| Emile Norman | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 22, 1918 California |
| Died | September 24, 2009 (aged 91) Monterey, California |
| Field | Sculpture |
| Works | Mosaic window, Masonic Center, San Francisco |
Emile Norman (1918–2009)[1] was an iconoclastic[2] California artist known for mosaics, panels, jewelry and sculpture – with a meticulous attention to detail.
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Nobody ever gives |
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Emile Norman grew up with a club foot on a San Gabriel Valley walnut farm.[2][4] From an early age he exhibited artistic talent, carving his first sculpture from a riverside rock at age 11,[4] – ruining his father's chisels, but also gaining his respect.[4][5]
From 1946, Norman lived and worked at his studio-home in Big Sur on Pfeiffer Ridge with his partner Brooks Clement, until Clement's death in 1973 from cancer.[6]
In 2008, actors Michael Tucker and Jill Eikenberry met Norman, purchased land from him in Big Sur, became his neighbors and his close friends[4] – eventually taking five years[7] to produce a PBS documentary, Emile Norman: By His Own Design. Having moved in with Norman in 2003,[8] long-time friends Jeff Mallory and C. Kevin Smith had discovered movie film shot by Norman's partner Brooks Clement on a hand-cranked 16 mm Bolex, footage that was eventually incorporated in the documentary.[9]
Norman died September 24, 2009 in Monterey, California at age 91,[10] survived by three sisters, Marilyn Bogart, Mabel Malone and Edna Rhodes.[4]
Note: According to the documentary, Emile Norman was born Emil Nomann.
Norman began his professional career fashioning window displays for Bullocks Wilshire in Los Angeles and later Bergdorf Goodman, Bonwit Teller, and other New York department stores. He later designed plastic headdresses for the chorus girls in the 1946 Fred Astaire film Blue Skies."[4]
In New York, Norman's work was featured in Vogue magazine[1] – and he first displayed an affinity for working in plastic, having discovered the material, especially exposy resins, during a trip to Europe in the late 1940s.[10] Norman was featured in a November 22, 1944 New York Times article, Plastics Shown in Decorative Role, covering the opening of his exhibit at the Pendleton Gallery.
Norman's lifetime body of work includes sculpture, mosaic, jewelry, and other forms – and most prominently the 40- by-46-foot[11] mosaic window for the Masonic Center in San Francisco along with an assemblage of exterior stone sculptures:
| “ | Fabricated with an endomosaic process, it incorporates thousands of bits of metal, parchment, felt, linen, silk, natural foliage, thinly sliced vegetable matter, shells and sea life, plus 180 colors of stained glass. The lower portion of the frieze is made up of actual gravels and soils of the 58 counties of California and the islands of Hawaii. The window depicts the history of the wayfarers and the seafarers that helped found California Freemasonry.[11] | ” |
Norman often used an innovative technique bringing together his own admixture of epoxy-resin, crushed glass, plastic, or wood – creating an effect not dissimilar to cloisonne or stained glass. The effect is especially unusual when Norman crafted the layered effect over a wax form which, when later melted away, left behind a three-dimensional sculpture.[1]
