About the Artists

Barry Hammond

Barry Hammond Art is a website that showcases a collection of my paintings, as well as, the collection of sculptures of my long time friend and renowned California based artist John Clark.

I have been a visual artist for more than fifty years. I hold an Honours Bachelors of Arts degree specializing in Fine Art from the University of Toronto. I also hold a Master of Business Administration degree from York University. I have been a member of the Art Purchase Committee of the Hart House Collection which is the largest private collection of Canadian art in the world.

I first started out as an illustrator strongly influenced by 1960`s artists such as Ed Roth, Stanley Mouse, Robert Williams and Don Martin. Later, I formally studied under Vera Frenkel, the renowned Slovak/Canadian visual artist. My other main influences are abstract impressionists and colour field artists such as Mark Rothko and Josef Albers. Besides being a creator of visual art I am also an avid collector of art from around the world.

In addition to my artistic endeavours I was able to also squeeze in a thirty year career in international corporate finance.

I reside in Zürich, Switzerland.

Barry J. Hammond

John Clark

In terms of education, as a student I studied at the Syracuse University College of Art, graduating with a BFA in Environmental Design, during which I spent a year of study in Kyoto, Japan. I did my graduate work at the Kunstgewerbeschule Basel, Switzerland, studying design with Armin Hofmann, Wolfgang Weingart, and other masters. I subsequently moved to Munich and joined the international studio of Rolf Müller, Büro for Kommunikation Rolf Müller.

As an educator, I began teaching at the Otis College of Art and Design, at both their downtown Los Angeles and their later west side campuses. In 1990 I began to teach at the
Art Center (Europe) campus in La Tour de Peilz, Switzerland, and ultimately took over the role of the Chair of the Communication Design Department through 1992.

I began our studio Looking, environmental design, in Los Angeles, which evolved gradually into a large public space sculpture. In 2000 with partner Marianne Thompson, we founded Artsglas, and arts glass studio working in all forms of dimensional and slumped glass, for both architectural and art assignments.

Over the last ten years my focus has been stone sculpture, ultimately focusing on alabaster, primarily with stone from the renowned Volterra Quarry near Pisa, Italy. The Volterra Alabaster, also know as ‘Italian Ice’, is bright white, but also highly translucent as a medium, with characteristics similar to art glass.

My specific creative influence is the work of Jean Arp, a native of Alsace, but whose studio still stands south of Paris in Clamart. His work is uniqiue in its development of abstract, yet highly anthropomorphic forms: forms that suggest another form of life.

I reside in La Quinta, California.

John Clark