Exhibitions 2014-2015This Aytes and Nease exhibit was unveiled at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California as part of its 2014 exhibit schedule where special Steinbeck artifacts were added for texture. The exhibit then traveled to the Irish Cultural Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana as part of the Famous Irish-American series in celebration of Steinbeck’s maternal grandmother’s (Hamilton) Irish roots. In 2015, the exhibit opened in Steinbeck’s muse, Pacific Grove, California, which is just West of Cannery Row. This exhibit was joined by guest artists, Warren Chang (painter), Benjamin Brode (painter), and Eva Lothar (filmmaker) as well as select pieces from the Robert Lewis’ photography collection and Pat Hathaway’s archival CA Views collection. The exhibit is now open in San Francisco at Doc’s Lab located in the historic North Beach area.

Lew Aytes ~ Robert Nease

“John Steinbeck once remarked that his goal as a writer

of fiction was ‘to cut up reality and make

it more real ...’ This is the intricate

music of the art of fiction. It’s the

music I have always tried to play.”

- Thomas Kieman from The Intricate Music, A Biography of John Steinbeck

The Art of Fiction

EXHIBIT WORKS Image sizes Sculpted characters are life-size, with the exception of John Steinbeck who is 1.3 X life-size. Characters are created in polymer clay, reinforced with fiberglass resin and finished in metallic acrylic.

Exhibit photographs are framed, matted, numbered and signed. Horizontal images are 17” x 22” and vertical images are 13” x 19” (not including frame).

Book References Cannery Row & Sweet Thursday Sculpture - Edward F. “Doc” Ricketts, Mack,

Lee Chong, Dora Photos - Green Fields, Beer Milkshakes, The

Great Tide Pool, The Hour of Pearl, Mixing the Punch, Heavenly Flower Grocery, The Bear Flag, an Honest Price, A Taste for Nile Green Evening Dresses

Of Mice & Men Sculpture – Lenny, George Photos - The Hiding Place, The Trouble with

Mice, Field of Dreams

Harvest Gypsies Sculpture – Tom Collins

The Grapes of Wrath Sculpture – Tom Joad, Ma Joad

East of Eden Sculpture – Samuel Hamilton, Abra, Cal Trask Photos - Cathy Leaving

Tortilla Flat Sculpture – Pilon

“Dora is a great woman, a great big woman with flaming orange hair and a taste for Nile green evening dresses, she keeps an honest, one price house, sells no hard liquor, and permits no loud or vulgar talk in her house.”

Cannery Row

A Taste for Nile Green Evening Dresses

Meeting SteinbeckNot unlike their inspiration for this exhibit, sculptor Lew Aytes and photographer Robert Nease spent much of their youth in California’s fertile farming regions where migrant farm workers toiled in the fields of Salinas and central valleys, and along the temperate coastal towns. These were the places whose inhabitants and culture so captured John Steinbeck’s imagination - his Salinas boyhood home surrounded by agricultural fields, and the family’s cottage retreat at the temperate shores of the Monterey Bay in Pacific Grove.

John Steinbeck used words to paint the world around him on a canvas of paper. The stories he witnessed were masterfully drawn in his novels with carefully sculpted portraits of people across artfully illustrated landscapes. Steinbeck’s words have long evoked strong feelings that artists have used as inspiration to create places and people in their works.

“You remember where we slep’ last night? Down by the river?”

“Yeah. I remember. Oh, sure I remember! I go there an’ hide in the brush.”

“Hide till I come for you. Don’t let nobody see you. Hide in the brush by the river. Say that over.”

Of Mice and Men

Artists’ PathAs a young teen, sculptor Lew Aytes moved from California’s agricultural Central Valley to a small town on California’s central coast - the same small town John Steinbeck visited as a boy and lived in as an aspiring author - Pacific Grove. Aytes found Cannery Row in a used book store and, intrigued, set off to find the places and people that Steinbeck had written about. This began a lifelong interest in Steinbeck’s work, and whether by accident or purpose, his journey has intersected with Steinbeck’s life time and time again. Aytes’ first love was music, and it wasn’t until adulthood that this classically trained musician

discovered sculpting. His inability to see color clearly suited his ability to sculpt; Aytes sees shadows in a way that enhances his sculpting. He is adroit at capturing his subject’s facial expression at just that moment when their face tells the story. This and his play of shadows in the pieces make them hauntingly expressive.

Photographer Robert Nease grew up in Southern California, spending his high school summers in Salinas with his cousins. During those hot summer days, while traveling through central California’s agricultural fields where migrant workers dotted the landscape, he was introduced to Steinbeck’s books. When Nease entered college he was bound for a career as an accountant, but a class in photography changed his life, and led to a successful career as an advertising photographer with his own studio. Nease’s fervor for fine art photography was reawakened in 2002 when he joined a small art guild of artists and writers, including Aytes, who met casually to share and encourage one another’s work. Nease found an ability to see things anew – exploring angles, light, color, and texture in fresh ways. His talent for building compositions in the studio that replicate ideas and events is pure perfection.

On a road trip from Orange County to Pacific Grove in 2012, Aytes and Nease began talking about the idea of a joint exhibit with sculpture and photographs set in the landscapes they knew so well from growing up in California and a shared interest in Steinbeck’s works and life.

Steinbeck: The Art of FictionThis exhibit showcases artistic interpretations of Steinbeck’s most memorable characters and images. The people and places depicted come from the pages of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, Of Mice and Men, The Harvest Gypsies, Grapes of Wrath, and East of Eden.

Aytes worked from character descriptions pulled from the pages of Steinbeck’s novels, as well as real-life photographs when available. Nease combed the landscape of Steinbeck Country for the places described in the books, and created interior images in his studio of memorable scenes and characters. Both artists paid careful attention to the language Steinbeck used to illustrate all of his characters and their surroundings, down to the smallest detail. Quotes from Steinbeck’s novels are paired with each piece to add context and texture to the presentation.

Upon entering the exhibit, it is the artists’ intention that guests feel as if they have just walked into that place in Steinbeck’s mind where his “fictional” characters lived. Aytes and Nease hope that Steinbeck enthusiasts will relive the experience of reading a Steinbeck novel, and that the uninitiated will walk away feeling they must read Steinbeck for the first time.

< John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (sculpture on cover)

“No analysis of Steinbeck’s world-view, his philosophy of life, can proceed without a careful study of the life, work, and ideas of this remarkable human being who was Steinbeck’s closet personal and intellectual companion for nearly two decades.”

Richard Astro Speaking of Edward F. Ricketts

The Hiding Place

Edward F. “Doc” Ricketts