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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

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by Peter Frank, ​J​anuary 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...

 

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essays

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

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

collaborations

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

collections

Detail from Situational Construction for Cal Arts, 1972, Valencia, CA

awards

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.

bibliography

Detail of Crown Lair, Stagecoach Park, Carlsbad, CA

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