JACK CHIPMAN:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The following is a condensed version of my art career to the time of this writing (1/1/06).
I grew up in Monrovia, a suburb of Los Angeles. I began to draw at a rather young age and art became my primary interest scholastically as I matured. My art classes at Monrovia High School were not particularly memorable. I do remember enjoying the one class I had with Vida Hackman, however. After graduation, I immediately applied to the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and was accepted. My parents were generally supportive and made it financially possible for me to attend. Chouinard was in a period of transition when I studied there. It soon disappeared and in its place the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) emerged as an entirely new educational model. Although my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree states that I graduated from Cal Arts, this event actually predated the opening of the new campus in Valencia.
At Chouinard, it was my good fortune to study with Emerson Woelffer. His influence was strong; his stature as a professional artist probably impressing me even more than his teaching style. Woelffer was the best abstract expressionist in LA at the time and his painting process fascinated me. I was also inspired by the work of many of the New York painters; especially Robert Motherwell and (naturally) Jackson Pollack. Another teacher at Chouinard who influenced me was Harold Kramer. He remains one of the most underrated of LA artists. He helped ground me in the fundamentals of drawing which would allow me the freedom to explore more conceptual territory down the road.
After art school, I opted for a change of scenery and moved to San Francisco. And what a change it was! I was amazed that two cities so close geographically could otherwise be so far removed. I fully intended to go for a Masters degree at the San Francisco Art Institute but ended up taking only a couple of classes there. I was too eager to begin working on my own, and further study seemed like an impediment at the time. I’m afraid the work I produced at first was rather derivative of Woelffer. It took a while to shake his influence and develop a personal direction.
One day while meditating, the concept for what became known as “rippings” came to me. In essence, it involved the act of ripping a stretched and primed canvas into strips of various widths before painting it. Prior to ripping, I would subject the primed canvas to some rough treatment after removing it from the stretcher frame. This resulted in a pattern of crinkles and creases that was enhanced when the strips were later soaked in an acrylic-dye mixture. The painted strips were then assembled and attached to a horizontal support (at first, wood; later, bamboo) so that the ends spilled onto the floor.
When the rippings (and allied “soul totems”) were first exhibited in the early 1970s, critical notice and awards followed as did more group and solo shows. The state of the economy at the time and the fact that San Francisco had a limited collector base for cutting-edge (ripping-edge, in my case) art, meant that sales were limited. This necessitated a part-time job to support myself and maintain a studio space. After working at various jobs, I discovered flea market selling—of collectibles, especially pottery—to be relatively easy money. Also at this time, I began writing for a new publication called ARTWEEK—originally a weekly newspaper that mainly listed and reviewed exhibitions in the Bay Area. Instead of reviewing, I did studio visits/interviews with emerging artists in the area. The art scene was not as expansive as it is today so it was relatively easy to find interesting new artists to feature. This turned out to be a good way to network as well. Since writing was something I never intended to do, this episode, in retrospect, amounted to on-the-job training and a foreshadowing of things to come.
As I gained more experience in flea market buying and selling, an unexpected thing happened: I got hooked on pottery. What had started innocently enough became an obsession by the end of the 1970s. At this time, a family crisis arose, forcing a return to Southern California. The novelty of living in San Francisco had worn thin so I actually looked forward to returning. Besides, the California pottery that now had such a hold on me would be much more easily found in the southland.
The crisis concerned my mom’s losing battle with cancer. Her death was a big blow but I comforted myself with daily treasure hunting for more pottery to collect and sell. It became harder to part with the good examples found, and my growing curiosity about the objects inevitably led me to research a little-known ceramic industry that had thrived in Southern California from the early 1930s into the 1960s. I wanted to discover why I was so enamored of the pottery and spent many hours in the downtown LA library going through arcane periodicals and old phone books. Naturally my art career suffered. In fact, for much of the 1980s art production took a sabbatical.
All this research eventually led to writing reference books about my beloved California Pottery. As it turned out, other people besides me had fallen prey to these pots so the books I wrote became good sellers. It was fellow collector and artist Howard Smith that I must credit for finally getting me back on the art track. When he discovered I was an exhibited artist and had stopped working, he made it clear that I should get it back in gear. To do this, I rented a studio at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, an artists’ commune of sorts located on a scenic strip of parkland overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Once there, I found it very difficult to get back into the swing of things despite the energy of other artists working all around me. Among other things, I began to tinker with small mixed-media assemblages composed of items I had picked up during my many flea market forays. The most significant work done at Angel’s Gate was a series called “Loss Angeles.” This was a group of paintings with ceramic objects attached to signify various lost landmarks of the LA area like the Brown Derby restaurant. The series was exhibited at the Gate Gallery.
In the early 1990s, I moved into a small one story live-work artists’ building located near the World Trade Center in downtown Long Beach. I spent a productive year there with a couple of on-again, off-again assistants. The death of my father in 1993 provided me (an only child) with the opportunity to relocate on the west side of LA and finally purchase a home. A few years later I was able to add a large studio with 7 skylights to the back of the post-WWII tract house I had bought in Venice.
While in Long Beach, I began to revisit the inspiration that had distinguished my work of the 70s, although I altered the look by ripping and reassembling completed paintings. In 1998 a group of these new rippings was shown at the Orlando Gallery in Sherman Oaks. By the way, this gallery has been in continuous operation since 1958 and has been where numerous prominent artists had their first show. In 2001, my work was included in “Chouinard: A Living Legacy” at the Oceanside Museum of Art.
The newest work merges hard-edge elements with fluid abstract color-field paint handling and is not ripped. I've tried to retire "the ripper" but he keeps rearing his aggressive head. Thus, a few of the new paintings have been ripped and reattached to their original stretcher frames. Today, I continue to explore this new-old territory. I’m also producing related imagery on heavyweight Arches watercolor paper.
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