New Plastic Art Cooked Up in Oven
The Milwaukee Journal
Plastic paintings lit from beneath. Plastic partitions with decor built into the wall. Plastic furniture reflecting the color of the carpet. These and more are foreseen by Palestinian Artist Zahara Schatz as features of a possible future era of plastic architecture, furniture and decoration.
Miss Schatz bases her idea on her own plastic experiments which she cooked in the oven at home. She showed examples for the first time recently in a one man show of plastic paintings at the New York Pinacotheca gallery run by Miss Rose Fried, the Associated Press reports.
Paint, Wire Designs
The paintings were made of two laminated thicknesses of the tough plastic used for bomber noses in wartime. Between them were modernistic designs achieved by paint, copper and silver colored wire, shimmering metal cut into triangles and disks and other devices prompted by the Schatz imagination. Some of the plastic paintings stood upright on tables, shot with light from beneath, which gave them an eerie light spangled beauty. Others were riveted a few inches away from a painted board background and hung on the wall.
"Architects who have seen my work,” said Miss Schatz "talked, of plastic walls with decor built inside. With the use of color and design the walls can be fashioned, if necessary, so that one would have privacy behind them. Screens can be made of this plastic, too,and stained glass windows for the outer walls of houses. Also, it can be used as tops for tables, which pick up the color of the carpet underneath, and it makes beautiful lamps and decorative dishes.
Studied Painting First
“All in all, it offers seemingly limitless possibilities for a completely new decor, especially when light is played upon it.”
Miss Schatz’s dark eyes, framed in two wings of coal black hair, glowed with intense eagerness as she talked of her work in plastics which she took up after years of modern painting. She was born in Jerusalem, where her father, Boris Schatz, a Russian Jewish sculptor, emigrated in the Zionist movement. After his death she went to Paris, where she studied with Jean Carlu, and attended the National Academy of Arts and Crafts. Before the outbreak of World War II, she came to the United States and for several years painted and exhibited at the San Francisco art museum. While teaching in the California Labor school in San Francisco, she wandered into a plastics class one night, was intrigued by the medium and went to work in it. She built a little laboratory in her apartment’s kitchen, where she heated the plastic in the cook stove oven. After that, she says, dinner was virtually, never on time. Sometimes—trying to handle both dinner and experiment—she forgot the experiment in the oven and when she opened the door dinner smelled “funny” and the experiment was gone. But she kept on experimenting and cooking and her plastic paintings, dishes and lamps are the result.
New Plastic Art Cooked Up in Oven
The Milwaukee Journal
Plastic paintings lit from beneath. Plastic partitions with decor built into the wall. Plastic furniture reflecting the color of the carpet. These and more are foreseen by Palestinian Artist Zahara Schatz as features of a possible future era of plastic architecture, furniture and decoration.
Miss Schatz bases her idea on her own plastic experiments which she cooked in the oven at home. She showed examples for the first time recently in a one man show of plastic paintings at the New York Pinacotheca gallery run by Miss Rose Fried, the Associated Press reports.
Paint, Wire Designs
The paintings were made of two laminated thicknesses of the tough plastic used for bomber noses in wartime. Between them were modernistic designs achieved by paint, copper and silver colored wire, shimmering metal cut into triangles and disks and other devices prompted by the Schatz imagination. Some of the plastic paintings stood upright on tables, shot with light from beneath, which gave them an eerie light spangled beauty. Others were riveted a few inches away from a painted board background and hung on the wall.
"Architects who have seen my work,” said Miss Schatz "talked, of plastic walls with decor built inside. With the use of color and design the walls can be fashioned, if necessary, so that one would have privacy behind them. Screens can be made of this plastic, too,and stained glass windows for the outer walls of houses. Also, it can be used as tops for tables, which pick up the color of the carpet underneath, and it makes beautiful lamps and decorative dishes.
Studied Painting First
“All in all, it offers seemingly limitless possibilities for a completely new decor, especially when light is played upon it.”
Miss Schatz’s dark eyes, framed in two wings of coal black hair, glowed with intense eagerness as she talked of her work in plastics which she took up after years of modern painting. She was born in Jerusalem, where her father, Boris Schatz, a Russian Jewish sculptor, emigrated in the Zionist movement. After his death she went to Paris, where she studied with Jean Carlu, and attended the National Academy of Arts and Crafts. Before the outbreak of World War II, she came to the United States and for several years painted and exhibited at the San Francisco art museum. While teaching in the California Labor school in San Francisco, she wandered into a plastics class one night, was intrigued by the medium and went to work in it. She built a little laboratory in her apartment’s kitchen, where she heated the plastic in the cook stove oven. After that, she says, dinner was virtually, never on time. Sometimes—trying to handle both dinner and experiment—she forgot the experiment in the oven and when she opened the door dinner smelled “funny” and the experiment was gone. But she kept on experimenting and cooking and her plastic paintings, dishes and lamps are the result.