Emile Norman, born as Emil Nomann, was an American artist known for his sculptors, mosaics, panels, and jewelry.
Background
Emile Norman was born in 1918 in San Gabriel, California, located in Los Angeles County. Raised on a walnut farm in the San Gabriel Valley, he exhibited artistic talent from an early age, carving his first sculpture from a riverside rock at the age of 11 which ruined his father"s chisels but gained his father"s respect.
Career
Norman began his professional career fashioning window displays for department store, Bullocks Wilshire, in Los Angeles, California. He later moved to New York where he continued to fashion window displays for various New York City department stores including Bergdorf Goodman and Bonwit Teller. His displays were featured in various magazines including Vogue.
During a trip to Europe, he discovered his affinity for working with plastics, especially epoxy resins, which would have a profound effect on his subsequent career.
Various of his plastic works were featured in a November 1944 New York Times article titled "Plastics Shown in Decorative Role". In 1946, Norman moved to California"s central coastal region known as Big Sur where he set up a home-studio.
In 2006, Public Broadcasting Service aired the documentary film, Emile Norman: By His Own Design, which covered much of Norman"s life. Law. On September 24, 2009, Emile Norman died in Monterey, California.
He was 91. He was survived by three sisters: Marilyn Bogart, Mabel Malone, and Edna Rhodes.
Norman"s lifetime body of work includes sculptures, mosaics, panels, jewelry, and other forms. One of his most prominent works is the 40-by-46-foot mosaic window for the Nob Hill Masonic Center in San Francisco, California, which includes an assemblage of exterior stone sculptures. The mosaic work is described as follows:
Norman often used an innovative technique bringing together various unique admixtures of epoxy resin, crushed glass, plastic, and wood.
The created effect is not dissimilar to cloisonne or stained glass and is especially unusual when the artist would craft the layered effect over a wax form which, when later melted away, left behind a 3-dimensional sculpture.