Product Description
Barry L. Thumma, Face of America, Gelatin silver print 1980
BARRY L. THUMMA (1947-2003) USA
Face of America 1980
Gelatin silver print
Size: H: 13 3/8” x W: 11”
Size (with board): H: 14” x W: 11”
Size (framed): H: 21 ¼” x W: 17”
Price: $2,750
Barry L. Thumma, a former New Era photographer, covered four presidents as White House photographer for The Associated Press. In his 20-year career with the AP, he traveled on more than 100 Air Force One flights to photograph presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He also photographed Pope John Paul II, Jerry Falwell, Mikhail Gorbachev, Michael Deaver, Alan Greenspan and Donald Rumsfeld, among other personalities and politicians of his time. He was a member of the White House News Photographers Association. Thumma began his career in 1967 as a part-time photographer for the Lancaster New Era. He joined the Associated Press in 1973 in Cincinnati, where he covered the Reds and the Bengals. After two years as the Ohio photo editor, Thumma moved to Washington, D.C. to cover the White House. He also captured heartbreaking images of the famine in Ethiopia, NASA space flight operations and troop actions in the field.
Barry L. Thumma, Face of America, Gelatin silver print 1980
ROSE CABAT (1914-2015) USA
Rare and important large scale “Feelie” c. 1980-85
Thin walled porcelain vessel with a silky satiny matte drip glaze
Signed: incised CABAT on bottom
For more information on Rose Cabat see: Rose Erni Cabat Retrospective 1936-1986 (Tuscon, AZ: Tuscon Museum of Art, 1986)
H: 3 5/8″
Price: $1,650
Rose Cabat was an American studio ceramicist living in Tucson. Considered one of the most important ceramic artists of the Mid-century Modernist movement, Cabat is best known for her innovative glazes on small porcelain pots called “feelies” which she developed in the 1960s. Her organic forms often resemble the shape of onions and figs, and her glazes range from organic to jewel tones. Cabat was born in 1914 in the Bronx, New York, began to work in ceramics in the late 1930′s, and moved to Arizona in 1942, where she continued to make innovative ceramics.
Feelies:
Feelies are described as onion, fig, cucumber, and saucer-shaped ceramic vases terminating in an upward closed neck. Bruce Block, an avid collector, has described them as sensual and tactile with a very specific unforgettable texture, spiritual seeming to contain a type of energy. Rose Cabat had developed a silky satiny glaze, and it wasn’t until around 1960 that she had hit upon the first of the appropriate form, svelte and sleek to match the glaze. She exclaimed, “Now this one’s a feelie.”, coining the term. Upon developing the new glazes, she felt that she needed new forms to apply the glazes to, different from what she made before, “craft fair” style coiled heads and wind bells. She is quoted as saying, “The old things did not look good … I wanted simpler shapes that went with the glazes.”They are typically globular in shape, tightening down to a minuscule neck glazed to a satin surface. The tactile experience is most important. The nature of the neck is such that it is closed, so narrow that it cannot hold anything. Cabat would reply when asked why the necks of her feelies are so narrow, “A vase can hold weeds or flowers, but can’t it just be a spot of beauty?”
EDWARD WESTON (1886-1958) USA
Elbow 1935
Gelatin silver print
Signed: 12-40. Edward Weston 1935 (pencil below photo)
Framed H: 17” x W: 14 9/16”
Edward Henry Weston was an American photographer, and co-founder of Group f/64. Most of his work was done using an 8 by 10 inch view camera. Weston was renowned as one of the masters of 20th century photography. His legacy includes several thousand carefully composed, superbly printed photographs that have influenced photographers around the world for 60 years. Photographing natural landscapes and forms such as artichoke, shells, and rocks, using large-format cameras and available light. The subtle use of tones and the sculptural formal design of his works have become the standards by which much later photographic practice has been judged.
Ansel Adams has written: “Weston is, in the real sense, one of the few creative artists of today. He has recreated the matter-forms and forces of nature; he has made these forms eloquent of the fundamental unity of the world. His work illuminates man’s inner journey toward perfection of the spirit.”