J.B. Blunk

J.B. (James Blain) Blunk (1926–2002) was a sculptor born in Ottawa, Kansas, who best known for his works in wood and clay. He also worked in other diverse mediums including jewelry, furniture, painting, bronze, and stone. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he intended to study physics; after changing major, he went on to study celebrated ceramist Laura Andreson.

After being drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War, he was discharged in 1952 but chose to stay in Asia. He traveled to Japan, where he met sculptor Isamu Noguchi in a craft store. They struck up an easy comradarie, and Noguchi introduced Blunk to the master potter Kitaoji Rosanjin (1883–1959) with whom Blunk went on to apprentice. He went on once again to apprentice Bizen potter and Living National Treasure Kaneshige Toyo (1896–1967). This made Blunk the first American to apprentice into the line of descent of Japan's great unglazed stoneware ceramic tradition.

Upon his return to the United States, set out to build his own home and studio near the Marin County town of Inverness, California. There, he maintained a lifelong friendship and association with painter Gordon Onslow Ford, who was set on establishing a community if artists and who had given him the acre of land he would go on to build his home and studio on. He developed his particular technique of carving tremendous pieces of wood with chainsaws one day when he found an uprooted Cyprus tree on the side of the road and, having no sculpting tools to suit its scale, turned to the power-tool.

Blunk's 1969 work titled The Planet is no doubt among his most well known and celebrated public works; it has a permanent home in the lobby of the Oakland Museum of California. Glenn Adamson, in an October 1999 issue of Woodwork magazine, described The Planet as “an irregular, wildly textured circle, riddled with textural incident. The piece is unified by a rhythm of alternating jagged forms and restful, smooth shapes. The work has been called ‘one of the most touched pieces of sculpture you could find,’ and indeed it still serves as a play space, bench and oversized toy for visitors to the museum.”

 Isamu Noguchi’s commentary on Blunk’s oeuvre was as follows: “I like to think that the courage and independence J.B. has shown is typically California, or at least Western, with a continent between to be free from categories that are called art. Here the links seem to me more to the open sky and spaces, and the far reaches of time from where come the burled stumps of those great trees.

“J.B. does them honor in carving them as he does, finding true art in the working, allowing their ponderous bulk, waking them from their long sleep to become part of our own life and times, sharing with us the afterglow of a land that was once here.”