Nut Art
Parker Gallery, Los Angeles
May 28 – August 5, 2017
Parker Gallery presents its inaugural exhibition, Nut Art, featuring works by Robert Arneson, Betty Bailey, Clayton Bailey, Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, Hannah Greely, Calvin Marcus, Maija Peeples-Bright, Benjamin Reiss, Peter Saul, Sally Saul, Harold Schlotzhauer, Richard Shaw, Irvin Tepper, Chris Unterseher and Franklin Williams.
Nut Art is a movement founded in the late 1960s by five Northern California artists: Clayton Bailey, Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, Maija Peeples-Bright (then Maija Zack, aka Maija Woof) and David Zack. Legend has it, the group was at Roy De Forest’s “purple house under the golden hills of Port Costa, California…looking out the window at some horses and drinking Swan Lager beer.” David Zack, an arts writer and correspondence artist, was searching for a new movement; something that might be an artists’ answer to the Funk moniker adopted by curator Peter Selz. “Roy’s mother Oma came up with a round tray full of open brown bottles of Swan Lager, plus some vegetarian bacon crisps. Everyone said Nut Art at once. Nut Art was born.”(1)
A few Nut Art exhibitions shortly followed, including one organized by Clayton Bailey in 1972 at California State University Hayward. For the exhibition’s staple-bound catalog, De Forest wrote what is commonly referred to as the Nut Art manifesto. The manifesto declares, in all caps:
“THE WORK OF A PECULIAR AND ECCENTRIC NUT CAN TRULY BE CALLED ‘NUT ART’… THE NUT ARTIFICER TRAVELS IN A PHANTASMAGORIC MICRO-WORLD, SMALL AND EXTREMELY COMPACT, AS IS THE LIGHT OF A DWARF STAR IMPLODING INWARD AND IN PASSAGE COLLAPSING PARADISE AND HELL TO ONE AS IT VANISHES FOREVER WITH OUR JOYS, SORROWS AND UNREQUITED LOVE.”(2)
Nut Art at Parker Gallery brings artists from Clayton Bailey’s 1972 exhibition together with contemporary artists who help reveal that the spirit of Nut Art is alive and well. Nut Art includes 10 works from the original exhibition, many of which have not been publicly exhibited since 1972.
(1) David Zack, “Basic Art,” unpublished manuscript, c.1971, 120–21.
(2) Nut Art (Hayward, Calif.: California State University, Hayward, Art Gallery, 1972), n.p.
PARKER GALLERY
2441 Glendower Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90027
