JB Blunk 1926-2002

Working primarily in wood and ceramic, James Blain Blunk developed a distinct style that drew upon the Japanese principle of directness as well as an unfaltering reverence for the natural world, particularly ecology and primordial landscapes. Taking forms from antiquity and mysticism and translating them instinctively through raw, salvaged materials, Blunk produced a body of work that represents an innate expression of, and conversation with, nature. 

Blunk's interest in Japanese ceramics was spurred by his studies under Laura Andreson at the University of California, Los Angeles. After graduation, he was drafted into the army and stationed in Korea, where a short training trip to Japan led to a chance encounter with the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. After his discharge from the army in 1952, and with Noguchi's introduction, Blunk worked for four months in the Kamakura studio of the noted ceramicist Kitaoji Rosanjin. He then spent fourteen months in the Bizen workshop of Kaneshige Toyo. These apprenticeships offered Blunk firsthand exposure to Japan's ancient unglazed ceramic tradition. Blunk's instruction in the power of the elemental-earth, water, and fire-would become fundamental to the character of his own work. He took these principles back to California in 1954, settling in Inverness, fifty miles north of San Francisco, in 1956. There, between 1959 and 1962, the artist built and furnished a home and studio for his family on an acre of land gifted by his friend and patron, the surrealist painter Gordon Onslow Ford. Single-handedly producing both the structure and the contents of the home-the wooden furniture as well as the ceramics used daily for eating and drinking-Blunk considered it to be his masterpiece.

The project demonstrates Blunk's disregard for category in art-making, producing work that exists as a riposte to any claim of sensible distinction between sculpture that makes a utilitarian statement and that which is abstract. It was also the catalyst for the artist's turn towards wood as his primary medium, after which he often foraged trunks and rare burls from felled trees found on nearby beaches. In 1969, Blunk created The Planet, now on permanent view at the Oakland Museum of California, from a single redwood root structure. On Blunk's use of reclaimed redwoods, Noguchi has noted, "JB does them honor in carving them as he does, finding true art in the working, allowing their ponderous bulk, waking them from their long sleep to become part of our own life and times, sharing with us the afterglow of a land that was once here." Blunk was a pioneer of the 1960s back-to-the-land movement, and he was one of the first artists to be described as a California Craftsman.

museum exhibitions and collections

JB Blunk's work has been exhibited widely in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan. In 2018, the Oakland Museum of California staged the retrospective JB Blunk: Nature, Art & Everyday Life. Also in 2018, the two-person exhibition In Conversation: Alma Allen & JB Blunk opened at the Palm Springs Art Museum before traveling to the Nevada Museum of Art in 2019. The first major monograph on the artist was published in 2020, with contributions by Lucy Lippard, Glenn Adamson, Fariba Bogzaran, and Louise Allison Cort. Blunk's work is included in the collections of the Oakland Museum of California; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; M+, Hong Kong; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.