The Work of Sculptor Stan Bitters, Photo Gallery
Stan Bitters is a pioneer of the organic modernist craft movement in the 1960s. A look at some of his birdhouses, planters, and fountains that have decorated California gardens over the years.
Read more about Stan Bitters and his sculptures in "The Work of Sculptor Stan Bitters."
A Stan Bitters water wall in a Hollywood Hills, California, home.
Check out ten10site.com for additional designs and art by Stan Bitters, or visit stanbitters.com. Get up close and personal with Bitters' work at the Ace Hotel Palm Springs (acehotel.com/palmsprings).
Bitters’ garden sculptures blend with nature’s coloring.
A Stan Bitters sculpture in the garden.
One of the fireplace friezes at the Ace Hotel.
A 1972 commission for the now-defunct Nut Tree restaurant in Sacramento, California.
A ceramic tile and stucco fireplace frieze is the starkly vertical focal point of this Los Angeles garden, designed by the Commune design collective. Commune commissioned Bitters to create a mural that would accent the garden’s high walls, which were erected to provide privacy, hide the noise from pool mechanics, and create the feeling of a sunken courtyard. “The scale of his work is incredible,” says Commune’s Pamela Shamshiri. “He has taken ceramic art and pushed it to its limits.”
Pots from Bitters’ former company, Hans Sumpf.
At a Fresno house Bitters once owned, he dug this pool and made its coping and fountain.
A highly textured glaze—a Stan Bitters signature—gives this birdhouse its of-the-earth feel.
The artist as a young man (circa 1969).
Bamboolike totems with actual bamboo in the background.
As a sign of Bitters’ re-emergence on the scene, his midcentury coiled “thumb pots” (the indentations are indeed made by his thumbs) resold for thousands of dollars.
Bitters’ low center of gravity garden figurines have been called Haniwa after the terra cotta funerary figures that date back to 3rd-century Japan.
A close-up of one of Bitters’ large medallions shows how it is made up of ceramic wedges, which are then bolted to a steel base.
