Lloyd Hamrol
Born 1937, San Francisco, CA
Lives in Los Angeles, CA
I went from graduate school at UCLA in 1963, straight into Minimalism, Jack Kennedy's assassination (the prelude to Vietnam) and the intellectual seedbed of the feminist movement, which had a considerable impact on my philosophical outlook. By 1965 I was trying to integrate reductive structures, androgynous imagery and social utility, but never succeeded in getting more than two out of three together at any one time. Consequently, the work swung back and forth across an arc of interests defined on one end by discrete objects and on the other by transitory collaborative events.
Somewhere in the center of all this, as though in an effort to balance two extremes, I developed a body of static, architecturally defined installations which foretold, through materials and imagistic associations the permanent landscape site projects which were to manifest later, in the '70's and '80's.
Contact the artist at lloydhamrolart@gmail.com
about
recent news • essays • exhibitions • collaborations • collections • awards • bibliography
recent news
by Peter Frank, January 2009
Some of our best sculptors have all but disappeared from our galleries and museums. Their successes have not so much destroyed them as derailed them, shunting their invention and production out of mainstream artistic discourse and into the realm of “public art” – a realm where imagination is challenged so formidably by exigency, and where responses to that challenge can be so handsomely rewarded, that the desolate struggles of the studio are all but left behind. Sooner or later, however, most of the sculptors who so intrigued us two or three decades ago, and whose success then attracted the attention of architects and consultants and cultural commissioners, return to the context of art itself, wanting to explore ideas and methods finally more appropriate to the intimacy of the studio than to the public arena. Many of these artists, we are gratified to find, are deft enough to maintain their involvement with the public sphere while scratching their experimental itch.
Lloyd Hamrol, for one, has returned to object-making even as he continues to evolve as a “public” sculptor...
essays
Studio, 2007
Sited Works Statement
by Lloyd Hamrol
My interest in sited work was an indirect outgrowth of my participation in “AutoBodies,” a performance event produced by Claes Oldenburg in Los Angeles, in 1964. The public aspect of the work, as well as its temporality, challenged my understanding of the limits of art and granted me a passport to explore new territory.
I began to pursue situational installations and artist collaborations on temporary sited work while wrestling with the incongruities between place and object. By 1974, I had redirected my focus to permanent sited works in public places.
Since 1974, I have produced over thirty site-specific public works, primarily in outdoor settings. Many of my public commissions have offered the ideal circumstances for pursuing my interest in demystifying formal sculpture and creating a sense of place at a human scale. Most of these works mediate between architecture and the landscape and, without being specifically functional, establish a locus for audience interaction and play. My work shares with architecture its capacity for shelter and intimacy, allowing it to engage the spectator in the participatory relationship essential to “complete the work.”
- Lloyd Hamrol
Catalogue Statement
by Lawrence Alloway
“…his purpose seems to be to sink his sculptures deeply into the quotidian, where its meaning rests in a Franciscan refusal to shine; it is with ostentatious modesty that he occupies space. A doorway in the rain, a park bench, or chess table under the trees, a grotto, these are the worldly analogues of his sculpture.
“Hamrol’s work belongs to the third phase of Earthworks. First is the period of theoretical formulation and expendable works (1968-69); second is the monumental on-site phase (1969-1973); and third, now, is the high access phase. This consists of works of various sizes but with a persistent connection to leisure and play… The later works are tender, not sublime; physical, not theoretical; inventive, not grand.”
- Lawrence Alloway, Introduction to catalogue, 16 Projects/4 Artists, (1977 Wright State University Art Galleries).
2015 Exhibition, Thomas Paul Fine Art, West Hollywood, CA
2010 Exhibition, Cardwell-Jimmerson Gallery, Culver City, CA
1986 Exhibition/Installation, Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1970 Installation, California State Univ., Fullerton, CA
1969 Installation, Pomona College, Pomona, CA
1968 Installation, La Jolla Museum of Art, La Jolla, CA
1966 Exhibition, “5 x 9”, Rolf Nelson Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Solo exhibitions
exhibitions
The artist at 21 months. Fillmore St.,
San Franscico, CA. First site work.
Group exhibitions
2011 LA5: Sculpture That Shaped the City, PYO Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2011 It Happened at Pomona: Art at Pomona College 1969-1973, part of Pacific Standard Time, organized by the Getty Museum
2008 SoCal: Southern California Art of the 1960s and 70s from LACMA's Collection
1999 Radical Past: Contemporary Art and Music in
Pasadena, 1960 - 1974, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA
1997 Unbuilt So. Calif., Chapman University, Orange, CA
1985 The Artist as Social Designer, LACMA
1981 The Museum as Site: Sixteen Projects, LACMA
1980 XIII Olympic Winter Games, Fine Arts Exhibit, Lake Placid, NY
1980 Across the Nation: Fine Art for Federal Bldgs, 1972 - 79, National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Insititute, Washington D.C. and Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN
1980 Sculpture in California 1975 - 80, San Diego Museum of Art, CA
1980 Urban Encounters/Art Architecture Audience, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Penn., Philadelphia, PA
1977-79 Los Angeles in the Seventies, Fort Worth Art Museum, Fortworth, TX and Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE
1976-77 Painting and Sculpture in California: The Modern Era, San Francsico Museum of Modern Art and Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.
1976 Artpark, Lewiston, NY
1975-77 Site Sculpture, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY
1974 Public Sculpture/Urban Environment, Oakland Museum, CA
1973 Four Los Angeles Sculptors, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
1972 15 Los Angeles Sculptors, Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, CA
1970 String and Rope, Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, NY
1967 American Sculpture of the Sixties: L.A. County Museum of Art and Phildalphia Museum of Art
1966 Annual Exhibition, Sculpture and Prints, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Serpent Mound in construction. 1988, Green Valley Library, Henderson, NV
collaborations
1997-Present TGP Landscape Architects, Canoga Park, CA
1997 The L.A. Group, Landscape Architects, Calabasas Park, CA
1995-96 Purkiss Rose-RSI, Fullerton, CA. Project; Pier Plaza, Huntington Beach, CA
1987-88 The L.A. Group, Landscape Architects, Calabasas Park, CA
1987 Tito Patri & Associates., Landscape Architects, San Francisco, CA. Runners-up, Todos Santos Plaza Competition, Concord, CA
1987 The L.A. Group, Calabasas Park, CA. Finalists, Inspiration Point Design Competition, Newport Beach, CA
1980 Charles Tapley Associates, Architects, Houston, TX. Finalists, Duncan Plaza Design Competition, New Orleans, LA
1968-69 Disappearing Environments I and II, Century City, CA, with Judy Chicago and Eric Orr
1968 Raymond Rose Ritual Environment, Pasadena, CA, with Judy Chicago and Barbara Smith
1967 Rooms Co. #1, Rolf Nelson Gallery, with Judy Chicago and Eric Orr
Situational Construction for the Richmond Art Center, 1969, Richmond, CA
collections
Sarah Tamor and Alex Ward, Santa Monica, CA
Elyse and Stanley Grinstein, Los Angeles, CA
Joan and Jack Quinn, Beverly Hills, CA
Lucy Suzar, Beverly Hills, CA
Dr. Larry Steinman, Palo Alto, CA
Judy and Marvin Zeidler, Los Angeles, CA
Ken Brecher and Rebecca Rickman, Los Angeles, CA
Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Hirschhorn Museum, Washington D.C.
Gallaudet College, Washington D.C.
Laguna Beach Museum of Art, Laguna Beach, CA
Detail from Situational Construction for Cal Arts, 1972, Valencia, CA
awards
1993 Miller Award, Friends of the Junior Arts Center, Los Angeles
1991 La Napoule Art Foundation, France, Artist Residency
1990 NEA, Artist Fellowship Grant
1980 NEA, Artist Fellowship Grant
1974 NEA, Artist Fellowship Grant
1965 LACMA, New Talent Purchase Award
bibliography
It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles 1969-1973, Rebecca McGrew, editor, Pomona College Museum of Art, 2011.
Galen Cranz, The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body and Design, W.W. Norton, 1998.
Moure, Nancy Dustin, California Art, 450 Years of Painting and Other Media, Dustin Pub, 1998.
Bourdon, David, Designing the Earth: The Human Impulse to Shape Nature, Abrams, 1995.
Marrow, Marva, Inside the L.A. Artist, Gibbs M. Smith Inc., 1988.
Lloyd Hamrol: Works, Projects, Proposals, (Catalogue), L.A. Municipal Art Gallery Associates, 1986.
Hopkins, Henry, 50 West Coast Artists, Chronicle Books, 1981.
Thalacker, Donald W., The Place of Art in the World of Architecture, Chelsea House, New York, London, 1980.
Raven, Arlene, Contemporary Artists, St. James Press, 1977.
Plagens, Peter, Sunshine Muse, Praeger Publishers, 1974.
Detail of Crown Lair, Stagecoach Park, Carlsbad, CA
