Artist Frank Minuto’s own little planet

Artist Frank Minuto in his studio at Angels Gate, San Pedro. The painting on the right has part of the title, "Serve Man" visible. It references the Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man." Fans will remember the concluding line is, "It's a cookbook."

As you enter the Southwest terminal at LAX this summer you’ll be greeted by a throng of giant whirring, buzzing robots. Don’t worry; they’re friendly. Their lights flash, “Happy Landings!” “Love the shoes!” and other cordial messages. Anyway, they’re only made of paint — 23 paintings and drawings  — the largest measuring eight by six feet.

The wizard behind the canvases is L.A. artist Frank Minuto, a shaggy-bearded bear of a man in shorts, shades and a multicolored hand-knit cap who looks like Santa Claus on a summer cruise. Minuto was born in the wrong time and place: Casper, Wyoming, in 1947. But his art teleports him to Paris in the 1920s, ancient Egypt and the Forbidden Planet of the 1950s.

Frank was a bit in awe of his father, a World War II submariner hero who had regularly cut high school to go hunting and fishing but passed finals by cramming the night before. Frank describes him as a “John Wayne type” skilled in the manly arts like packing his own bullets. His father dragged him along on elk-hunting trips, but the only child was “a disaster in the outdoors.” Chipmunks and bugs were enough to scare young Frank.

He’d rather be in his grandmother’s warm kitchen learning to cook her favorite Sicilian dishes or huddled in a corner writing and illustrating comic books about superheroes and robots. The robots could express feelings the shy boy didn’t dare show.

“I learned that keeping my mouth shut was best,” Minuto says. “I learned from Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.” What the ventriloquist didn’t dare say could come out of the dummy’s mouth. While Frank had to eat every pea on his plate, later his robots would burn down the pea ranch.

In the mid-‘50s a TV ad captivated him. “I am Robert the Robot the mechanical man. Drive me, steer me wherever you can.” It swung its arms as it walked; it grasped objects; its eyes lit up and it talked! It was a plastic toy just over a foot high, but on TV it looked enormous.

“It was the only thing I ever really wanted,” Minuto says, “But I never got one.” Now he realizes the robot of his imagination was far superior to the toy, which would probably have conked out after a day. Not having it, “you had to kick your head into overdrive.”

As his father took various jobs like drafting and truck driving, the family moved around the West: from Casper to Denver, Laramie and Billings. When Frank was 11 they moved to California – San Gabriel, Gardena, Hermosa and then Alhambra. Moving was monotonous, but in Frank’s head the family car was a space ship and he was venturing into the cosmos.

Fifteen-year-old Frank helped out at his father’s restaurant in Hermosa Beach. But on breaks, a nearby establishment called The Insomniac lured him in. The coffeehouse-bookstore-gallery was a gathering place for artists and other Bohemian types. There were artists’ studios in the back.

According to Minuto many of the artists were pilots, survivors of World War II and Korea. They knew that every day was a gift and they lived it as if there were no tomorrows. Their philosophy: living each day to the fullest — savoring each meal as if it were the first you ever had, declaring your love for someone without hesitation and experiencing the joy of creation – resonated with the teenager. When one of the artists showed him his studio, where he had been working on series of nude portraits, Frank found his calling. “Anywhere a man can sit around looking at naked women and make a living” is where he wanted to be.

"Robot Faces" by Frank Minuto.

But continually changing schools was unsettling. Frank became a class clown and a rebel. Although the standard school curriculum bored him, he loved learning about art and artists. But he had no respect for teachers who couldn’t answer his questions and he was kicked out of two high school art classes — one for refusing to draw with a ruler. Finally his rebellion reached the point where he was expelled from school and had to repeat his senior year.

A year after high school he was loading trucks for a citrus company when Mike Brennan, the district manager for Sunkist approached him. “I hear you want to go to Chouinard [Art Institute],” he said. “Tell you what. You paint me a clown. If I like it, I’ll sponsor you.”

The clown portrait and his portfolio gained him entry to the prestigious art school. But the “sponsorship” was a recommendation, not monetary support, and young Frank was already married – to a woman with three children. So he got up at midnight and loaded trucks until 8 a.m., schlepped his art gear onto the bus and got to class by 8:45, stayed until 5 p.m., took the bus home, studied until 7 and went to bed. So much for la vie bohème.

But through his studies at Chouinard and later at Otis College of Art and Design and the University of London, as well as independent reading and visiting museums and galleries, Minuto gained a thorough background in art and art history. The depth of his knowledge is apparent to his students at the Palos Verdes Art Center where his classes are often wait-listed.

Although Palos Verdes is a slog from the Long Beach home he shares with his second wife Debbie, it’s worth it, Minuto says, because he enjoys teaching even more than creating his own work. “Painting is boring when done alone. And scary,” he says.

In his Painters Workshop he serves as mentor rather than instructor to artists working in every style from photorealism to complete abstraction. Joy Haselhorst, whose cartoons on wood panels satirize space-age anxieties, says Minuto, “encourages artists to think outside the box.” His nonjudgmental attitude allows artists the freedom to express their unique visions, she says.

Rosemary Bandes, whose work ranges from impressionistic landscapes to mixed-media reliefs incorporating metal hardware, says, “Frank has an incredible eye for how a painting might be improved, no matter what the style or subject. He’s also very encouraging. He always pushes me beyond what I think I can do.”

Minuto enjoys playing with the styles of favorite artists like Larry Rivers and Jasper Johns in his robot paintings. He’s also having the time of his life building sets to turn his ramshackle former-army-barracks studio at Angels Gate in San Pedro into a Paris café in the ‘20s and the dressing room of the Lido show in Las Vegas in the ‘50s.  There he photographs costumed models for multilayered shadow-box constructions as well as for paintings.

But for now he’s basking in the glow of the robots’ flashing lights. The LAX show is a hit, eliciting smiles from weary travelers and attracting thousands of viewers to his website (www.frankminuto.com), plus interested buyers, offers of more shows and universal “thumbs up” from airport employees. PEN

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