on a website (flickr to be precise), and just thought it was funny and that you, as docents, would also find it funny and interesting. I did research the quote a little bit on the internet, but was unable to put it in context or find any source for it. I found the quote on www.brainyquote.com, and that website doesn’t give any reference to where the quote came from originally.

 

Anyway, I don’t want to misrepresent Georgia O’Keeffe as a flower-hater. I know several of you have ready biographies of her (and I haven’t), and probably have a better idea of how it was meant.

 

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!

 


From: Barbara Abegg [mailto:babegg1@comcast.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 10:55 PM
To: Heide Fernandez-Llamazares
Subject: RE: I hate flowers.

 

Heidi--

 

This quote must have been tongue-in-cheek.  I have just finished reading a 500-page biography on O'Keeffe and read that she loved flowers and all natural life.  Whether they have all the sexual connotations that many see in them is a debatable issue.  Georgia denied that they did; however, she loved playing the devil's advocate at times,especially to some people she may have disapproved of.

 

Barbara

-----Original Message-----
From: Heide Fernandez-Llamazares [mailto:HLlamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org]
Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 12:24 PM
Subject: I hate flowers.

An interesting Georgia O’Keeffe quotation…

 

“I hate flowers. I only paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.”

Georgia O’Keeffe quote

 

 

Heide Fernandez-Llamazares

Assistant Museum Educator and Docent Coordinator

hllamazares@TacomaArtMuseum.org

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, Washington 98402

T: 253.272.4258 x3018

F: 253.627.1898

www.TacomaArtMuseum.org

Become a Member Today!