San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Maverick of modernism
Jack Rogers Hopkins, radical midcentury sculptor and SDSU art prof, left an imprint on post-wwii art showcased in a new documentary
In 2018, the Alpine home of the influential but now mostly forgotten 20th century modernist sculptor Jack Rogers Hopkins was destroyed in a wildfire, taking with it most of the late artist’s handmade furniture, sculpture, paintings, tools, jewelry and other personal items.
While the loss was devastating to his widow, children, grandchildren and modernist art historians, the destruction of his artwork might not have angered Hopkins, who died in 2006 at age 86. As a radical artist and an influential art professor at San Diego State University, he encouraged artists and his students to destroy their own work because he felt that the art process was the most important part of the artwork, saying: “Any artist who can’t destroy his own work shouldn’t be an artist.”
To prove the point, Hopkins destroyed his own masterwork, the massive sculptural environmental piece of undulating wood named “The Womb Room,” which he completed in the early 1970s.
That story, and the little known life and work of Hopkins is the subject of “Jack Rogers Hopkins: California Design Maverick,” a short documentary by Katie Nartonis that will premiere Tuesday as part of Palm Springs Modernism Week. The 20-minute film, made in association with the Sam Maloof Foundation, was created as a companion piece to a 2020 book of the same name. The screening will be followed by a Q&A featuring Nartonis and her fellow editors and writers of the book.
Nartonis — a curator, writer, filmmaker and 20th century design specialist — said she hopes to screen the film later this year in San Diego County, where Hopkins spent half of his life.
Back in 2007, Nartonis was working in the 20th Century Decorative Art Department at Bonhams Fine Art Auctioneers & Valuers when one of Hopkins’ rare “Edition” chairs was sold in a Bonhams auction and, she said, “he came on to my radar.”
Nartonis soon discovered that Hopkins was a leading figure in the California Studio design movement in the 1960s and ’70s, and because of his impressive body of work, he is considered one of the last important untold stories of the West Coast post-wwii design era.
“In the larger story of important American 20th century makers, he is considered one the West Coast’s most original and influential makers,” she said.
“The postwar studio movement was a period in which American furniture was becoming more idiosyncratic,
sculptural and free-form. Hopkins’ approach to design was both radical and metaphysical,” Nartonis said. “Hopkins is vital to the national story of the handmade object, which blossomed during the midcentury and included other West Coast makers such as Sam Maloof, Art Carpenter and JB Blunk. Hopkins was celebrated during his time by the design community and featured in important shows in San Diego and up and down California.”
Intrigued to learn more of Hopkins’ story firsthand, Nartonis started visiting Hopkins’ widow, Esther, and his children and grandchildren many years ago. In 2020, with co-editor Jeffrey Head, she published the book “Jack Rogers Hopkins: California Design Maverick, Master Mid-century Designer-craftsman.” The book features essays by noted design specialists Jo Lauria, Dave Hampton and James Rawitsch. All five of those book contributors will speak at the Q&A after the film screening on Tuesday.
According to a biography in the “California Design Maverick” book, Hopkins grew up in Bakersfield and as a young boy learned to make toys for his friends in his father’s wood shop, the Sierra Furniture Mfg. Co. But instead of pursuing woodworking as a career, Hopkins enlisted in the Navy and became a photographer’s mate 1st class. Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, he was assigned to the Pearl Harbor station for two years, where he photographed war activity and reconnaissance missions in the Pacific theater.
During a visit to the Stage Door Canteen in Washington, D.C., he met his future wife, Esther, at a dance. She was immediately taken by his artistic perspective. After the war, Hopkins returned to California with Esther and attended the California College of Arts and Crafts, where he studied painting and drawing on the G.I. Bill and a California state scholarship.
After graduating in 1950, Hopkins then earned his MFA degree from the Claremont Colleges in 1958. In 1960, he began teaching at San Diego State University in the Art department, where he was an influential teacher until his retirement in 1991.
In an interview for the book, Esther Hopkins — who died in January 2022 — described her husband’s artistic progression.
“His first creative form was painting, working on a flat surface. He became tired of working within the limits of two-dimensional work and wanted to get into three dimensional pieces, but he did not start working in wood until much later, around 1965, when he was already making jewelry and ceramics. The creative process for him was a continuum, progressing forward but not linear since he continued to work in other mediums concurrently,” Esther Hopkins said.
In an essay for the book written by the Hopkins’ children, David Hopkins and Ann Begley-hopkins, they wrote that their father’s deep dive into creating artwork in his home studio in the early 1960s was most likely borne from a tragedy. In December 1963, their younger brother Mark was killed by a drunken driver, and creating art helped their father cope with his grief.
“What had been a passion driven purely by love for the art form became mental, emotional and, perhaps, spiritual therapy, as well, helping him heal from that tragic loss. In a sense, his
art lifted him up from the ashes,” they wrote.
During the years that Nartonis and others met with the family to gather information for the book and a planned exhibition, they collected several of his personal items for the book and a planned art exhibit. As a result, some of Hopkins’ sketchbooks, photographs, slides, a group of jewelry and a few tools and templates escaped the fire in 2018.
The book and the film will be part of a spring 2024 exhibition featuring a small collection of rare and important works by Hopkins at
the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Craft’s Jacobs Education Center Gallery in Rancho Cucamonga.
Tuesday’s events are part of Palm Springs Modernism Week, an 11-day festival of more than 350 events that celebrate the city’s long history as a hotbed of midcentury-modern design. Events includes historic home, bus and walking tours, parties, book signings, lectures, film screenings and more. Events continue through Feb. 26.