So I mentioned the Stella print at the Toledo Museum of Art, and after some musing, decided to elaborate. The surprising thing about the Toledo Museum of Art is that, despite Toledo (or Toodle-E-Doo as my father would say) being something of a blue-collar factory town, the Great and the Good in the city always kept the Museum pretty well-funded. So I spent a lot of time there, looking at art, taking classes, etc., etc., etc. In fact, my first printmaking efforts were done there, relief prints cut into styrofoam and printed on paper handmade by me, myself, at eight years old.

Early Relief Prints from Yours Truly

So, some of the things I saw in the Museum have stuck with me to this day. I did actually manage to catch Richard Estes’ The Urban Landscape when it came to Toledo, which was the talk of my third grade homeroom (not really). I was most impressed by the realism of the painting. This, indeed, was art I could embrace. I remember walking up to one of the paintings—there was a car involved, that was cool—and examining the brushwork (or lack thereof) as closely as I could without having the guards or my mother freaking out.

Another series of images that would remain in my brain would be several Op Art paintings done very possibly by Victor Vasarely. An extensive googling does not bring up any images that remind me explicitly of what I remember, except for this one and possibly this one. I was big on grids and geometry and bright dayglo colors in my youth, so this was another big hit. Actually, come to think about it, I’m still big on grids and geometry, if not dayglo colors. I could probably work those in some way.

Then there was the Calder mobile on display. Of course, as a kid, a mobile was cool regardless of who made it, so it didn’t really matter that the museum had a Calder mobile, although I did like the style. Funny thing is, I tried to find a image of the mobile I might have seen, and even though I found nothing, it turns out that the TMOA purchased the maquette of his sculpture “Stegosaurus” for the front of the museum in 1996. That would have been something to remember as a kid. As a kid I loved dinosaurs (who didn’t?), and a brightly-colored climbable abstract dinosaur sculpture would have been awesome. (I dunno if you can actually climb on the Calder, just that it looks like it would be cool to do so.)

Anyway, here’s a link to a color pic of Stella’s Lac Laronge IV, although the colors kinda suck. (I’m linking these instead of posting them inline so’s I don’t have to deal with copyright problems.) I really liked this print, except the fact that the right half doesn’t quite form a symmetrical circular shape (that grey chord in the lower left skews the optical centering) always stuck in my eye.

Something not in the TMOA, but still emblazoned in my brain from 1978, is a full-year Stendig-style calendar printed in black on Mylar that my parents had on the wall in the living room. (This is a Stendig Calendar.) I was fascinated with it. I still kinda organize the months of the year n my head in this fashion. Funny to think the things that stick in one’s young, developing brain that will affect you in years to come. Although, to be sure, I still prefer Akzidenz Grotesk over the  Helvetica used in the Stendig Calendar. (Johnny-come-lately Arial is a load of crap.)

If I think of some other artworks I remember from the Decade of Polyester and Disco, I will update this post.