“I found Stan Dann in his Oakland studio, perched on a stool, staring at the carved wood relief on the easel. I stirred. His concentration would not be interrupted. Finally I called his name.
Even though we had an appointment, I felt like a spoiler. Dann was obviously involved in the creative process, the staring and decision making that is a part of visual art works. Sometimes the staring may be out of the window or at a bare wall, but the artist is working.
Dann carves wall hung wood bas reliefs, something of a departure from his previous work. His previous carvings have been more realistic, usually integrated into architecture — a carved door for example. Now Dann has moved away from decoration into the realm of the fine arts, carving the wall hung pieces which stand on their own as art works. Working in this mode, he has done a commission for an insurance company in Connecticut. He does smaller scale pieces for residences. Signature Gallery in San Francisco is currently showing Dann's reliefs.
There is more than meets the eye in the Lafayette resident's work. What first appears to be an abstract composition, turns out, on closer inspection to be a toaster, an oil can, tennis shoes or a baking pan. He takes ordinary objects, simplifies and reduces them to a simple design. Then he cuts the entire composition out of a piece of board with a bandsaw, creating what amounts to a puzzle. "I have to be sure to keep putting the pieces back in place, particularly in the large pieces." The individual pieces of the surface are mounted on a board below it.
Next comes a long process of refinement to create the rounded edges and subtly waved surfaces of the pieces, first with hand grinders, rasps, rifflers and then ever finer grades of sandpaper and finally steel wool. "I've developed tennis elbow from working the wood," he commented.
Finally Dann puts a wash over the whole thing, giving the wood color and grain a silvery cast that adds even more the subtlety.
Not only does Dann do the simple objects, he takes the areas near at hand, his studio and an adjoining office, and makes complex reliefs out of them. They have an almost surreal flavor.
Another aspect of Dann's carving is abstract landscapes, done with several varities of wood. Lafayette Ridge, a massive work of undulating forms, hung on the wall. He showed me a series of slides of these works, featuring forms inspired by Yosemite and by the valley in Northern California where he often vacations. A creek featured thin, parallel lines of wood streaming about the rounded forms of boulders.
'Moving in the direction of the fine arts is the ultimate trip for the artist," he remarked, blowing sawdust off a surface. "I may say one thing today and do another tomorrow. Everyone should be allowed to do that."
Carol Fowler
Times Art Critic