Monday, April 11, 2016

Potter Jim Bass and Emerging Artist Robert Falco are Featured in AmadorArts Gallery for month of April

Jim Bass, pottery artist for over 50 years and Amador High School graduate Robert Falco, emerging artist in his early 20s, are featured for the month of April in the AmadorArts Gallery. The gallery walls will reveal a sampling of the latest large abstract paintings of Falco who now lives and works in the Bay Area after receiving his BFA degree last year. Pedestals will show off the ceramic art of Bass, longtime teacher of art and pottery, who creates elaborately decorated vases to simple goblets.

A resident of Mountain Ranch, Bass has been making art and pottery for over 50 years. He discovered pottery as a student at Shasta Junior College in Redding, Calif. studying under Burt Oldham. Then, he transferred to Pepperdine University studying under Tabor Jankay and graduating with a B.A in Art in 1965. He did his  post graduate work there receiving his teaching credential in 1967.  He accepted a teaching position at Calaveras High School in the Fall of 1967 where he taught Art and Pottery at Calaveras High for 33 years.
Jim Bass
During part of that time, he lived in Mokelumne Hill, and along with Lee Hess, whom he taught to make pottery, they ran a pottery shop for ten years.  While teaching at Calaveras he also taught Adult night classes for Columbia J.C, Delta J.C, and U.C Davis University.  Prior to retiring he began throwing pottery for Quyle Kilns in Murphys and continues in that capacity today. He’s been making all of Quyle's thrown pottery pieces for 18 years He is a member of the Calaveras Art Council and exhibits at the Gallery Calaveras and he is a participant at his studio for the Artist Studio Tour in Calaveras each year during the last weekend of September.


Vase by Jim Bass
You can find his work at Quyle Kilns Gallery in Murphys,  Prestige Gallery in Angels Camp and the Gold Country Roasters in Murphys. He lives in Mountain Ranch with his wife Linda and they have four grown children. His work is “art on pottery,” and he says, “I love to experiment; it shows in my work…something new all the time.”

Robert Falco was an artist as early as seven years old, and now, at just 22 he’s making waves in the Bay Area art world.  Falco grew up in Amador County; his parents are Lilliana and Manuel Falco of Sutter Creek.  Before he even graduated from Amador High School in 2011, he received early acceptance to study at the San Francisco Art Institute.  Last year he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from there after also taking a round of art studies in Germany. 


His early training began right in the Art Department of Amador High and he was one of the youngest to take a Master’s Class at Sacramento’s Crocker Museum usually reserved for professionals.  He won Arts Scholarships from AmadorArts and the Amador County Artist Association, and at the time a newspaper report said, “Many have witnessed his obvious talent and his drive to excel with perfection,… everyone agrees that he will become a new leading artist of our country. “  Falco has been honored by many exhibitions of his art throughout the Bay Area, including Berkeley, and also in Hamburg and Berlin, Germany. Falco currently works full time at a prestigious Union Square gallery in San Francisco and resides in the East Bay in a live-work warehouse space with three other artists.


On his webpage he has his Artist Statement:  “My work is a reaction of static forms of art dealing with inconstant information that through representation will fail and be left as relics.  Individuality and false personalization is a constant thread within the work and the materials used. My paintings are not glorifying locations or moments, but rather displaying them as ethereal devices, remnants of moments that are in constant motion within multiple lanes of information cannot be fully replicated in a still object,rendering the object outdated.”

For more information, contact AmadorArts, a non-profit arts organization since 1982 serving the region with arts education in schools and in the community, free concerts, and monthly art exhibits. Phone 209-267-9038 or visit www.amadorarts.org

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