Unique to his aquatic childhood in Southern California, Ted Emrick’s appreciation and respect of his ocean environment has created a powerful artistic style conscious of light, motion, time and life. His use of “suspicious objects” and inspirational insight from his recent cave paintings expedition has inspired a bold new direction in his sculptural visions. Emrick’s latest series explores the concept of how we will be seen thousands of years from now. His work holds a fine balance between contemporary and primitive visual storytelling.

Emrick is a graduate of a host of art institutions and universities including the San Francisco Art Institute. His works are owned by notable collectors including Merv Griffin, Apple Computers, Caesar’s Palace, Beverly Hills Nikko Hotel, Chicago O’Hare Hilton and Albuquerque Hyatt Regency, to name a few. Ted’s works have also been collected recently by the Berkeley Library in San Francisco and the Santa Maria Museum of Natural Arts. Emrick’s work can be seen throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico including Third Dimension Gallery in Kona, Hawaii; Phillips Gallery in San Jose; Cody Gallery in Los Olivos and The Gallery at Ventana in Big Sur and Carmel, California.

Emrick has been the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards for his contemporary paintings and sculptures. Ted’s glass works have been recognized by awards from such respected institutions as The Dallas Society of Glass Artists. His latest solo exposition in collaboration with Morgan Stanley Investment Group was televised and highly received. Latest works include glass doors, chandeliers and large glass wall installations.

Ted currently resides in beautiful Los Osos, California, where he runs a large art studio. His studio has hosted a wide range of notable artists and projects including Art Clokey’s “Gumby and Pokey” and “Davey and Goliath” claymation productions. His studio has also hosted guest artists specializing in contemporary jewelry, sculptures and paintings. His multi-media background has opened the doors to many contemporary projects throughout the United States and the world.

Ted in Central Baja

forever responsible in stimulating the creative mind. I am most satisfied with works that stimulate fascination and discovery. If the electric current in the brain which controls creative “discoveries” can be energized, the viewer’s mind will be opened to an adventure into his or her own creative juices.

The best example of this would be the works I created for Apple Computers. Terry Bailie, CEO of Apple Cupertino, told me that he had observed some of his employees when they were stuck on a program. He watched as they wandered the hallways and then gazed into one of my paintings. At first it was just an adjustment, but then it became something else. Their gazes looked into the composition of color and shapes. A sense of wonderment took over and then boom, they were off to their program. Terry and I discussed how the paintings changed their electrical signal into a creative level that opens the mind.

I have thought much about this signal. I realized it was in all the artwork I have enjoyed throughout my career. It was in not only the petrography I’ve studied throughout the world but in all the great works up to the present for which I have loved and shared the same fascination.

It is a gamble, not to be seduced by the security of a product, but to challenge oneself to create works that stimulate the mind at such a level. To lose oneself in the fascination of creating this “electrical signal” holds for me the greatest challenge and all the risks I will ever want.

I was asked once why I do not gamble. My career in art is gamble enough. I have bet everything on it and yet it always feels so far from completion.

What I’ve found in being an artist is that you can’t be too comfortable. And you must be honest with yourself and observe creative energy. Truly being an artist is redefining not only the medium but also the concepts of your own creativity. To observe what we are -- forever changing and

Most of us have had the experience of walking into a gallery or museum and

being struck by the 20th century phenomenon of found object art. From

Picasso to Warhol artists of the 20th century found that contemporary

objects, sometimes reshaped or reapplied, and sometimes presented in their

natural state become the subject of the artist’s expression about

contemporary society.

It is the object’s very normalness that makes us as viewers question the use

of these items as art. When an artist, however, can manipulate the object,

reshape, restructure and redefine them so that they cease being what they

once were and become the tool of the artist’s personal expression, we are

more comfortable. Painter/sculptor Ted Emrick typifies the latter category.

Using contemporary material and found objects, Emrick molds, manipulates, and

shapes the object in such complex and intriguing ways that the objects lose

their functionality and become statements of this young Californian’s vision

of society as we understand it.

As a painter, Ted’s visions are uniquely expressed because each of his images

are painted on glass. Painting on the backside of glass, Ted, through the

application of bonding material, rubber cements and the like, creates

textured paint, depth and contrast on the smooth glass surface. His most

intriguing pieces are often painted on the discarded windows of churches,

public buildings, factories and private residences built in the last 100

years in his native California coastal communities. By applying his

contemporary theme to glass that has a history, Emrick reshapes and rethinks

history and the applications which he can make of them. Contemporary heros

such as Albert Einstein are a recurring theme in his paintings as are icons

of ancient history such as King Tutankhamen.

As a sculptor, Emrick’s work is even more complex. Using mediums of

industrial construction, I beams, rebar and glass, Emrick has created and

shaped contemporary visions of beauty through manipulation of the most

utilitarian of all man’s 20th century objects. Columns of glass supported on

I beam and captured between posts of rebar are touched with hints of paint

which become visible to the viewer only as the viewer walks in, around or

right up to his sculpture. While the sculptures are made of common building

materials, Emrick’s theme thinking and subject matter tends to reflect life

and living. Many of his sculptures reflect botanical or natural themes,

things that are more from nature then from the materials he’s using.

It is precisely Emrick’s amalgamation of the natural themes together with the

contemporary building material that bring his sculptures to life. By using

building materials in an organic way, by letting the viewer see where the

rebar has been cut or the rough edges of glass as it has been shaped, the

viewer is always able to see the artist’s hand at work in reshaping the

objects. The sculptures are rarely polished, refined or finished as the

would be for building; instead, by allowing them to appear in a more natural

state, Emrick is able to achieve the feeling of organic living themes through

the use of his mediums. Watch for this Californian artist. We believe he is

truly a force to be reckoned with.

PRESS REALEASE from MARKUS GALLERIES,

Written by Mark Tratos, gallery owner & director