Organized by the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum, curated by Theodore Cohen, collection of Forrest L. Merrill
Bob Stocksdale, wood turner, was born in Warren, Indiana on May 25, 1913. This exhibition coincided with his 88th birthday which is an auspicious occasion in Japan and thus to his wife Kay Sekimachi. A self-taught wood turner, he started woodworking in his youth, making baseball bats and honey dippers. He turned his first bowl while incarcerated in a conscientious objectors camp in 1943. Since that time he turned more than 10,000 bowls. His many innovations in a wide repertoire of exotic woods revitalized the craft of lathe-turned bowls and laid the foundation for the work of contemporary wood turners.
He exhibited widely in museums throughout the world, and his work is in the permanent collections of many museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, the American Craft Museum, New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh.
_From the Collection of Forrest L. Merrill,_ published by the Museum of Craft & Folk Art, San Francisco, accompanied the exhibition.
Following the Members’ Reception for the exhibition on June 16, Signe Mayfield, Curator of the Palo Alto Art Center, presented an illustrated lecture “Turning Point – Bob Stocksdale at 88.”
Playing continuously in the Multi-media Education Center throughout the run of the exhibition was the film “OUT OF THE WOODS – Woodturning by Three American Master Craftsmen: Bob Stocksdale, Rude Osolnik, Ed Moulthrop.”