Inez Storer

A few years ago, a member of my Board of Directors telephoned just as I was boarding a flight to Italy. Elated, he described what I immediately envisioned as one of those ‘rare finds’, a unique piece of art he and his wife had purchased that day from an artist whose works I had so admired in his home, hung next to floor to ceiling windows overlooking the beauty of San Francisco Bay.

Since that flight to Italy, I’ve come to know the amazing mind behind these truly outstanding works and how she grew to become, in her own right -- her famous father’s daughter!

I AM MY FATHER’S DAUGHTER...

For years, Franz Bachelin was Art Director for Paramount Studios. His work evolved around film directors such as the renowned Billy Wilder and some of the best films ever made! He was the German-born, Academy Award nominated genius who oversaw the set design for Star Trek’s first pilot: The Cage – after Pato Guzman dropped out to return to Chile. He also was this young girl’s father.

The mother of this very young lady was an actress and dancer who arrived in Los Angeles in the late 1920s with her husband, Franz, having immigrated initially to Cuba. She, Jewish. He, Catholic. An amazing feat for a young couple in Germany in the ’20s, as Hitler was rising to power.

Franz had been an aviator who refused Hermann Goering’s offer to help establish the Third Reich’s air force. And as we begin to see, when reflecting upon the life of this remarkable man -- overcoming adversity would play an enormous role in forging the couple beyond and he, into a Hollywood life of real make-believe.

It was for the 1959 screen adaptation of Jules Verne’s science fiction novel, Journey to the Center of the Earth, that Franz earned an Academy Award nomination in Best Art Direction -- Set Decoration. He shared the nomination with fellow art directors Herman A. Blumenthal and Lyle R. Wheeler and set decorators Joseph Kish and Walter M. Scott.

Franz Bachelin’s many other art direction credits include a number of the classic Bulldog Drummond films of the 1930s.

Billy Wilder’s classic 1953 comic war film Stalag 17; the 1954 adventure film The Naked Jungle {starring Abraham Sofaer}; the 1955 John Wayne film The Sea Chase {co-starring Paul Fix}; the 1957 drama Band of Angels {featuring Clark Gable, Yvonne De Carlo}; the 1962 fantasy The Magic Sword {starring Gary Lockwood}; and the 1965 sci-fi B-movie Village of the Giants. His last work was the 1966 two-part pilot for the Batman series, which featured TOS {The Original Series} guest star Frank Gorshin in his Emmy Award nominated role as The Riddler.

Star Trek: The Original Series {formally called Star Trek} is the first Star Trek series show and it aired on September 8, 1966 on NBC. The show was created as a Wagon Train to the stars and was set in the 23rd century and featured the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Star Trek was later informally dubbed The Original Series, or TOS, after several spin offs.

Franz Bachelin died in Pacific Palisades, California in 1980. He was 84 years old – right at the time his beautiful daughter Inez Storer was brilliantly achieving in her own right – a remarkable mark in history.
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INEZ STORER AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL THEMES ~ AND PERSONAL NARRATIVES...

Inez was born in Santa Monica, California. Upon reaching the age of 14, the details of her German-Jewish past came to light after questioning her father about whether she was Jewish. He said: “yes,” but they were not to discuss it further and her mother fled from the room!

And so Inez was raised Catholic and sent to Catholic high school. But it was hardly a good fit for the self-described rebel and anarchist. “I was constantly getting expelled,” she recalls. “But Catholicism certainly has influenced my work. All the rituals, mystery and illusions.”

As a child, Inez spent hours on movie sets, learning at an early age that nothing in life was as it seemed. “I remember Bing Crosby and William Holden were so short that they stood on boxes so as not to be shorter than their leading actresses. And I remember so well, the actress Corinne Calvert who, once the director called ‘cut’, stood up in her taffeta costume, pulled out her falsies and threw them at the director.” Watching actors step back and forth between illusion and reality would come to play a significant role in her life, in her narrative work and in her telling stories through her imagery.

Inez studied at the Art Center in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Art Institute, the University of California at Berkeley and, ultimately, received her B.A. from Dominican University in San Rafael, California and her M.A. from San Francisco State University.

Today, her work is consistently exhibited in solo exhibitions in both the United States and abroad. She’s received numerous awards including the Pollack/Krasner Grant, was selected by the Council of 100 -- for their annual selection of a California woman artist at the Fresno Art Museum and on two occasions, she was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.

Her work is included in several museums, including the permanent collections of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Fresno Museum, the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University and the National Museum of Jewish History in Philadelphia.

Her art is about telling tales – a visual raconteur who uses paint and various materials to tell stories. “I work in various mediums including assemblage which I call ‘theatricals in a box’ collage, mixed media and paintings as well as various methods of printing -- principally monoprints.

I have done many editions both at Urban Digital Color, Trillium and Smith Andersen Editions in California. I also have done collaborative work – most especially with Miriam Schapiro one of the founders of the Pattern and Decoration Movement in the early ’70s. Together, we did an enormous, handmade paper piece, essentially using the vacuum form method.”

Her art, like the novels by one of her favorite authors, Gabriel García Márquez, embraces the lines between fantasy and reality -- her multileveled narratives exploring the human condition. “My figures often float in precarious positions like tightrope walkers.

I find these metaphors can often reflect our own sometimes unsettled lives. I prefer to have a dark aspect underlying the work.”
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JO LEE: I’m so excited about this interview, Inez. The memories, the questions that have filled my interpretation of your amazing career and now, sitting with you for my excursion into your world. You no doubt had an unusual life -- growing up in your father’s Hollywood and meeting some of the great movie makers of the late ’40s and early ’50s. What is it that you remember most about that time?

INEZ: Jo Lee, my early memories certainly influence my work having lived in a family which kept secrets and one where there were no known relatives to clarify these secrets. As an artist I had to invent ‘stories’. I was later to find out after my mother died, that I had over 30 relatives ... two cousins who escaped on the Kindertransport to England. One of these cousins called me after my mother died and said that her mother and my grandfather were sister and brother! They all grew up together in Berlin. I did not know my cousins existed until the late ’90s. Some lived just a few miles away. When my parents immigrated to Los Angeles, my mother did not want anyone to know that she was Jewish so, they too, kept the secret!

JO LEE: What wisdom and courage this must have instilled! Tell me then, with your art sometimes described as being influenced by such compelling world events as the Russian Revolution and the Second World War -- do these perceived influences relate to your personal life in any way?

INEZ: I certainly did not have first hand knowledge of the Russian Revolution, only through what my husband relates and he got his information through his family as he was born a number of years after the Revolution. My memories of the Second World War as a young person growing up in Santa Monica are much more ordinary. Now, of course, I am very interested in current politics and definitely refer to this interest in my current work – to the topical events as they are happening, today. I feel helplessness about how little voice one has for change. The world seems so terribly worrisome in so many ways. Using current, political information in my work is a small way for me to comment on the larger scheme of things. There are so many war fronts.

JO LEE: Art critics and historians, as I referenced earlier, Inez, have labeled your work theatrical or magic realism and at the same time, your paintings are referred to as uniquely personal and idiosyncratic. How to you describe what you do?

INEZ: I use materials, other references from books, the written word and as I have said, current events. I am a great traveler among flea markets ... as if I am searching out for clues towards my own earlier lost identity. I am a shopper of artifacts to refer to or use in my work. Artists like to shop.

JO LEE: You have said Catholicism, with all its ritual, mystery and illusions, influenced your work. There are Jewish themes in your paintings. This is all fascinating. Tell me about your spiritual approach to art and life?

INEZ: I won’t say I am ‘deeply’ spiritual. I don’t feel I am that kind of person. If I lean towards anything in that realm it would be towards Buddhism or the more eastern philosophies. I prefer a meditative stance. I think I have pretty much fled from my ‘catholic’ upbringing except for the drama of it. But it’s interesting to have ‘guilt’ from two religions - Jewish and Catholic. Guilt in the creative sense of the word.

JO LEE: Your works are created in many styles. Which medium are you most comfortable with?
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INEZ: I go between scale, large and small and I am very comfortable using mixed media -- collage/assemblage. It’s a way of really using my hands. A tactile approach. Close to sculpture. If I am painting, I usually start with using acrylics and then counter paint with oils. That way if I wish to glue anything to the panels, I am able to do it on the acrylic surface. It does take a certain amount of planning and strategy.

JO LEE: Inez, a great friend of ours tells of the time you were commissioned to do a piece of significant size for the Fairmont Hotel, in Chicago. In preparation for that commission – you created a work influenced by Matisse – that today hangs in his home.

INEZ: Yes, I did a large mural for their Grand Ballroom Lobby a number of years ago, Jo Lee. It’s always a surprise to see the work once it’s installed and I recall visiting it while I was at the Chicago Art Fair … just me and the painting. The work was done in the studio and I wasn’t present for the installation -- so to view work is always a great surprise to see it outside of the studio context. As to Matisse being an influence -- how could one go wrong in having Matisse as a ‘teacher’. I don’t want to paint ‘like’ Matisse but it’s so interesting to me to see how he painted and how he used the objects around him in the work. That part of it has remained with me to this day. My studio {as well as our home} is filled with strange objects; ‘Outsider Art, folk art, fellow artists’ work, photos, flea market treasures’, the whole lot. And often these odd things find their way into the paintings.

JO LEE: Inez, as an artist and teacher you wield considerable influence. Whose work have you influenced most?

INEZ: Since I have been a painting instructor for many years, I would imagine that I have influenced some. But I’ve always kept my eye out for my students to not end up painting like me. That would be a crutch for them and they would not be able to find their own voice. They had to find their own voice. I keep in touch with many of my former students and also have on-going dialogues with them as well as fellow artists. The San Jose Institute of Art put on an exhibit of former students of mine at the same time as my retrospective at the de Saisset Museum at the Santa Clara University. Some of these former students I had not seen in many years. And to reunite with them gave such a sense of continuity for them as well as for me.

JO LEE: Have other artists influenced you?
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INEZ: This is always a hard question to answer, Jo Lee, because it’s so easy to get ‘tagged’. Of course there are the obvious ones that people usually identify with my work. But I will leave this answer up to the reader. I look at a myriad of artists and they are not always in similar categories.

JO LEE: Now, I’ve got to ask. Do you and Andrew influence each other’s work?

INEZ: Sure. We come from different perspectives but he often has a third eye and I sometimes ask him to ‘have a look’ and ‘talk’ about what he sees. You would have to ask him about it, Jo Lee.

JO LEE: Is it wonderful for two, renowned artists to live outside of San Francisco in a small community like Inverness?

INEZ: I have been here for so long that it’s easy to take it for granted. But the landscape has a way of seeping into my vision and calms me down. It’s a never ending battle to keep the landscape safe for the next generation as well as for ourselves.

JO LEE: I’m curious! How did you and Andrew meet? It is said, that like both of your works of art, your union is equally rare.

INEZ: We met in a very casual way in downtown Inverness. One of those minor events that turns into a BIG something. He had two children {very young} and I had four children, the youngest one was nine. So you might say that we were the Brady Bunch when we ‘melded’ our families in the old hotel!

JO LEE: Inez, Andrew’s mother, Donna Elizabeta, Duchesa de Sasso-Ruffo, was a healer and I know you use her crystal. I’m very much into crystals. Can you tell me something about this? I believe Andrew’s mother also wrote for the same magazine as the one that Henry Miller contributed to. It was called the Mystic Magazine. She certainly was ahead of her time and definitely into the healing arts.

INEZ: When I read her column from that magazine, published in the late 30s – I was most amazed how timely she really was with the current interest in the healing arts. Her words were right on the mark and I am lucky because I have her crystal and certainly use it. I remember giving a seminar at the San Francisco Art Institute where I taught for so many years. I did a ‘demo’ on the use of crystals. The students ‘got it’ right away and the seminar lasted for a very long time.

JO LEE: Oh, I’d love at some point, to discuss the Duchess’s crystal, Inez! We know how I adore the pureness of crystals. I understand Thomas Paul of Thomas Paul Fine Arts is adding you to his very impressive roster in Los Angeles. This is exciting!

INEZ: I am excited too. I have a footprint in L.A. since I did two very large commissions for the First Interstate World Center, now known I think, as the Library Tower in downtown L.A. It was designed by the architect I.M. Pei and is the tallest building west of the Mississippi. I did the murals in my studio in sections and never saw the entire painting until they were installed in the building. So I look forward to again having representation in the city where I grew up.

JO LEE: Where do you go from here?

INEZ: Jo Lee, I do think that I just go on painting. I tell my students they really did not have a choice in being artists. It chose them! I now do workshops around the country. I’ve recently returned from having an exhibit at Grover Thurston Gallery in Seattle and soon at Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco. I am busy. I have recently exhibited in Ketchum, Idaho through my gallery in the Anne Reed Gallery. I’ve also done a workshop at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and I’m about to do a printing workshop in Mazatlan, Mexico. It keeps my hand in teaching and one meets such interesting people and THEY all have their stories!

JO LEE: But how many stories hold a candle to yours, Inez! Color, compassion, romance, history all within a rainbow – mirrored with life through art – a gift of rarity! Thank you for sitting with me. In you, Inez, I’ve made a friend ~

INEZ: It’s so interesting, so wonderful to me that your magazine goes out into the ‘world ether’ and is seen by SUCH a diverse group of people. I’m hoping my story can resonate with some artists from other places and that this segment of my life story can be of encouragement to many to ‘keep going’ and to continue making their art. Thank you, Jo Lee.