Paul Hultberg Memorial 31 Dec 2020, 1:39 am

Paul Eric Hultberg aka Paul Hammer-Hultberg • January 6, 1926–December 3, 2019

“There are those who dream of death as a waking up from life” ~ Paul Hultberg

PAUL by Ethel Hultberg • acrylic on canvas 40″ x 48″ (101.6 cm x 121.92 cm)

INTRODUCTION

Paul Hammer Hultberg passed away on December 3rd of 2019.

We planned a memorial service for him in the Spring of 2020 in France, but due to the current situation facing all of us, it was not to be. 

A year had passed. We decided to build a memorial page and create an interactive component where everyone who wanted could participate no matter where they were in the world.

Paul Hultberg circa 1927

We were very moved by the many lovely comments family members received to their Facebook pages in response to the announcements we posted in regard to Paul’s passing. But as the one-year anniversary came and went without a proper memorial we wanted to host a more formal event. A celebration that would provide greater closure and honor the father, husband, brother, teacher, inventor and artist whom we all loved so dearly.

This page and the comment section at the bottom was an opportunity for each of us to share our stories of Paul, our sentiments, poems, pictures, videos and photographs, creating a more permanent record than what would have otherwise been lost in the ever cycling feed of Facebook. It also provides the opportunity for those who are not on social media to be able to participate.

We’ve created this virtual memorial space on our family website where we can keep a permanent record of whatever is shared. We began gathering on January 6th, 2021, which would have been Paul’s 95th birthday.  We’re glad you’ve joined us and we would love to hear from you. So, when you’re done perusing the page, you can leave comments and respond to the comments of other visitors and share whatever your heart desires.

The comment section at the bottom of the page opened on January 6th, 2021. We originally intended to keep the commenting open for one week, but decided to keep it open indefinitely, at least until such time that spammers discover it and begin using it for their own purposes.

NOTE: We encourage those wanting to place images, photos or short videos into the comment section, but because of security limitations you’ll have to email the file to Lawrence at admin@hultberg.com and he will upload it for you and place it with your comment.

Mabel Hammer, Paul’s mother died in 1936 when he was only 8 years old. She had modeled for advertisements published in Ladies Home Journal for Gold Medal Flour, toothpaste and other things.

When Paul’s mother Mabel died, his father John sent Paul and his sister to live with relatives in Fresno California. The two older brothers stayed with their father. In order to be sure they all remained close, the children were required to write to each other on a weekly basis. Drawings were allowed, so the correspondence included lots of cartooning. This was influential in Paul’s own path toward becoming an artist, and was perhaps for his brother John as well, for he too was a painter.

“I often apply the unfired enamel (a sand-like material) to copper in a manner reminiscent of the way sand is affected by the forces of nature–that is, by gravity (dusting, throwing, dropping); by wind (blowing); by erosion (scratching, pushing, pulling); by water (dribbling, splashing); or by a combination of these in which the memory of the fluidity of water can be preserved by means of the fact that dry sand will stick to a pattern of wetness. I feel that this mimicry of processes, rather than the artful delineation of appearances, allows me to work as abstractly as nature and yet evoke many of those emotions which constitute our response to the visible world and that often give is a feeling of ‘place’. I fire my work on a bed of torches so arranged as to travel along a track which will accommodate a piece up to ten feet in length.”

Astronauts, yes
But also poets
Visit the moon

~ Translations From the Limbic: Forty-One Small Poems by Paul Hammer-Hultberg

Leaves of Fall
Borne on the water
Pass me by

 

Last nights dream
Mingles with
Waters of the creek

 

Last nights rain
Steals away
In the morning mist

 

Some rain drops
Briefly patterns
The moving waters

 

Trees and clouds
Mirrored in the stream
Are dashed upon the rocks

~ A Deck of Fifty One: Fifty-One Small Poems by Paul Hammer-Hultberg

 

 

Hultberg family portrait by George Ancona circa 1970

“After having found the impetus to write, the problem is really not at all what to write, which is probably quite obvious to you for certainly you cannot write what is not in you to write), but rather what not to write (is the problem); for actually everything which is possible for you to write, you have already written (figuratively that is, in the mind) and what remains for you to do is to sift out from this mass that which you want to be read, and this, write! Aldous Huxley once caused a character of his to say, in effect: “You can do nothing in life which is not like you”; which is something like saying, “You cannot walk down this lane and escape the fact of having walked down this lane”.

~ Paul Hultberg

 

 

 

In my mind’s eye I see Paul sitting on the terrace  of Les Deux Garcons cafe, on the Cour Mirabeau in Aix en Provence savoring a big fat Havana cigar, with smoke curling softly around him. Over perpetual cups of coffee he talks about Cezanne’s fascination with the light and shade traveling across the facade of Mont Sainte-Victoire during the course of a day.  

We can watch this sun and shadow play from the yard of the little house we are staying in. Cezanne’s studio is nearby. We found it while driving to a vineyard to buy wine for dinner. That was 50 years ago and we had no thought of ever living in Europe.

In 2008, years ago we moved to Sauve, a small medieval village in southern France. We bought a house overlooking a river and packed a couple of suitcases with our clothes and left our entire life behind; the house Paul built, our studios and gallery, the gardens and orchard, our books, and all our artwork.

Lawrence moved from California to stay in the New York house until it sold. Jesse moved down from Paris and spent a year helping make this 1000 year old stone house habitable; electricity, plumbing, all had to be done. Peter, Marilyn and grandkids, Sam, Gabe and Lawrence’s son Nathan came to visit. And a few years later, Cassie moved from the west coast to live nearby.

Paul, now over 80, settled in as if he had always lived here. He made friends easily, went for his daily walks in the nearby woods, did his yoga on the terrace, and gave up cigars. We were very happy. He became more interested in writing his haiku and fanciful stories about talking stones, than he was in painting or print making. He always continued to draw and made friends with Robert Crumb, our near neighbor, whose graphic abilities appealed to him and whose good nature was much like his own.

For a few years this was our calm and peaceful life. When Paul became forgetful, we’d laugh chalking it up to old age. When he developed some neurological problems and had trouble walking we sent back to N.Y. for his beloved canes which he had always taken with him when walking in the woods.

His physical deterioration developed slowly but soon we had to admit there was a serious problem. Here in Sauve the doctor’s advice was clear, “Go home”, he said, and “enjoy the rest of your life together”. “There is no cure or beneficial medication  for Alzheimer’s.”

And that’s what we did. Jesse stayed on with us to help and the generous French social security system provided nurses, physical therapists, whatever was necessary as things progressed. Cassie was also nearby and on hand.

When Paul fell and broke his hip, even though the surgeon’s work was successful, it robbed him of the motivation to move. Bedridden he required more intensive care so the nurses came twice a day to attend him. The doctor made regular visits and the physical therapists helped him to move his body.

Paul never forgot who we were and was completely conscious and aware that all of his children came to stay with him during this period.

Thanks to Sauve’s medical staff, who were here at the end, Paul’s death was painless and peaceful.

He lives in my mind as the strong handsome loving man I married. He was intelligent, funny, incredibly generous and a marvelous, sensitive, gifted teacher. My teacher. Encouraging me to paint, and giving me his studio was the most fabulous gift of love and generosity I could ever have imagined.

Two of his own sayings, carved onto a piece of wood by a Rasta friend in Jamaica, hangs  on our terrace here in Sauve.

One side says,

“Self Help Is On The Way”,

and the other side ,

“Where There’s a Whim There’s a Way”.

Paul filled our life with love, imagination and possibilities.

I can’t imagine there being a better way to live.

Ethel Hultberg

 

 

Paul and Ethel Hultberg

 

Drawing by Paul Hultberg given to his wife Ethel circa 1950

 

“Among the losses of my life, there is one which is among the most anguishing, and that is, I never kept a written record of the sequence of my readings, or, for that matter, my first encounters with the work of poets, composers, authors, artists, whose concepts have become the stepping stones in the brook of my life. If only I had such a list now, such a treasured guide could lead me to retrace the steps of my past, and perhaps relive some of the thrills of discovery I once experienced”

~ Paul Hultberg

 

Ethel and Paul Hultberg in their jungle-like patio in Pomona, NY

 

 

Paul Hammer Hultberg was :

A Poet, a Punster and a Writer.

He loved Haikus, William Blake. and wrote his own translation of Beowulf.

He quoted Shakespeare and Chaucer in Olde English.

In modern English he wrote The Two Stones. 
A children’s adventure where most of the characters were various rocks who lived in a different space/time that he named the Flickering. If you want a basic understanding of geology, I recommend The Two Stones by Paul Hammer Hultberg.

He was a flutist, a cartoonist, a yogi, and an acupressure and laminating enthusiast.

Most known as an enamel muralist and abstract expressionist.

He later turned to portraits and landscapes.

One year he took plastic wrappings from the cigars he smoked and glued them to transparent revolving polarized discs. He then projected light through the revolving discs which when refracted from the plastic, displayed moving shapes, forms  and colors wherever it landed. True to his Scandinavian roots Paul called it the Lumenflinger  (pronounced in a Swedish accent).

He was a photographer and a filmmaker. I was ten years  old when he got all of his friends and family together to make a western satire called Bad Mattresses.

He was a graphic artist and graphics teacher. He systematically gave all of his students an A. What was the point of a lower grade as long as you showed up and tried?

He was a World War II veteran who participated in the occupation of Japan where he picked up some of the language.

He was a dandy, and an orphan who made a family. He was a humorist who’s jokes flew far above the head of his audience.

He was a Californian and a New Yorker who had traveled in Mexico, the Philippines, Japan and finally settled in France.

He was an ex-patriot. He was an avant-gardist.

My father improved my kindness by showing me how it’s done.

He demonstrated to me how self destruction can be willfully slowed and/or stopped by simply slowing or stopping it.

He eased me away from my fears of love and creativity.

Alongside my mother, he created who I am by example, and molded my way of life.

I couldn’t have done it without them both and I will always be grateful.

Here’s an old Swedish song that Paul loved to quote

My name is Yon Yonson,

I live in Wisconsin.

I work in a lumber yard there.

The people I meet as

I walk down the street,

They say “Hello!”

 I say “Hello!”

They say “What’s your name.”

I say: My name is Yon Yonson… (repeated again and again).

Here’s to all of us repeating again and again, the love and kindness that Paul left with us.

Jesse Hultberg

 

 

“I’m persistently amazed by the realization that pigment particles unlock the spectral colors sealed in light, and that the artist can bind these particles to canvas in selectively combined patterns and markings out of which arises like a spectre, the optical illusion which Goethe called the visual truth. But what truly amazes me is that in doing so, the artist can also express something of his own.”

~ Paul Hultberg

 

Landscape • Paul Hultberg

“Dad…? You there…?”

“…Yeah, I’m here… How did you do that?” 

“What…?”

“Get me here?”  

“I’m not sure… I was just thinking of you… then, I just thought… Ask him… go ahead… so I asked out loud… “Dad, You there??” … and then you answered. So… I  guess this is how it works…”

“Hahahha Yeah!” 

“Ha!! of course, you knew all along how things like this ‘get happened’ – didn’t you??! I should have known!”

“Yep!”

“Ok, Right!! Well I just wanted to tell you that I called you because I want to talk to you… and I’m sorry that I haven’t asked for you to come until now… cuz, it’s been a whole year since you left the planet. God, I really miss you so much, Dad! I should have at least tried before this…”

“Oh, don’t worry about that…! I’m always around,  I’m just ‘Out Here’ now somehow… and you’re just sort of ‘Over There’, somehow… You know, it’s kind of like in “The Wizard of Oz”… You remember how it went… Right? When he gets up into the hot air balloon and fires it up and it takes off… and Dorothy yells up for him to WAIT… But the balloon just keeps rising and rising – and all he can yell back is… “I can’t stop this thing, I don’t know how it works!!” Remember that?? Well, that’s kind of how this is and it’s ok. I don’t really know ‘how it works’ either, but here we are Somehow, together!”

“God, Dad!  Oh man, there are just so many things… I don’t know where to begin!  I want to tell about ALL the things that happened and all that we did together… All the stories! All the jokes! All the insanely funny things you ever said and did… EVERYTHING! I want All the memories of being with you to be here!”

“Well, there’s plenty of time for all that from where I am… an INFINITE amount of time Out here, Whew!!! –  Let me tell you! So you can start wherever you want, and if you can’t finish it all today… there’s always tomorrow… Because, from where I am… You guessed it – ‘The Sky’s the limit’!! – haha, to coin a phrase!! So, I can come to be with you anytime you call…”

“I want to tell them about the “LMNO” story.”

“OH, hahaha, that’s a good one! You were just 4 or 5, I think… and I was getting you ready to go to your kindergarten class… and suddenly you asked me…”Dad, how do you spell LMNO?” Because you had been given the assignment to write out the alphabet… and you said you didn’t know how to spell that part… Hahaha I really laughed over that one!”

“Yeah – yeah! That one!” 

“Well… I explained to you that they were all separate letters in the alphabet and then I showed you how to write it out, of course – and we put your coat on and then, when we got outside… you told me that I had to walk all the way on the other side of the boulevard… because you said you were a big girl now… And, I have to tell you … I was pretty nervous about letting you walk down that sidewalk all the way to school, all by yourself – with me all the way on the other side of the street… and, I tried not to look at you too much because I knew you wanted to feel independent…”

“But… You let me do it anyway!”  

“Yep! I wanted you to feel like you could do it – and you did it!  I was amazed that you never even once looked over at me… You just looked straight ahead – marching like a little soldier – a tiny little pink hooded soldier, and you had your paper with your alphabet written on it… I was proud of you!”

“Oh, Dad… that was a good day.”

“Yeah… I’ll never forget it!”

“Oh… And do you remember the Peanut Butter Cookie story… And Charleen was there too – you remember her don’t you???”

“Sure… I remember that day and I remember Charleen too!!! How could I forget it?? That day will go down in Infamy!!! I remember that you asked me if I would like to have some peanut butter cookies… and how could I ever say ‘NO’ to that idea??”

“Yeah, Dad… I knew you would say yes to peanut butter cookies!”

“Well, Who could ever refuse peanut butter cookies… unless maybe if they were Chocolate Chips?”

“And… what did I do??”

“Well, as I recall, you put the jar of peanut butter on the counter and as you turned to grab a baking pan, your elbow hit that jar… and it flew off the counter onto the floor with such a whoosh – and it smashed into smithereens!! All that peanut butter got just pasted onto the floor… and all the shards of glass were mixed up with it… it was hopeless! And, I will never forget the look on your face… hahahaha… “Dad???!!!” you asked me with your eyes…” 

“And you said… Don’t, worry… I ‘ll just go to the store and get another one.”  And you took off in a flash… Charleen and I just stared at the mess on the floor… And then Charleen said to me when you left, “Cass… I love your Dad!!! He is so great! I mean he just took off to the store like Superman, ALL just for a jar of peanut butter!!!”  

“Yep,  hahahahahaha and then, I got back with the jar of peanut butter… and you placed in it on the counter in the same spot…”

“I know… and then, like an idiot… I… just…

“Yep – you turned just like before to get the baking pan, and your elbow hit the jar just exactly like the first time… And BAM! That jar hit the floor like a ton of bricks!”  

“Yeah.. none of us could believe it… We all just looked at it.. amazed… and then I looked up at you… I was like… just hopeless, wasn’t I??”

“Haahhahaha oh yeah… and I knew what I had to do. I just said… Yep… Don’t worry – I’m already going – be back in a minute!  We need those cookies BADLY!!!”

You see, my Dad, Paul Hultberg, was a magical being. And one of his most magical qualities was his amazing patience – and another of his most magical qualities was his never -ending generosity of spirit! 

He was a genius painter and a world-famous enamelist. And, he invented a new way to make enamels on copper which I don’t think anyone has ever reproduced yet. Yeah, he was a great enamelist – and great teacher.

In fact, he was a Master Teacher, because he really understood how to take complicated concepts and techniques for doing things, and somehow he magically knew how to make them seem easy and uncomplicated – and his students loved him for it. He taught painting and drawing and graphic arts at Rockland Community College, a two year college in Suffern, New York. But, many would come back to take the same classes he taught over and over again for years, because he was always innovating and doing new things. I took all of his art classes. So I got the pleasure of watching him with his students. He made some accomplished painters out of tired old retirees who had never put a brush to canvas before, thus helping many people to rejuvenate their lives in a whole new way.

And, before he and my mother moved to France, he loved walking the trails in the woods near their old house in New York and quietly helped to keep them in good order (someone had to do it, so he did it, and like any good secret caretaker, he didn’t ask for a medal for doing it, he just did it because it was the right thing to do).

Among other things, he loved poetry and music. And, from the time he was a small boy until nearly the last year of his life, he drew cartoons which were often hilarious and sometimes also quite poignant.

He could also recite Chaucer in ‘Olde English’ and Beowulf. He knew many Shakespeare sonnets by heart. ‘Willy the Shake’ he called him. And he was infamous for his for his endless puns, and jokes, and sometimes practical jokes too! 

One time my parents had a big party and there was this one guy there who was known for literally taking any drug offered to him. So, Dad told this guy that he had a really great drug that he thought he would just love. Then he ran upstairs and got an Alka-Seltzer tablet and he scraped off the logo from it and carved the word ‘EXIT’ on it and gave to him. That guy was thrilled and downed it right away. Needless to say, the fellow had quite a surprise experience! “EXIT”, only my father could have thought of that one!

One of the things he LOVED the most was making us kids breakfast in the morning. So, many a Sunday morning, he would give Ethel a chance to sleep in, and he would make us Buckwheat pancakes in the shapes of mermaids and swans. And we were ALWAYS allowed as much maple syrup as we wanted! 

And in the dead of winter, he would pack us kids up in blankets and take us riding through the park (also always on a Sunday for Ethel’s sake), in the Old crank-up Model ‘A’ which had curtains with purple fringe. Soon he would stop, when he found a marsh by the side of the road and get out of the car with a glass mayonnaise jar. And we would ask him “Dad, what are you doing with that jar”, and he would say “I’m going to make a ONE QUART WORLD!!” And he would dip that jar deep into the muck of the swamp… and seal it up tight. Then we would drive back to the house, and he would place that jar on the window sill in the sun, and we would wait and wait for days to see what would happen.  

When He knew the One Quart World was ready he would gather us kids on the couch to watch the show. He would place the One Quart World on a tall stool and hang an old sheet on the wall in front of it. Then he would shine a bright lamp behind the jar and the show began!  

All the little marsh creatures who had been sleeping in the wintery marsh, after a couple of days on the sunny window sill – they came to LIFE, because they thought it was SPRING TIME. We could see them swimming and frolicking in their little One Quart World. Of course, we being little kids we had no idea about these tiny creatures and their busy life. Those were the kinds of things our Dad did with us all the time. To this day I marvel at how he could think up these amazing and wonderful things to show us!

Paul was a Man for All Seasons!  All of our friends and family loved him, and we will always love him!  He was made for LOVE – that was his purpose really! We were so lucky to have him in our lives!

Cassie Callan

 

 

 

 

 

My advice is this: Leave the beaten path and take the short-cut that leads to the riches of life!

What is this short-cut to riches? That’s what I want to know!

Take a walk in the country. It’s good to get alone.

You can get a loan in the country?

Sure. It’s an excellent way to get alone. Listen, go to the riverbank.

Oh, at the River Bank?

Yes, that’s right, go to the bank, sit down and ask yourself: Can I do this without a prophet?

A profit! That’s what I need!

Wait! Maybe you don’t need a prophet. Maybe you can invest in yourself.

Of course, yes! Invest!!

 In mySELF??

 

~ Paul Hultberg

 

 

My father was the kindest person I ever knew and likely, the person I have loved the most in the world. My dad represented the very model of what kindness is and perhaps should be, at least for me. Some part of him is in me when I extend kindness towards others.

 

Dad taught me how to use a paintbrush when painting a window sash; how to hammer a nail straight (he was so good at that), how to saw wood, and how to make a fire in the fire place using just 1 piece of newspaper. 

 

Growing up I’d often be around to help him with various projects or repairs around the house. Like most kids I wanted to do the cool dangerous jobs working the fancy tools like drilling a hole into sheet metal or sharpening the blade of our lawn mower, but he rarely let me, mostly cause he wanted to get the job done. I’d nag him so much he would just go off, go the bathroom, get a beer or smoke a cigar, until I lost interest. But he never stopped inviting me to help the next time. He had a Yankee screwdriver I use to love to play with to the point of almost breaking. I still have it. I don’t think it works.

 

When I was 10 years old dad was building his new studio. He commissioned me to do a very important job. I spent 3 days over a weekend helping mix cement and set up bricks and concrete blocks close by for the bricklayers to conveniently reach, slap cement on and place them to build the exterior wall.  I really loved doing that. I felt so grown up, like I was part of the work crew.

 

It’s my father’s actions that speak to me the most. When I’m “in action” I often feel I’m being like him in some way. Mar and I just bought our first home. When visiting him, his dementia raging, a few weeks before he passed away I showed him a picture of it and explained to him that it was my home and he gave me huge smile. He really got it. He understood my happiness.

 

Tending to it is like my new hobby and I love it, just like he did. I don’t think I’ll ever be as good as him when it comes to being handy but because of him I go into a project fully expecting I will succeed. Sometimes I don’t, but it never occurs to me that I won’t, before giving it a try. I never felt more like him as I do now.

 

Home and family were very important to him. His quiet and steady presence, his determination, his kindness and good humor, and his being grounded with knowledge of physical materials and the physical world, may have provided a necessary example that keeps me quietly resolute on my path.

Peter Hultberg

 

 

 

Portrait by Paul Hultberg of his grandson Nathan • acrylic on canvas • 48″ x 60″

 

Paul Hultberg was a quiet, soft-spoken man. Some might say reserved, and perhaps even aloof at times. He was a man of concentrated reflection who pondered the paradoxical mysteries of life.

He loved nature, spending time walking in the woods or sitting by a pond or stream, musing over the ever changing reflections caste upon its surface. He was fascinated by the myriad ways nature manifested its complex designs upon the world, at times even mesmerized by its abstractions.

He sought to duplicate and incorporate into his work the same processes that were at play in the surrounding environment. His imagination was also captivated by the interplay of light and shadow, something he mastered and mirrored well in his drawings and paintings.

As talented and skilled as he was as an artist, one might say that he was really an inventor at heart, a perpetual experimenter. He delved deeply into processes, seeking to figure out how things worked. How elements interacted and played upon each other. Often spending more time exploring the processes leading to a body of work, than on the eventual outcome, the ultimate distillation of his experiments.

These experimentations were well documented in his copious notes, as were his sketches, doodles and privately expressed thoughts. He played with words in the same manner he did the elements, testing and teasing out with his poems, puns and anecdotes their many layered meanings, interplays and usefulness. His quick wit and jocular persona displayed a wry sense of humor that often highlighted the ironic complexities of life.

While I can’t say that I inherited my father’s talent or skills as an artist, for that was a developed craft he well honed with study and practice, I feel fortunate to have at least received the creative spirit, if you will, from both him and my mother, and a common curiosity from my father about the inner workings of the natural world and its underlying geometric forms and fractally expressed components. The very building blocks of all that we perceive in the physical realm. I suppose that my predilection for documenting and archiving life experiences could be seen as analogous to my father’s own penchant for chronicling the many steps he took on his life path and in exploring his mediums of choice and producing a body of work, as well as the recording of his ideas for inventions and new processes.

I learned a lot about my father through his art and by the way he approached life and his life’s work. Being the custodian of the family archive, I’m still discovering things through his notebooks, sketchbooks and journals that were previously unknown to me. 

I truly idolized my father, though I’m not sure he ever really knew that. Having left home relatively early in life (at 16), and soon thereafter having a family and businesses of my own in California (at 20), we didn’t have the opportunity to spend as much time together as I would have liked in retrospect, other than during holidays and family gatherings and such. Unlike me, he wasn’t much of a phone person, and neither of us were letter writers.

And though I never had the good fortune to take or even attend any of his classes, I cherish the time I had with him growing up. Being able to watch him work in his studio and even upon occasion being able to make enamels with him.

As a child I delighted in his drawings, caricatures and cartoons. Begging him to play Exquisite Corpse. The game where a paper is folded in thirds with one person drawing the head, another the body and the last the legs and feet. All done without seeing what the other’s drew until the paper was unfolded. I couldn’t wait to see the part Pop drew! …because it was always so cool. I called him pOp, because that was how he signed my birthday cards, with little rays coming off the O as if it were a balloon popping. And of course, his sleight of hand routines were always entertaining. I’m forever grateful for him teaching me the classic French Drop, for palming a quarter. I’ve entertained countless children over the years with that one little trick. 

Paul Hultberg’s public legacy as an artist is already caste as an abstract “enamel muralist”. And though the broader scope of his creative exploits far surpasses the limitations imposed by that moniker, he was certainly a pioneer in that endeavor, using the enamel medium to produce abstract expressionist ‘paintings’ on copper and steel unlike anyone before him, or since.

Over the last three years I’ve been steadily conserving a large body of his enamels, cataloging and preparing pieces for exhibition, publication, donations and sales. The body of work spans the four decades he dedicated to expressing his unique vision in that particular medium.  

It’s a great honor for me to be the custodian of this remarkable body of work, and to be conserving it and helping to bring it to the attention of a wider audience. The work stands alone. Though I hesitate to label it as his “life’s work”, because his life was more than just that. Our father had moved on from the enamels more than thirty years ago, producing other considerable bodies of work. He also contributed greatly to the lives of his many students over the years. The life he gave me and to each of my siblings, and all the lives he touched upon with his teachings were also his life’s work. As was the lifetime he dedicated to his wife, my mother, whom he adored.      

Lawrence Hultberg

 

Family Portrait by George Ancona

 

 

Take a moment to listen to Tightrope, a beautiful original tune by Jesse Hultberg from his album 20 Years Old. If you watch it full screen you’ll get a closer view of the portrait paintings by Paul Hammer-Hultberg that Rachael Wolf of Wolfworks Studios used in producing this lovely video for Jesse. It’s also a nice tune to have playing while viewing this page.

 

 

If you have not already watched the award winning film Reflections: the imagery of Paul Hultberg enamelist produced in 1967 by filmmaker/photographer George Ancona, or if you wish to see it again in the digitally remastered version, we invite you to watch it now…

 

 

Paul Hultberg self portrait • acrylic on canvas

One of the things that I always marveled at was my father’s uncanny ability to recite long stanzas of ancient verse by rote that he had committed to memory as a young man, from Shakespeare to Chaucer to old gallic poems.

He was well versed in the classics; literary, musical and all the master artists.

Here, in the video on the right, Paul is recorded by Jesse reciting works by “Willy the Shake” and “Geoffrey the Chauce”, while sitting in a small park along the River Vidourle in the Village of Sauve where he and Ethel lived together for 12 years, and where Ethel and Cassie still live.

Jesse is currently living in Monpellier, about a 45 minute drive from Sauve. Peter is living in New Jersey and I’m in Oklahoma City.

In the video below, Pop recites more Olde English verse sitting in the living room of their home in Sauve.  

Lawrence Hultberg

 

Paul-Hammer Hultberg • photo Cassie Callan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was the sunrise on the morning of December 3, 2019, the day Paul passed away…

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The enamel artwork of Paul Hultberg NYC and Miami 4 Nov 2017, 3:45 pm

The enamel artwork of Paul Hultberg produced by the artist during the 1960’s and the 1970’s will be featured during The Salon: Art+Design show and at the Design Miami global forum for design.

We have paired up with Moderne Gallery of Philadelphia for both the The Salon: Art+Design show in NYC, and Design Miami in December in conjunction with Art Miami/Art Basel. The enamel murals of Paul Hammer-Hultberg will be exhibited with the mid-century modern furniture of George Nakashima, and the work of other artists represented by Robert Aibel of Moderne Gallery.

The Salon: Art+Design
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue
between 66/67 streets
New York, NY USA

“The Salon Art + Design welcomes the world’s finest international galleries exhibiting historical, modern and contemporary furniture, groundbreaking design and late 19th through 21st century art. Visitors will find designs by the great 20th century masters, as well as creative works by today’s most innovative young artists. Look for Art Deco, Mid Century Modern from America, France, Italy, and Scandinavia paired with the work today’s emerging designers.”

Tickets: https://www.thesalonny.com/

Design Miami
Meridian Avenue & 19th
Adjacent to the Miami Beach Convention Center
Miami Beach, FL USA

“Design Miami/ is the global forum for design. Each fair brings together the most influential collectors, gallerists, designers, curators and critics from around the world in celebration of design culture and commerce. Occurring alongside the Art Basel fairs in Miami, USA each December and Basel, Switzerland each June, Design Miami/ has become the premier venue for collecting, exhibiting, discussing and creating collectible design.”

Tickets: http://miami2017.designmiami.com/

Anyone interested in learning more can contact us via email.

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Vintage enamels by Paul Hultberg exhibited in NYC & Miami 9 Oct 2017, 10:31 pm

Copper enamel by Paul Hultberg • 12″ x 12″ • circa 1960’s

Vintage enamels by artist Paul Hultberg, aka Paul Hammer-Hultberg will be featured at two upcoming art venues, The Salon Art+Design at the Park Avenue Armory in NYC and Design Miami adjacent to the Miami Beach Convention Center in conjunction with the Art Basel Miami fair. The work will be displayed for sale at both shows in the booth’s of the internationally renown Moderne Gallery of Philadelphia. In addition to several monumental architectural pieces by the artist from the 1970’s, a series of smaller works from the 1960’s will also be offered for the first time in over 30 years.

LINKS:

MODERNE GALLERY   •   THE SALON ART+DESIGN   •   DESIGN MIAMI/BASEL   •   PAUL HULTBERG

ARTICLES:

Pioneers of enamel in USA  •  Paul Hultberg: the enamel as mural  •  Enameling in the footsteps of painting

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Pomona Exhibit • Artist Caroline Crawford 27 May 2017, 1:59 pm

The ‘playful’ world of Caroline Crawford Show

also marks opening of a new gallery in Pomona

“In the best of all worlds, I think that human beings want more than anything ti indulge in joyful play,” say Caroline Crawford about he new exhibition of paintings and sculptures opening at Artworks, a new gallery in Pomona.

Ms. Crawford’s exhibit, her first in nearly eight years, opens on Saturday with a reception from 4 to 7 p.m., to which the public is invited.

Known heretofore for her artistry with stained glass, Ms. Crawford has, with the new show, expanded her artistic horizons to include painting, drawing and sculpture.

“About four years ago,” she says, “I began to shift from realism to abstraction and began working with watercolors of shapes floating about and colliding. I also used collage, mixed media and tried to find interesting paint surfaces.”

“This year, with Ethel Hultberg’s urging,” she continues, “I decided to take a break from stained glas work and devote myself entirely to various media. I wanted to encounter new materials and see what I could do with them.” Most of all, I wanted to play.

She explains “play” as meaning the free use of materials and colors and “putting them together in some new way.” “It’s amazing,” she explains, how much hard work ‘play can be.”

Mrs Hultberg is co-owner of a the new gallery with her husband, Paul Hultberg. Both are artists. The gallery is located at 240 Quaker Road, Pomona.

For her exhibition, Ms. Crawford began going beyond the flat surfaces and straight edges of canvas and began cutting shapes out of plywood and assembling them to form three-dimensional wall sculptures. “I cover the surfaces with bright paint and textures, adding things like glitter, beads, sequins — whatever comes to mind for a particular piece.”

She also credits music as being as influence in her work. “I try and get a “jazzy” movement in the pieces,” she says.

Papier-mache sculptures are also among her recent creations, many of them quite large. These will also be seen in the new show. (The papier-mache picture on the cover of Weekend, title “Housing Complex of African Hornbills,” is more than six feet high.)

Caroline Crawford at work on one of her colorful sculptures in her Pomona Gallery

Ms. Crawford, who is a resident of Pomona attended the Art Students League, Rockland Community College and studied figure drawing with Ken Nishi. She has taught at the Woody Crest School in Pomona and the Rockland Center for the Arts. She has had many exhibitions in Rockland.

Of her new show, Ms. Crawford says, “The main focus is that I am doing something new and sharing it with folks, I truly hope it is infectious and makes people happy.”

The new Artworks gallery, according to Mrs. Hultberg, will be run by artists, with exhibitions — “hopefully 12 exhibitions a year,” she says — to reflect both “originality and quality.”

“Galleries are usually directed by art dealers, not artists,” she continues. “Rockland County has been unique in having such a gallery as Thorpe Intermedia, a highly successful exhibition space run by artists. Artworks offers another such opportunity.”

Ms. Crawford’s exhibition at Artworks will continue through July 27 and can be viewed weekends from 1 to 5 p.m., or at other times by appointment. For more information call 354-0487 or 354-9160.

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Artist Ethel Hultberg • Hooked Art 12 May 2017, 11:20 pm

Artist Ethel Hultberg is Hooked on Art

A pair of wallhangings — more properly, hooked rugs of wool fiber — greets the eye on entering a caverous room housing the Fiberworks exhibition now under way at the Thorpe Intermedia Gallery in Sparkill.

The two wallhangings, “Staghorn Ferns” and “Monsterra and Curves,” are the work of a one-time teacher, art administrator, radio commentator, and now housewife and mother of four, Ethel Hultberg, who with her husband, RCC art teacher Paul Hultberg, resides in Pomona.

What makes the rugs exceptional in an exhibition full of outstanding examples of fiber art is the fact that they represent but two of an outpouring of nearly 13 rugs executed by Mrs. Hultberg within the space of nine months—each one a work of art, in which color compliments material, and the materials are melded into designs that are both striking and beautiful.

Although utilitarian in appearance, these hooked rugs are beyond use as mere floor coverings.

What makes Mrs. Hultberg’s enterprise perhaps a bit more unusual is the sudden reawakening of one housewife’s long dormant creativity. Mrs. Hultberg said it had been 22 years since she last put her hands on a shuttle hook, the essential tool used in the making of hooked rugs.

The device is used to thread yarn from the back of the canvas to the front side. It creates the loop which contributes to the completed design.

Of that first encounter with hooked rugs back in 1958, she recalls: “Paul and I were then living on the Land (the cooperative in Stony Point) and I was pregnant with my son Peter. I had not been feeling well and John Cage (the composer) would come over to the house to keep me company. While he was doing some composing, I was hooking a rug. At the end of winter—after four months—he had finished his winter music and I had my hooked rug.

“I put it on the floor and in three weeks there was no color on it. It had faded out to zip, having used old reprocessed wool. I had wasted four months. So I got very discouraged and didn’t do it again.”

Ethel Hultberg working on a hooked rug in her greenhouse, with stacked bins of yarns nearby. At left, she works with the shuttlehook. At bottom, a hooked rug titled Dottie’s Iris, and above it, ‘Staghorn Fern,’ which is now being shown at Thorpe Intermedia Gallery in Sparkill.

That is, until last February, when she decided to try her hand again at making hooked rugs.

Triggering her renewed interest was the fact that Mrs. Hultberg has a well-developed green thumb. She is surrounded by an array of flowers, plants and assorted exotic flora, not only on the greenhouse attached to her home, but throughout the rambling house itself.

“I decided to use the greenhouse as my studio,” she says. “My work has been greatly influenced by this. In fact, the first eight rugs were all of the plants I grow myself.”

How does she arrive at a specific design?

“That decision,” she replies, “has been fairly organic, literally—in the beginning, flowers and plants. As I see images in the rugs I’m doing, so the next one is determined. It’s an organic flowing kind of thing.”

How does she transfer her a design on to her canvas?

“I work in several different ways. For some of my plant rugs I cut the actual plant out and project it onto a canvas with an overhead projector. In this method I was helped by my husband. He taught me how to use the overhead projector, so that I can do this by myself now.”

“In another method,” Mrs. Hultberg continues, “I project color slides of plants directly onto the canvas, very much as the magic realists work. In these designs what I additionally see is the breakup of light, which gave me my first clear picture of what abstract design might look like.

“And there’s a third method I sometimes use. I will cut out designs, make drawings of shape or forms on colored craft paper, and just play with them on different colored backgrounds.”

Mrs. Hultberg admits that her long-time interest in feminist matters has also been tapped as a source for her hooked rug making. “My most recent work,” she says, “embodies the theme of Ishtar, goddess of all creation, along with her Holy Daughter. I’m going to do a series of female goddesses, enough eventually for an entire show on the mythic female figure.”

Expressing with ardor her feminist views, she asserts: “I truly believe that our Judeo-Christian culture helped kill off an earlier culture in which a female deity reigned supreme. And in reigning supreme, we had a priesthood, or priestesshood, if you prefer. We had lawyers, doctors, real estate agents and the whole hierarchy of society. Men stayed home to take care of the children and the weaving.”

Does she think women want to return to that earlier time when they dominated men she is asked?

“No,” she replies, “I think the period of domination is coming to a close. I think woman dominated once. I think men have dominated for a very long time. And now I think we are approaching the period of equality.”

So, is this what her weaving is all about, or at least being targeted to, she is asked?

Then, taking the edge off the gravity with which she has stated her views, she smiles ans says, “No. Of course not. It’s just an idea that preoccupies me at the moment.”

But the subject does occupy her and she returns to it, “Women have got to assume an equal role in society with men so that they can feel good about each other. Men have dominated for a long time and have managed to produce an ugly society.”

Returning to the subject of her hooked rugs, Mrs. Hultberg is asked where she purchases her yarns and her canvasses.

“For the most part, I can buy all my needs in the county. Occasionally, I will send to New York City for certain yarns that I cannot find here.”

In the preparation of attaching the canvas to backing — the gluing, stitching and binding — which can be a physical chore, Mrs. Hultberg sayd that she is sometimes helped by Jay Fay of Congers.

Paul Hultberg, above, sits on the rose-patterned hooked rug made by his wife, with a projected image of roses which served as the model for the final design. At left, Jay Fay and Ethel Hultberg check over the backing which provides the hooked rug with rigidity. This is the final step in the hooked rug-making process. Fay finishes and glues the backing to the rug and then stitches the binding.

Would she describe her hooked rugs as rugs, wallhangings, or what?

“I thought of them originally has rugs to put on the floor. I plainly see that they are not rugs. I wouldn’t call them wallhangings either, because that implies a craft. What I would like to call my hooked rugs is art, because I feel they transcend the categorization which is often applied to it.”

What else would she like to do with her rediscovered talent for making hooked rugs?

“I plan to next exhibit at the Christmas show being held at the Rockland Center of the Arts, beginning on December 14.

“Then,” she concludes, “I would like to translate some of those astounding images that recently came back from space showing Saturn’s beautiful rings and moons.“

. . .

Source: She’s Hooked On Her Art by Michael Hitzig, staff writer • The Journal News, Sunday, December 7, 1980

Recent Work   Abstracts  Portraits  Flowers  Body Politic  Creatures   Earlier Work

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Lecture on the Artist Paul Hammer-Hultberg 21 Apr 2017, 4:19 pm

Lawrence Hultberg, the son of artist Paul Hammer-Hultberg will give a talk about his father as an artist.

The talk will take place on May 7th at 5 PM at the site of the exhibition FIFTY/50th, a show of period enamel artwork produced by the artist during the 1960’s and 1970’s that is currently showcased at the Pomona Cultural Center. 

The Pomona Cultural Center gallery is open Fridays thru Sundays from 2 PM-6 PM.

The artist talk will be held:
Sunday, May 7th
5 PM-6 PM

Pomona Cultural Center
584 Route 306, Pomona, NY
Gallery hours:
Friday-Sunday, 2–6 PM
Tel: 845-362-8062

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Paul Hultberg: the enamel as mural 9 Apr 2017, 3:08 am

Doors, each 3′ x 7′, of painted enamel on oxidized copper at Living Theater in New York City have reds, oranges and blues with white on interior face and with black on exterior.

Paul Hultberg’s murals exemplify what has happened to enamels in the 20^th century. They have gotten big. They can be used architecturally.

An enameled copper screen, six by eight feet in size, designed and executed by Hultberg, greeted each visitor as he entered the fall show of contemporary enameling in the U.S. at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts (N.Y.C.), September 18-November 29. Other of his wall panels in the exhibition—tall and narrow, square, horizontal—represented Hultberg’s approach to the visual, spatial art. Characterized not only by size, his work at present is also distinguished by his emphasis upon the brush stroke as means of application of the enamel and upon oxidation patterns. His palette usually moves among whites, blacks, rusts. Recently, Hultberg has been developing a new paste enamel in which clay has been mixed and with which he painted directly upon the copper sheet. This new formula creates an image that suggest ceramic tone and an impasto paint surface. He has made a scale model of a free standing hollow wall, six feet tall and twelve feet long, completely faced on all sides and ends with a mural of this type.

“My interest has always been in murals,” he states, “I had a mural business in California years 11 years ago, working with plastics. I had learned the techniques in the workshop with Jose Gutierrez in Mexico City. Although the first murals we did there were frescoes, Jose Gutierrez was more interested in the new media that would withstand outdoor exposure and combine imaginatively with modern architecture. He introduced me to vinyl acetate resins, cellulose nitrate resins and silicon-ester (used to preserve stone by developing on its surface a deposit of pure silicon, constituting a type of ceramics without heat).

Doors, each 3′ x 7′, of painted enamel on oxidized copper at Living Theater in New York City have reds, oranges and blues with white on interior face and with black on exterior.

“Enameled copper murals have great possibilities. They can be made weather resistant by careful mounting. Also, the color range is as inclusive as painting or glass. As shiny enamels tend to reflect light and produce glare, I myself like matt surfaces. The matt effect of naked copper, when treated with oxidation patterns, can have the quality of sculpture: the copper is the form, and the enamel delineates that form.

“One of the technical problems in enamels is warpage. I use a light 28 gauge copper because it is easier to get the warp out. Most enamelists, I understand, use an 18 or 20 gauge. Peterson, the Norwegian enamelist, did research in Europe and told me that many early enamels had been done in light gauge metal. I was glad to hear I had precedents!

“My approach to enamels was originally as a printmaker. While teaching painting, drawing and design at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, I had the opportunity to do experiments in enameling for a year. Walter Rogalski, also a print maker and engraver, joined me in this work. We took off from our point of view of our interests in painting and print making and fooled around in the medium not in the traditional way, but in ways that suited us.

“For one thing, the print maker has a taste for indirect effects, not like the painter, who makes a stroke and there it is—paint. In print making, it is a matter of doing something that does something else: scratching the plate, wax resist, acid, , all kinds of texturing and multiple printings. In enamels, also, the tecniques are indirect. You have the enamel as a granular, sand-like pigment. The problem is how to get this where you want it. It doesn’t handle like paint. The firing changes its coloring and texture. As in print making or ceramics, you don’t know exactly how it will come out.

• 9″ x 27″ panel with white, black, red and silver enamels painted on oxidized copper.

“Another thing that attracted me to enameling was that it forced me to complete something. In painting, when are you finished? In enameling you are finished when the technical requirements have been fulfilled.” This statement, of course, was belied by the pile of “failures” in a corner of Hultberg’s studio, which were technically completed but had not satisfied the enamelist imaginatively.

After the Brooklyn Museum, Hultberg shared a studio with potter Hui Ka Kwong and then did commercial enamels for three years, making more, he estimates, than 45,000 pieces. In 1965, he and his wife and two children (now four) moved to Rockland County as members of the Gate Hill Cooperative near Stony Point, New York where craftsmen David Weinrib, Karen Karnes and M. C. Richards were living and working.

Painted enamel on copper triptych, 3′ x 6′ has white and black enamels combined with copper oxides.

His studio at Gate Hill in the lower floor of his house, which was designed by Coop architect Paul Williams. He has two kilns, a long firing bed of his own design for large panels under which rolls a cart holding gas torches, two large work tables and mural show space. Williams commissioned an enamel mural for the outside wall of his woodshop nearby, which Hultberg completed three years ago.

For the past three years Hultberg has concentrated upon enamels for walls, screens and panels­–with the encouragement and cooperation of Jack Lenore Larson, Karl Mann Associates and the Martha Jackson Gallery, all in New York City.

Born January 6, 1926, in Oakland, California, one of three blonde brothers (a sister, also blonde, came last(. Paul Hultberg was the one known in adolescence as the “artist”. Brother John Hultberg the painter, was then the “writer”; brother Donald, now a physicist in California, was considered the “musical one.” There mother died during their childhood, and their lives revolved around first one relative, and then another, from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. “My father was interested in the common man, in the solution of social and economics problems. My mother was interested in the uncommon man. Sometime I think I have inherited in myself the argument between them. I have the practical interests of my father, plus a tendency toward self effacement; at the same time I have always had a strong feeling of personal destiny.”

Panel, 3′ x 8′, of painted white enamel on oxidized copper

Hultberg is almost as close to inventor as to artist. He has, for example, created a mural process called “Photojector,” which combines the techniques of photography and painting and enables an artist to affix a projected image upon a surface..

He works from “an intention of the size and how I am going to break it up. And as the copper I use comes in widths up to 14 inches, this is an important element in my work. It is part of the craft of mural making to be adaptable to shape. The long thin shape and the square shape particularly interest me, partly because of the difficulties they present.”

He starts by making a number of drawings, feeling out the forms. Then he does color samples, handling the forms to color on scale model enamel panels. He works with one or two firings, and at most three. By applying all elements of his designs for the first firing, the second one may involve only an over-all color or clear glaze.

This was the Fall cover for the 1959 Crafts Horizons magazine that featured the work of enamelist Paul Hultberg. The M.C. Richards’ article came out in the following Spring edition in 1960.

The following steps constitute Hultberg’s usual procedure:

1/ Cuts a piece of copper with a paper cutter, rolls it flat, cleans it with steel wool.

2/ Brushes on design with glycerin and water, which tends to roll and skip on the somewhat oily metal surface; brushes this with mixture to which a commercial binder, “Klyr-Fyre” has been added, somewhat dissolving the oil. These two steps underlie the application of the enamel, which is shaken through a tea strainer over the panel and then dusted off. The enamel sticks to the brush strokes, furthering shaping with brush end.

3/ Bare areas are sometimes brushed with a mixture of vinegar and salt, which influences the oxidation occurring during the firing. The brush work here also retains the character of the stroke–pressure, length, speed, area–a sense of kinetic forces pressing outward.

4/ Lays panel on metal rods of firing bed. Lights torches, passes flames under panel producing red heat, moving flames back and forth to melt the enamel dust. Thereby producing oxidation patterns on bare metal.

5/ Removes panel from bed, rolls it flat as black oxidation pops off and is brushed away, leaving marbled image in blacks, reds and rusts, vivacity of metal on which thick white glass floats.

6/ Applies wax, which slightly darkens the panel. Often with age and exposure, the naked copper may further darken and become green like bronze, an effect which Hultberg likes.

Hultberg’s enamels are distinguished by their use of the copper itself and by their size. “Michelangelo was the earliest influence upon me,” he says, “and Korin screens the latest!”

This is the actual cover of the March / April, 1960 issue of Craft Horizons where the Richards’ article about Paul Hultberg was published.

Although his designs tend to be organic, they are not necessarily representational. Outside murals for the new medical offices of Dr. N. Czukor on Route 9W in West Haverstraw, New York, are in bright floral patterns, since the doctor asked specifically for something “cheerful.” Other look like cosmic kites held held to the sea with long craggy tails; ovum forms, scratched, intersected, veined, like highway blueprints. Relief elements are sometimes welded on a vertical surface, and many of the murals give a feeling of being done with pen rather than brush, of having made use of scragfitto through a second application of color.

Installations of Hultberg’s architectural enamels may be viewed at the following locations: Merck International, Church Street, New York City; executive offices, Dorr-Oliver Corporation, Stanford, Connecticut; office doors, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York City; Lobby Doors, Living Theater, New York City; Malvern Jewish Center, Long Island, New York; fireplace hearth, Edina Country Club, Edina Minnesota; exterior paneling, Walden School, Berkeley, California.

Hultberg’s enamels are not the little jewel-like miniatures one sometimes associates with this craft. His surfaces are the more original expressions of an artist who mixes the visions of painter, print maker and adventurous inventor.

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This article on PAUL HULTBERG by M. C. Richards was first published in the March / April 1960 issue of CRAFT HORIZONS magazine.

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Enameling In the Footsteps of Painting 3 Apr 2017, 5:43 am

Enameling In the Footsteps of Painting: Karl Drerup and Paul Hultberg

Makers: A History of American Studio Craft, Chapter 7 1950–1959 The Second Revival of Crafts

By Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf

By the mid 1950s enameling had become a popular pastime. Many of the jewelry-making textbooks published in the 1950s devoted a few pages to it, and Kenneth Bates’s comprehensive Enameling: Principles and Practice first appeared in 1951. A more accurate sign of the times may have been the 1953 publication of Enameling for Fun and Profit. Enamel in jewelry proliferated. Typically a cloisonné would be mounted in a bezel setting, somewhat like a large flat stone, or small panels would be linked together to make bracelets. This introduction of color to jewelry was seductive, and many people tried their hands at it. Results were mixed. Many jewelers failed to protect the edges of the enamel, leaving it prone to chipping, which gave the medium a bad reputation.

Teachers and professionals in the enameling field had to distinguish their work from the volumes of hobby work. They could do so by complete mastery of technique, larger scale, or artistic sophistication. Bates, with his encyclopedic knowledge of enameling, chose the first option. Monumentality was a path explored by Edward Winter in Cleveland, who created decorative architectural panels using the medium. The third approach for enamelists was following painting, which presented a moving target. What seemed adventurous at the beginning of the 1950s was passé by the end of the decade, and artists who did not change accordingly fell out of fashion. The trajectory can be clearly traced in the differences between Karl Drerup (1904–2000) and Paul Hultberg (born 1926).

Drerup trained as a painter and printmaker in his native Germany. Even as a youth, he was conservative, studying etching and figure drawing while his friends participated in the artistic foment of the Bauhaus. As fascism overtook Europe, he and his wife fled to the Canary Islands and then to the United States, in 1937.

Drerup’s first exposure to contemporary enameling was at a New York showing of a Ceramic National exhibition, where he saw an Edward Winter piece. (Because of the technical similarity between enameling and glazing, ceramics and enamels had been lumped together since the Arts and Crafts period.) Hearing that enamels could be produced more quickly and less expensively than ceramics, Drerup set about teaching himself. He read all the books he could find and experimented. By 1940 he was earning a living making enameled trays, plaques, and jewelry, but his primary ambition was to treat enameling as a form of painting.

A love of tradition led Drerup to the Limoges technique, in which opaque and transparent enamels are layered gradually over a colored (or bare metal) ground. This technique was ideal for both figuration and lush color effects. He worked in the style of the school of Paris, the avant-garde of his youth. Such paintings featured highkey colors, fractured representation of space, and such conventions as still lifes, harlequins, and female nudes. Many enamelists adopted the style. One of Drerup’s painterly enamels is Three Figures (ca. 1955). (Figure 7.25) The faceting of analytic cubism, saturated colors of fauvism, chunky figures of Fernand Léger, heavy black outlines of Georges Rouault—all derived from painting before 1920—can be recognized in the work. The composition is safe, with the three figures carefully balanced.

For years, Drerup was regarded as the artistic equal of Kenneth Bates. He exhibited widely in enameling surveys, national craft shows, and even the 1958 world’s fair in Brussels. By that time, though, critics were questioning craft’s continuing reliance on outdated art styles. Greta Daniel, a curator from MoMA, was not impressed with a 1959 show of French tapestries that similarly worked with the conventions of the 1920s. She dismissed it with the observation that “‘Styled’ eclectic repetitions of old traditional themes survive there, meaninglessly but enduringly, and with a self-conscious determination which no longer relates to life.”72 Within ten years, Drerup’s enamels lost favor. It is not that his work no longer related to life but that it no longer related to contemporary art.

In 1970 the biggest event in the craft field was the Objects: usa exhibition, and Drerup was not invited. Paul Hultberg was. He represented a new generation of enamelists who embraced abstract expressionism. (Figure 7.26) His enamels were big, and he specialized in making enamel look like it was applied in bold brushstrokes. The similarity to paintings by the most graphic of the abstract expressionist artists, like Clyfford Still, was unmistakable. The flavor of urban grit and downtown cool was unmistakable, too.

Figure 7.26. Paul Hultberg, Little Fault, 1972. Enamel on copper; 48 × 24 in. (Courtesy of Lawrence Hultberg. © Paul Hultberg.)

As a young man Hultberg had studied with muralist José Gutierrez in Mexico City. Gutierrez pioneered the use of new synthetic paints to increase the longevity of his murals, and Hultberg became fascinated with the possibility of durable two-dimensional mediums. In the early 1950s, while teaching at the Brooklyn Museum School, he and a printmaker friend started fooling around with enamels, which are durable but cannot be applied like paint (most have a heavy, sandy texture that prevents them from flowing onto a surface).

Hultberg found that he could paint a mixture of water, glycerin, and a commercial binder onto a sheet of copper. Since the mix was thin, it could have all the qualities of an expressive brushstroke. Since it dried slowly, he could sift dry enamel onto the liquid, and the powder would stick. He would then work on the remaining bare metal with another mixture of vinegar and salt, which would etch and encrust the metal during firing. After running through a moving furnace of Hultberg’s design, the copper had splashy brushstrokes in enamel, complemented by oxidized copper in shades of black, rust, and maroon. Hultberg preferred to fire his panels very few times, maintaining a sense of immediacy and bodily gesture. The potter-poet M. C. Richards wrote a glowing article on Hultberg for Craft Horizons in 1959. She noted that his panels were emphatically not jewel-like miniatures, and she enthused about the kinetic quality of his brushwork. Hultberg contributed a fresh new approach to the enamel medium, but he was more of a popularizer than a pioneer. Even as one of his panels was acquired by MoMA for its permanent collection, his enamels were commissioned for apartment buildings, executive suites, doctors’ offices, and the Pan-Am Building. Such wide acceptance suggests that his version of abstract expressionism was, like Drerup’s version of the School of Paris, comfortable. He, too, would be eclipsed by a new taste for decorative, jewel-like qualities. The time for expressionist enamels had passed, and by 1980 his work was seldom exhibited.

Painting like enamel faded after the 1950s. Perhaps the marketplace had been saturated with too many enameled bowls with trite designs, or maybe the medium became inextricably tied in the public imagination to Trinkit kilns and summer camps. There were a few exceptions, such as Bill Helwig (born 1938), a specialist in grisaille (black-on-white) figurative imagery, and Ellamarie (1913– 1976) and Jackson Woolley (1910–1992), who continued to create large architectural work in the School of Paris style. But enameling withdrew to a more intimate scale, to jewelry and vessels in particular. In those two contexts it no longer had to be compared with painting and could find its own standing as a decorative art. Enameling was thus positioned for a renaissance in the 1980s.

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From the 2010 book, Makers: A History of American Studio Craft, by Janet Koplos & Bruce Metcalf; Chapter 7 • 1950–1959 The Second Revival of Crafts

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Pioneers of Enamel in the U.S.A. 3 Apr 2017, 2:49 am

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FIFTY/50th Exhibit 4 Apr 2016, 3:24 pm

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