Bob Francis is among the artists highlighted at FOLA’s Saturday fundraiser
One of the hallmarks of a unique artist is that he or she has a personal style we can recognize from across the room: Giacometti, Rothko, Nevelson, Hopper, or, from even farther away, Richard Serra. You know them when you see them. Whether or not we would place him in such august company, the same can be said for Hermosa Beach resident Bob Francis, who is one of seven artists whose works will be on display this Saturday at the beachfront home of Bob Salim in Manhattan Beach.
Salim, this year’s FOLA honoree, is hosting the sixth annual fundraiser held by the Foundation of Local Arts to benefit a variety of arts programs throughout Manhattan Beach. In addition to the stunning flower photographs that Francis has lent, works by South Bay artists Margaret Yuki Tan, Bobbie Rich, Linzi Lynne, Jennifer Hellman, Lynne Haggard, and Geri Aida Hess will also be on view. Pianist Devin Norris will tickle the ivories. The event takes place from 7 to 10 p.m.
Floating through darkness
FOLA’s executive director Angela Silverman asked Bob Francis for three pieces.
“I thought these would be good for Angela,” Francis says, indicating “Mum, Red,” “Tillandsia, Yellow,” and “Billy Balls, Purple.” “It’s a super-contemporary house,” he says of Salim’s residence; “this is very contemporary work.”
Around town, Francis is known as a photographer, but it wouldn’t exactly be demeaning to call him a fine arts scanographer since his large portraits of flowers are created on a scanner. It’s a bit more complex than someone hoisting themselves onto the fragile top of a copy machine and xeroxing their butt, but it’s the same general principle. Well, sort of.
Francis excels in detailed prints of illuminated flowers, most often one per image, and usually emerging from a colorless backdrop.
“It’s as if the subjects are immersed in a blackness,” he explains. “People have said, Gosh, it looks like it’s floating in dark water.”
Which is exactly what he’s been striving for, that integrated effect where there isn’t a noticeable barrier between the flower and the apparent void behind it.
In most cases, the flower is gently placed on the surface of the scanner. However, since his goal isn’t to acquire an image of a squished flower, Francis removes the cover. Because the camera inside the scanner is shooting straight up, the overhead lights are turned off and/or the area above the scanner is draped in black.
(Let me just point out that his recent experiments have – for the first time – incorporated backgrounds with different colors, and it’s these pieces that Francis will be showing on Saturday. But this is the exception to the rule, and black backgrounds still prevail.)
Francis uses a high-end Epson scanner that he usually leaves at its default setting.
“If it’s an all-white flower I might turn it down a little bit more,” he says, but the scanner’s very good at not blowing out highlights.” That’s crucial, and if this happens the image is worthless: “Because I need tone everywhere.”
One leaf in the garden
Francis is known for his flower imagery almost without exception, although he did make scans of Laura Orr for an exhibition of Muse portraits at the Palos Verdes Art Center. He says he has photographs of other subjects, adding that “most of them are still in the box,” but his niche specialty is flowers: “This is the one (area, or subject) where I really felt I had something unique to offer.”
When Francis was young, he and his family lived in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. One school assignment during 6th or 7th grade was to collect assorted flowers, press them into a book, and then label them.
“I always remembered that,” he says. And perhaps it all came back to him seven or eight years ago when he found a curious leaf in his garden that, having died, “started turning these extraordinary colors, like fall colors, red, green, yellow, and I went Wow, that’s cool. I knew that you could take a picture on a scanner and so I said, I’ll put this on the scanner and shoot it at 800 dpi and see what this is.” The result, he says, was like being back in science class and looking through a microscope and seeing wonders – veins, tiny hairs – in the most minute objects. But what most enthralled him was the sheer beauty of what he saw.
Experimenting some more, Francis eventually entered three prints into a show; they were all accepted and shown, although nobody bought one. But that wasn’t the point, which was that Francis had found an enduring passion.
“I said, You know, I like doing this. I think it might, one, keep me entertained, and two, maybe we could augment the retirement account or something. It certainly hasn’t done the latter, but it’s done the former.”
“Tulip,” by Bob Francis
From there to here
Francis didn’t train as an artist, although he attended Art Center in Pasadena from 1973 to 1976 – as an advertising major, albeit with a heavy leaning towards design. However, because this is a field that incorporates many disciplines that congregate around the development of a key concept, photography was part of the overall package. “They not only taught you how to shoot a picture,” Francis says, “they taught you how to develop the film and print the damn thing.” He laughs. “So I’m going, Wow, this is really cool.”
The courses he took drove home something else: “It’s not so much the skill that you have, it’s the eye that goes with it, because you have to edit your work.” One needs to look at one’s creations objectively and to be able to discern “between a good design and an excellent design. Once you get to that point where you are your best editor, that’s when you really accomplish (memorable work). A lot of it has to do with just knowing.”
In the latter 1970s Francis entered the advertising world as a designer and, among other challenges, created product catalogues for major companies. He went independent in 2000, nurturing his own clientele, but around 2008 with the downturn in the economy his workflow slowed considerably. One result has been more time to devote to his photographic projects, which are time-consuming as is. His wife, Astrid, has now been retired for a couple of years and may soon be known as the artist in the family: Her captivating paintings earned praise at the last Power of Art show in Redondo Beach.
Francis stresses the importance of being in tune with other artistic disciplines.
“Another thing that was told to me at Art Center,” he says, “was to be open to everything, to know everything you can know.”
It’s clear that Bob Francis knows a lot, intuits a lot, and his refined sensibilities have enabled him to find and draw out spiraling galaxies of beauty in the simplest things. His flower portraits are superb; there’s nothing else quite like them. (See more at BobFrancis.com.)
The FOLA fundraiser takes place on Saturday, Jan. 31, at the home of Bob Salim, 1516 The Strand, Manhattan Beach. Appetizers, live music, a door drawing, valet parking, are included in the $50 ticket price, available online at FoundationOfLocalArts.com.
