The Candy Store

Exhibition Statement

This exhibition of sculpture, paintings, and prints bear testimony to the insight of Adeliza McHugh, owner of the Candy Store Gallery in Folsom, California, from which the show took its name. During the early 60’s, McHugh recognized the artistic promise of a group of artists affiliated with the University of California at Davis and Sacramento State University. Since then, many of these artists have gained national stature, though they have remained loyal to McHugh and the Candy Store Gallery.

The exhibition was organized by Adeliza McHugh and Rob Wilson, Curator of the Redding Museum and Art Center. The exhibition and catalog were funded in part by the Simpson Paper Company, Anderson, California. Schneider Museum of Art programs are supported by funds from the Friends of the Museum and Southern Oregon State College, and by a grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Artist Bios

Robert Arneson

Born 1930 in Benicia, California. Arneson earned a B.A. degree at the California College of Arts and crafts in Oakland in 1954 and an M.F.A. in ceramics from Mills College in 1958. Along with William T. Wiley, he is credited as a founder of the California “Funk” movement, a regional rebellion against the snobbish “high” art of the east coast establishment. An original member of the “Candy Store Bunch,” he gained notoriety with his controversial bust of the late San Francisco mayor, George Moscone, in 1981. Arneson received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1989.

Luis Cruz Azaceta

Born in 1942 Havana, Cuba. Azaceta was 17 years old when Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. The following year, Azaceta immigrated to the Unites States. From 1966 to 1969 he studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York city, graduating with a B.F.A. in 1969. Not satisfied with the aesthetic concerns and emphasis on geometric abstraction prevalent during this turbulent era, Azaceta’s art changed dramatically following a trip to Europe in the early 1970’s. Inspired by the artists Bosch, Goya, and Max Beckman, and the urban anxiety and psychological paranoia of New York City, he began to paint from personal experience. His recent work features a minimal centralized confrontational figure, often a self-portrait, acting out a role amid the chaos and aggression inherent in contemporary urban society. Azaceta was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1985.

Roy DeForest

Born in 1930 North Platte, Nebraska. DeForest grew up on a farm in Nebraska and lived in Yakima, Washington before enrolling in the California School of Fine Arts in the early 1950’s, studying under David Park and Hassel Smith. He continued his education at San Francisco State College where he graduated in 1953. His early paintings were abstract with silhouettes of animals and human figures curiously juxtaposed on flat stylized fragments of landscape. Another original member of the “Candy Store Bunch,” DeForest infuses humor into his rebellion against snobbish “high” art.

Julian Faulkner

Born 1960 in England. Faulkner moved to the United States in 1967. He studied at American River College, 1980-83, and San Francisco Art Institute, 1983-85. The youngest artist in the show and a recent discovery of Adeliza McHugh, his neo-expressionist figurative paintings exude vibrant energy.

Sharon Jacques

Born 1956 New Orleans, Louisiana. Jacques received a B.F.A. in 1977 and an M.F.A. in 1982 from Louisiana State University. She currently lives in New York where she works at the Museum of Modern Art. The central image of her work is the female torso examined within the context of contemporary concerns.

Luis Jiminez

Born 1940 El Paso, Texas. Jiminez is an artist of Hispanic heritage with a long family tradition of craftsmanship. He expresses his political and social concerns in large drawings, prints, and exotically sprayed fiberglass sculptures. Jiminez studied architecture at Texas Western College in El Paso and the University of Texas at Austin; however, his interest in drawing and sculpture caused him to switch majors, and he graduated with a degree in Fine Art in 1964 and continued his art studies in the New York studio of artist Seymour Lipton. Jiminez works in geographical isolation in an adobe schoolhouse 200 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He produces imagery inspired by his Southwest heritage, expressing the dignity of hard working and confident people.

Gladys Nilsson

Born 1940 Chicago, Illinois. Nilsson grew up in Chicago and studied at the Chicago Art Institute from 1958 to 1962. She is a founding member of the “Hairy Who” monster artists who first exhibited in 1966 at the Hyde Park Art Center. Nilsson is best known for her watercolors of distorted figures, vegetable-like shapes with long winding appendages situated in spaces overgrown with foliage. Her iconography is complex and eclectic based on mystery fiction, Egyptian and naive art, archeology, biology, and an avid devotion to certain television shows. Nilsson, while teaching at Sacramento State in the 1960 1 s, was one of the original Candy store artists.

Jim Nutt

Born 1938 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Nutt earned his B.F.A. at the Chicago Art Institute in 1965. He was a founding member of the “Hairy Who” monster artists, who shared an obsession with the grotesque and the absurd, the flat linear brilliantly colored style related to comic books and an interest in primitive and popular arts. Nutt, sensing a compatible atmosphere, moved to Sacramento in 1968 to teach at Sacramento State where he became affiliated with the Candy Store Gallery. His specialty is comically grotesque caricature.

Maija Peeples

Born 1942 in Riga, Latvia. Peeples emigrated with her family to California following World War II. She studied mathematics at the University of California at Davis until a required painting class with William T. Wiley caused her to change her major. She graduated with an M.F.A. in 1965. Her humorous, happy paintings, filled with brightly colored people and animals, often have long, playful titles.

Sandy Shannonhouse

Born 1947 in Petaluma, California. Shannonhouse graduated with an M.F.A. from the University of California at Davis in 1973. Her early work, porcelain wall reliefs of shelves with flattened cups and glasses, evolved into hanging strings of ceramic bladders, hearts, and other organs. Her most recent work, elongated figures related to Picasso’s sculpture of the 1930’s, are cast in bronze and emphasize dance­like movement and gestures.

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