JB Blunk

The project demonstrates Blunk’s disregard for category in art-making, producing work that exists as a riposte to any claim of sensible distinction between sculpture that makes a utilitarian statement and that which is abstract. It was also the catalyst for the artist’s turn towards wood as his primary medium, after which he often foraged trunks and rare burls from felled trees found on nearby beaches. In 1969, Blunk created The Planet, now on permanent view at the Oakland Museum of California, from a single redwood root structure. On Blunk’s use of reclaimed redwoods, Noguchi has noted, “JB 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.” Blunk was a pioneer of the 1960s back-to-the-land movement, and he was one of the first artists to be described as a California Craftsman.

JB Blunk’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan. In 2018, the Oakland Museum of California staged the retrospective JB Blunk: Nature, Art & Everyday Life. Also in 2018, the two-person exhibition In Conversation: Alma Allen & JB Blunk opened at the Palm Springs Art Museum before traveling to the Nevada Museum of Art in 2019. The first major monograph on the artist was published in 2020, with contributions by Lucy Lippard, Glenn Adamson, Fariba Bogzaran, and Louise Allison Cort. Blunk’s work is included in the collections of the Oakland Museum of California; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; M+, Hong Kong; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.

© JB Blunk Collection