Melvino Garretti (born 1946) is an American multidisciplinary artist who works in ceramics, painting, and performance. His visual works are known for their recognizable abstract motif, which often includes a variety of colorful emblematic shapes, and symbols. He is an original member of the

Studio Watts Workshop The Studio Watts Workshop was an arts organization founded in 1964 and based in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, dedicated to providing working space for artists and offering a broad range of arts workshops for the local community. History ...

art collective, and a 1978 MFA graduate of

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...

Early life and education

Melvino Garretti was born in Los Angeles. While he was at an early age his family moved to Compton. In 1967, Melvino Garretti joined the nearby

. Although, originally a painter, the workshop introduced him to ceramics through two years of rigorous work at Great Barrington Pottery, the pottery shop of Richard Bennett in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. There he received lessons in Japanese techniques and philosophy of production, and fired pottery within an authentic wood-burning kiln. After this focus in ceramics, Garretti moved to San Francisco, where he studied as a painter under

Julius Hatofsky Julius Hatofsky (April 1, 1922 – January 1, 2006) was an American painter. Biography Julius Hatofsky was born in Ellenville, in upstate New York, in 1922, and first studied art as a teenager in the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Pro ...

at San Francisco Art Institute.

Performance

In 1969, Garretti and ten other members of Studio Watts joined with the San Francisco Dancer's Workshop under the direction of Anna Halprin in a dance performance art piece, entitled Ceremony of Us, which took place at the

Mark Taper Forum The Mark Taper Forum is a 739-seat thrust stage at the Los Angeles Music Center designed by Welton Becket and Associates on the Bunker Hill section of Downtown Los Angeles. Named for real estate developer Mark Taper, the Forum, the neighboring ...

in 1969

Artistic style

Garretti's paintings and ceramic works often include spikes, spiral forms, and jagged edges, to which he applies paints and glazes using a free gestural approach. Garretti also has done several works which contain gestures of human faces in the form of three-dimensional ceramic masks, or two-dimensional contour paintings and drawings of facial profiles.

Notable press

The September 2018 issue of Art Forum magazine's front cover shows a group photo of the Ceremony of Us cast, which includes Melvino Garretti. The November 2018 issue of

Architectural Digest ''Architectural Digest'' is an American monthly magazine founded in 1920. Its principal subjects are interior design and landscaping, rather than pure external architecture. The magazine is published by Condé Nast, which also publishes internati ...

, contains an article about the Santa Monica home of philanthropist and art collector Eileen Harris Norton. A photograph within the article features one of the home's gallery rooms, where a large colorful jar crafted by Melvino Garretti sits on a table, next to a painting by Kerry James Marshall, and a neon work by Glenn Ligon.Mayer Rus, " Designer Nell Alano Reimagines Philanthropist Eileen Harris Norton's Santa Monica Home", Architectural Digest, November

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Garretti, Melvino 1946 births Living people 20th-century American artists 21st-century American artists 20th-century African-American artists 21st-century African-American artists