Origin Story​​

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If Mid-Century Modern artists were truly people of their time, then how do we define the art and the artist who was Joan Dobbs Henry? How was she influenced by the turbulent times that followed on the heals of the the Great Depression and continued through to the upheavals of the Sixties? How was she influenced by the various themes found in the art of her contemporaries? Was she influenced by these same themes? If she was or wasn't, what motivated her to create what she did in the way that she did?

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The rejection of artistic norms began long before MCM. Art Nouveau, Fauvism, Art Deco, Cubism – all these new artistic expressions laid the groundwork for 20th Century Modernism that became Mid-Century Modern Art.

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The bubbling cauldron of creativity fostered at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland held that Crafts were as important as Art. The Machine Age embraced Industrial Aesthetics and CCAC supported the innovative ideas emerging from the resultant blending of form and function, art and craft.

Had she been allowed to complete 4 years at CCAC, Joan might very well have developed a completely different style. She might have matured very differently as an artist.

 

As it was, Joan thrived at CCAC in an environment where she was able to try everything. Drawing, painting, sculpting, jewelry making, metal work, glass work – she tried everything she possibly could in the short time she was there. What is quite remarkable is that, even in a “big pond” where you’d think she would have been a very little fish indeed, coming from a small agricultural town in Central California, she was scouted and pursued by the military, by fabric design houses, by the theatre in San Francisco, and even by a South American cattle breeder who commissioned paintings of his prize breeding stock which she happily executed and shipped off to an exotic location that she forever dreamed of visiting.

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While she was not allowed to stay at CCAC for a full four years, Joan Dobbs did carry the principles and practices of their modern mind-set with her for the rest of her life. Once back in Bakersfield, she continued to create and to hold on fiercely to the notion that she had the right to create in the way she chose to create. She never allowed herself to be intimidated by the many voices that attempted to tell her what to create, and who she should be as a creator.

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