Esoteric Survey

The Art and Design of Howard Smith at The Palm Springs Art Museum The exhibition was curated by Steven Wolf Howard Smith (1928-2021) was born on the East Coast of the United States, but is mostly known for his work in Finland. He worked in pretty much every medium in both fine art and design for production. He had over 40 solo exhibitions during his life, mostly in Finland.  This is his first retrospective in the United States.  My first exposure to him was from friend and legendary design dealer, Ken Erwin. Howard and Ken met in in the 1970s at a Art Deco shop on Melrose called Jazz. Ken said, at the time, it was rare to see another Black person in a design shop. They became instant and lifelong friends. After serving in the US Army, with time in Japan, Korea and West Germany, he moved to Philadelphia in 1958 to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The he moved to Helsinki in 1962 to participate in a United States government sponsored festival called Young Ame...

Peter Blake Gallery  hosted another exhibition during Palm Springs Modernism this year. The Blakehaus installation for 2024 took place in a 1962 Donald Wexler steel house. The  Calcor/Rheem Prefabricated Steel House is number three of the seven Wexler Steel Houses. Forty houses were planned for the development but the increased price of steel made them cost-prohibitive. See Blakehaus 2023, here , which took place in a William Cody home. Wexler actually actually worked for Cody when he moved to Palm Springs. Prior to that, he worked for Neutra.

The Raymond Loewy house by Albert Frey (1946) or "Tierra Caliente" as Loewy called it. The house was a collaboration between the designer and architect.  Like the next door neighbor,  Kaufmann house , the terrain looked a lot different in the late 40s.   All vintage photos: © Julius Shulman, Peter Stackpole. Source: The Getty Research Institute, Julius Shulman Archive; LIFE The pool continuing into the living room is the most noted aspects of the design This happened more than once. During Palm Springs Modernism I was able to get a close-up look at The Aluminaire House by Albert Frey and managing editor of Architectural Record, A. Lawrence Kocher (1931). Source: Albert Frey / Inventive Modernist