Meet Walter Askin of Floatingrock Enterprises in Pasadena

Today we’d like to introduce you to Walter Askin.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Walter. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Growing up in a rented house on Mar Vista in Pasadena I had delighted in drawing small figures and boats in the rose-patterned wallpaper. One day my mother noticed my designs while talking to a salesman at the front door.

I was in awe that my drawings had made such a wonderful, kind and generous person so angry and have, since this very early age, been addicted to artistic expression and committed to a life in art.

Today, my work is involved with ideas that focus on delectation, delight, sublimation, sensuosity, joy, exultation and mystery. I find these realms to be energizing and life-giving and hope my work now melodic and harmonic in nature will arouse similar interests in contemporary culture.

Has it been a smooth road?
I found my voice as a student in abstract expressionism, but today, a number of elements come to play in my work to create a variety of intentions – figures, objects, a sense of place/a context, as well as symbolic forms and even a sense of humor.

I’ve had involvement with a wide range of media and collaboration with master printers, foundries, and even various industrial fabrication plants where my imagery was liberated further still.

We’d love to hear more about your work.
I have been committed to a life in art from a very early age. After an education rooted in traditions, I found my voice in the joys of abstract expressionism at the University of California, Berkeley where I worked with both the regular faculty and a series of artists imported from New York.

I had my first one-person show in 1954 at the De Young Museum in San Francisco while still a student. Today, viewers find my work easily identifiable as coming from my hand – recognizing my extensive roster of formal, expressive, and personal material…

As director of the Visual Humor Project, conferences were held at Chateau de la Bretesche in Brittany, France. My books and print folios include “Another Art Book to Cross Off Your List,” “Womsters and Foozlers,” “True Fictions” and a “Briefer History of the Greeks.”

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Our city has lost many exhibition venues, and more public exhibition venues are needed. We need curators who will venture out of their offices and see the work that is being produced in this area.

They also need to discover their own value systems and not just replicate ideas found by other curators in other places – such as New York, London, and Tokyo. We need publications that tell artists about other artists in the LA area.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-walter-askin-13013#transcript

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