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Stan Bitters is a 21st - century caveman . In a windowless blade construction on an industrial strip of Fresno , California , the 76 - year - old sculptor shapes earth , water , and blast into primeval ceramic forms . It is a ritual free-base more on instinct than intellectual precept . “ It ’s not about thinking about the mud , ” he say . “ It ’s really perplex in there and manipulate it — mashing it and flap it — until it grow some feeling of admirability , something earthy and textural . ”
A Stan Bitters water bulwark in a Hollywood Hills , California , habitation . Photo by : Richard Powers . SEE MORE PHOTOS OF HIS WORK
bitter ’ art bears the mark of his own two hands , often quite literally . “ Stan ’s work is special because you’re able to see the appendage , ” articulate Pamela Shamshiri , a partner at the Los Angeles blueprint collective Commune who has commissioned Bitters ’ oeuvre for residential DoI , garden , and the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs , California . “ I mean , his thumbprint are in it . ”
As a innovator of the organic modernist trade movement in the sixties , Bitters has been producing rough - hewn ceramic birdhouse , planters , pedestals , mural tile , totem , bowlder wall , and outflow for more than half a hundred . He has mesmerized designer , landscapers , and collector from the start but was of late discovered by a articulatio coxae novel audience . Actress Cameron Diaz has a Bitters weewee rampart at her beach house , and Commune commissioned him to create a radical of two - narration hearth that are focal points at the Ace Hotel .
bitter ’ piece of work is peculiarly democratic in Southern California , fitting in with dwelling that swan in style from New to Mediterranean . John Heiden , owner of the Los Angeles artwork firm Smog Design , put pedestal made by Bitters onto his flagstone - paved patio and topped them with his bonsai accumulation . Stephen Kaufman , a political jurisprudence lawyer , moved a Bitters wall sculpture from one theater to his current residence in Los Feliz . “ We had it reconstructed as a loose - stand piece , ” Kaufman says . “ It complements the garden , but when you look out at it from in spite of appearance , it seem to be an extension of the house . ”
A ceramic tile and stucco fireplace frieze is the starkly vertical focal point of this Los Angeles garden , designed by the Commune figure collective . Commune commission Bitters to create a wall painting that would punctuate the garden ’s gamy walls , which were set up to leave privateness , cover the dissonance from kitty mechanics , and produce the feeling of a deep-set courtyard . “ The ordered series of his employment is unbelievable , ” says Commune ’s Pamela Shamshiri . “ He has acquire ceramic art and pushed it to its limits . ” Photo by : Lisa Romerein . SEE MORE photo OF HIS WORK
Landscape designer Matthew Brown aver Bitters ’ work is more about a property - the pile and desert landscape of California - than a metre period . “ His pieces are so of nature that they accommodate in seamlessly in a garden , ” Brown aver . “ You might not even notice his work at first , but when you do it really experience part of the outside experience . ”
Bitters earned a unmarried man ’s grade in paint from UCLA , but he chose a different route in 1959 when he signed on as a designer for Hans Sumpf , at that time the globe ’s largest manufacturer of adobe brick brick . “ They gave me 20 tons of Lucius DuBignon Clay , ” he recalls , “ and necessitate me to bring forth a vendable object . ” He made birdhouse , pot , tiles , and tremendous planters for shopping malls . He also explore the architectural software of his work with frieze and clay tiles that could be strung together and used as room dividers indoors and as magnanimous - scale wind chimes outside .
Sizable commissions take after , including an iconic fountain titledDancing Watersin a shopping mall designed by landscape architect Garrett Eckbo . In 1969 , Bitters finish a fantastic 300 - foot - long high - relief wall painting for the Fresno headquarters of Duncan Ceramic Arts , a maker of products for hobbyist potter . The wall painting featured circular medallion in carnival colors , chemical element that by design recall folkloric Norse and Mexican crafts , the work of interior designer Alexander Girard , and the optimism of the hippie geological era .
Bamboolike totems with actual bamboo in the background . Photo by : Michael Wilkinson . SEE MORE picture OF HIS WORK
Another breathing in , Bitters says , is “ the gestural posture ” of abstract expressionist ceramist Peter Voulkos . “ He record what could be bestow in stiff , ” Bitters order . “ Having grown up in Fresno where Duncan was really the conniption with its small ashtrays , his body of work was a thinker - blower . He wake up an energy that obligate me to do born , organic body of work on a large scale . ”
Bitters documented his process and work in the 1976 bookEnvironmental Ceramics , which has since been reissued and serve as a textbook of variety for his guest . “ There were a stack of how - to books at the time , and my seeking was to enlarge the thinking and content to go beyond making the small paw - oblige teacupful , ” he explains . “ I see ceramic as a centerpiece - indoors or outdoors - something that live perpetually with texture and color that engages you visually and physically , a presence that can be felt and touch . In line to pristine marble and bronze sculptures you set aside to view from a distance , my material leave you to be involved in it . ”
With the advent of what Bitters call “ trash loge ” computer architecture in the 1980s and 1990s , the artist felt pushed aside but continued to pursue his sculptural study . But in the last tenner , a revitalization of stake in post - and - beam and sheath field architecture as well as midcentury modern interior and garden inspire a rediscovery of Bitters ’ hand-crafted work . His vintage pieces begin to get premium prices at Los Angeles galleries like Reform , which sold giant thumb pots ( list for the textured convention impart by bitterness ’ quarter round ) for up to $ 5,000 each .
In 2001 , creative person representative Scott Nadeau , owner of Ten 10 Design in Los Angeles , see a Bitters spell among midcentury pottery he was buying from an estate . scheme by its configuration , he go after Bitters down and has since placed Bitters ’ work in gallery , admit a current show ( through June ) at Found on Melrose Avenue . He ’s also the artist ’s rep for more than two XII residential commissions .
“ I ’ve always been hip , ” says Bitters , laughing . “ It was just a matter of being institute . I am finally being recognized and mass are mindful that I am not utter yet . ”
Far from it . In summation to clay , Bitters works in bronze and stainless steel and just completed his first jet made from concrete and colored glass for a business district Los Angeles high - rise . He hopes to travel one day to the Turkish archaeological site at Göbekli Tepe to view the 12,000 - twelvemonth - former cut up limestone columns latterly unearthed there . “ They had just come out of the caves , ” he says of the unknown sculpturer ’ place on the evolutionary timeline . “ I was blown off by how much they copy what I was doing with my monoliths in the late 1960s . ”
This is humor , not hubris , bitterness - style . The sculptor , who happily calls himself an “ onetime hippie ” and describes event as “ happenings , ” feels a creative kinship with the first artists . “ I imagine a caveman sitting by the fire , looking at his drawings on the rampart and thinking about what he has done for his environment , ” he says . “ I ’m an organic piece . I sit with the caveman . It ’s where I am comfortable . ”
Check outten10site.comfor additional designs and prowess byStan Bitters . Get up close and personal with Bitters ' work at the Ace Hotel Palm Springs ( acehotel.com/palmsprings ) .
This article appeared in the June 2012 issue as " An Artist ’s Touch . "
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