ABOUT STAN DANN

UNNOTICED: EPISODE 1: STAN DANN (TEASER)

An exemplary Maker, Stan Dann’s finely crafted and distinctive wood carvings from the 1960s and ’70s included art objects, wall reliefs, plus wood graphics and signage for both the regional and national architectural community. His artwork then evolved into the ground-breaking imagery he produced from 1979-2010, expressed in puzzle-like, often polychromed wood reliefs. Using a band saw to cut and sculpt the individual wood pieces, he achieved an almost fluid quality in his finished sculpture.

As a sculptor, Stan Dann’s legacy is his dynamic transition away from using wood purely for traditional carvings and crafts. He stretched the technical boundaries of wood as an art medium, with an in-depth exploration of subject matter, abstraction, color, and the manipulation of the wood relief surfaces to alter perceptions of space.

Born in 1931 in British Columbia, Canada, Stan Dann moved to the U.S. to attend art school in Los Angeles, California. He lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area, with studios in Oakland and Lafayette, CA. His career spanned over five decades, from the early 1960s until his death in 2013.

Stan Dann’s art is in significant collections, including the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA, The Hechinger Collection, Washington, DC, and The Collection of Forrest L. Merrill, Berkeley, CA. In addition, Dann’s art was included in the substantive survey exhibition “Crafting Modernism, Midcentury American Art and Design” 2011, at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY.