JB Blunk.
One Big Sculpture and many little ones.
James Blain Blunk was one of the 20th century’s greatest sculptors. He’s celebrated for his organic sculptural works in clay and wood – a lover of raw forms.
Blunk was drafted into the Korean War in 1949. Hopefully, perhaps, the artist saw it as an opportunity to visit Japan and meet the revered studio potter Shoji Hamada. There, a chance encounter with the artist Isamu Noguchi led to apprenticeships with the distinguished ceramicists Kitaoji Rosanjin and Kaneshige Toyo. These years spent absorbing Japanese stoneware tradition would teach him to welcome cracks and imperfections and colour variations in a piece, an approach he’d eventually bring to wood. It was here too that Blunk learnt about Shinto, the ancient Japanese religion that worships nature; a lesson that deeply influenced his work and way of life.
When Blunk returned to California, he built his own house entirely by hand; a humble, redwood cabin nestled in the sleepy green forest of Inverness Ridge. The Blunk House held countless ceramics, tables, chairs and sculptures he made during his lifetime. It was not only a home, but what his friend Rick Yoshimoto called “One Big Sculpture.”
Blunk moved fluidly among mediums – making ceramics and paintings and wooden seats that blur the line between sculptural and functional.
Much of the delight of JB Blunk’s work is that it was made to be interacted with, sat on, drunk from, lived in, and - in the case of his jewellery - worn.
His rings, bracelets, bolo ties and belt buckles, were a natural extension of his practice: sculpture scaled to the wrist, the finger, the throat.
Though Blunk’s earrings, pendants, and bracelets are smaller in scale than his sculptural work, the pieces reflect the same earthy warmth and contrast between function and abstraction.
There’s an intimacy to Blunk’s jewellery, which was rarely made for exhibition. These were gifts: each Christmas he would give his wife, Christine Nielson, a new piece, introduced by a poem he had written on brightly painted pieces of paper, folded into shapes and tucked into the tree. One bracelet – a circular brass band fitted with two beads, one carved from a deer antler, the other from ivory – Nielson wore every day for the next 40 years. That same design has since been reinterpreted by their daughter as the Sun Moon Bracelet, part of a set of limited reproductions issued in collaboration with Los Angeles jewellery designer J. Hannah.
These designs, reimagined in recycled gold and silver, are testament to the tactility of Blunk’s originals. Like his large wood sculptures, the jewellery invites contact. Continuum, carved from a single piece of ivory in 1975, is both continuous and marked by a distinct beginning and end, like the vast outdoor redwood sculpture, its namesake, which Blunk finished the same year. Presence, with its broad face and architectural form, recalls Blunk’s 1977 sculpture Entry Arch (Presence). Another ring, Muse, given to Nielson in 1974 and later worn as her wedding band, is carved with subtle irregularities, an embrace of imperfection that animates the piece. Also rethought is the ring Blunk made for daughter Mariah in 1988 when she was 11 years old, with Crown cutting a symmetric shape, a refined foil for Blunk’s usual rawness.
The appeal of Blunk’s jewellery lies not only in its form but in its materials, often taking cues from salvaged natural materials. He worked with ivory brought back from Taiwan by his mother-in-law, with antique beads from Mexico, abalone shells from the California coast, deer antler, brass, silver, and salvaged walnut.
Today, Blunk’s daughter Mariah Nielson works to keep the artist’s legacy alive. Nielson is the Director of the JB Blunk Esate, preserving and researching his practice, and Director of Blunk Space, an art and design gallery dedicated to expanding Blunk’s legacy by connecting his practice to that of contemporary artists all over the world. She is the editor of the first monograph about the artist, JB Blunk, which is now in its third edition. I asked Mariah some questions about Blunk, to inform my research.
K.L. Blunk’s work centres around natural materials - wood, clay and stone. How did he approach material when working to the scale of jewellery?
M.N. The same way he approached working with a large-scale redwood burl or river stone. He developed a distinct style that drew upon the Japanese principle of directness as well as an unfaltering reverence for the qualities of natural materials. Taking archetypal forms and translating them instinctively through raw, salvaged materials, such as old growth redwood and river stones, my father produced a body of work that represents an innate expression of, and conversation with, nature. The scale or type of material did not change his approach to making.
K.L. His jewellery completely feels like sculpture in miniature! I wonder if he considered jewellery as part of his broader sculptural practice, or something separate?
M.N. Yes, he absolutely considered it as part of this broader sculptural practice. In one day, he might work across three or four mediums – carve a sculpture in the morning, glaze ceramics and paint after lunch, carve the sculpture before dinner and make jewellery before bed.
K.L. Do you think his relationship with nature and the land around Inverness shaped his jewellery? I feel as though the environment is very much reflected in the pieces I’ve seen…
M.N. Yes, absolutely. The contours of the natural environment around our home and the raw materials from this place – redwood burls, beach stones, local clay – were all an intrinsic part of his creative practice. He didn’t have a lot of money throughout his life so he worked with what was accessible. Salvaged materials was what he could afford!
K.L. I know that Blunk built your childhood house - and most of the things in it! Which is very cool. I guess he didn’t see a divide between art and life - how do you think that philosophy shaped the way you grew up?
M.N. There was no separation between art and life, no distinction between art, craft, and design in JB’s world. Most of what he created was functional art and he enjoyed the slippage between these categories. Growing up in the Blunk House helped me see art in the everyday – in river stones, the garden, our kitchen.
K.L. Did your dad wear jewellery himself? Or was it mostly for others - to give - if so - do you have a favourite piece?
M.N. He didn’t wear jewellery but his belt buckles were probably his flashiest accessories. He made the belt buckles using abalone and silver and they were so fabulous and expressive.
As Isamu Noguchi so beautifully wrote, JB Blunk’s work reflects “open sky and spaces, and the far reaches of time from where comes the burled stumps of those great trees. JB does them honour 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.”