ARTISTS IN PORTRAIT : Scanga’s Work Is Reflection of His Diverse Inspirations

Like a microcosm of the artist’s mind, Italo Scanga’s studio on the campus of UC San Diego is rich, full and endlessly amusing. Its walls are dotted from floor to high ceiling with art reproductions, taxidermied animals, cartoon characters and crucifixes. Clarinets and a wide assortment of wood carvings clutter the shelves.

“You can see vulgar things, beautiful things, cheap things,” Scanga said, amid the loosely controlled chaos of the place. “I have no prejudices. I like to take it all in.”

Having fed off these diverse inspirations, Scanga creates a range of diverse expressions. Though best known for his vibrantly painted wood sculptures, the Italian-born artist also makes prints, glass and ceramic works and has even designed handkerchiefs--what he calls his “underground” activities.

As a full-time professor at UCSD, as well as an internationally exhibited artist, Scanga’s schedule is a constant juggling act, a shifting mosaic of interdependent parts.

“After I teach, I’m on the airplane; I work and come back again to meet my next class,” he said, never breaking stride on a page of doodles.

Scanga’s trips to Santa Barbara to work on monotypes, to Nebraska to experiment with ceramics, or to Europe to organize a show, would not be possible if not for the combination of a secure teaching job and a certain measure of artistic success. But he said acclaim was long in coming and the teaching job is not without its drawbacks.

Scanga, 55, was almost 50 before his work became popular and began to sell. It happened late, he admits, but he had no choice but to wait until the work struck an appealing chord among art-world tastemakers.

“You have to fit into certain places,” he said. “If you don’t fit in, you’re out of luck. After 1980, things started moving for me. My stuff was emotional art, it was semi-figurative, it had a little bit of a narrative.”

Until the early 1980s, there was little interest in that kind of sensibility, but since his breakthrough, Scanga’s career has soared. Now, he takes particular pride in “cracking Europe,” lining up shows at major institutions throughout Italy and in Sweden.

“I was totally unaccepted in Europe 20 years ago,” he said, “but now I’m coming back again. It’s very difficult to find a position, a place. You have to take your time. You have to do your work, you can’t be demoralized, you can’t become paranoid or bitter. You have to just keep doing your work.”

How did he sustain his motivation until his work caught on?

“I’m naive,” he said, with a chuckle.

Scanga’s success now is not something he takes for granted, however. “The art world is very fickle,” he can say with the certainty of experience. “Because I’m doing very well this year doesn’t mean I’m going to do well next year. You can lose it in a season, so it’s very tense and scary.”

During the 1960s and ‘70s, when his art was neglected amid the tide of minimal and conceptual art, Scanga could always rely on teaching to carry him through. For over 15 years he moved “like a gypsy,” he said, from one position to another, spending time at the University of Wisconsin, the Rhode Island School of Design, Pennsylvania State University and the Tyler School of Art.

In 1976, he was lured out to UCSD as a visiting professor, and the promise of a university-provided studio convinced him to come back to stay in 1978. Though teaching can be inspiring, he said, it forces him to be “like a schizophrenic--one day I concentrate on teaching, the next day I concentrate on the work. It’s difficult.”

The security of the tenured position, though, has allowed him a measure of financial stability, which in turn gives him the artistic freedom to move in new directions. But, he warned, “You’ve got to be careful because (teaching) can really be so placid. It can be really troublesome. You can be so placid you just keep repeating the same thing, and you don’t make art anymore, you become a maker of things, you manufacture things.”

His concerns are echoed by the art world at large, he feels, to the point where his teaching position may be detrimental to his career as an artist.

“Galleries and museums look at a teacher as more of an academic. It doesn’t help you being a teacher. People frown on that. They think if we make our livelihood as a teacher, we don’t have any drive or any motive to get into the scores of the art world.”

After all, Scanga said, “Frank Stella doesn’t teach, James Joyce was never a teacher, Shakespeare was never a teacher. Great, great, great artists were never teachers.”

Though he can always cling to the teaching job for security, his nature, he believes, prevents him from succumbing to the occupational hazards he describes.

“I still think that I’m doing very good work, and I change. That’s one thing about me. I always change. I get bored by repeating myself.”

When Scanga moved to California from the East Coast, he said his work assumed a new tone, becoming “very colorful, very joyous, happy work. It was about the good things in life, not about the horrible things. It wasn’t always tragic, like my earlier work.”

This shift reflects Scanga’s generally positive feelings about his current home. After arriving in this country from Italy as a teen-ager in 1947 and spending decades changing jobs and addresses, he rejoices in feeling connected to a place.

“I could never fit into certain geographical locations in America. Right now, I’ve finally found roots. I feel good about my place. It’s very conducive for me to work. It’s very conducive for me to be creative.”

When the ever-energetic Scanga retires, he dreams of setting up a museum of his work in his hometown of Lago, Italy. Most of his family still lives there, and even at the post office, they know his name. Such a tangible tribute to the artist’s career is bound to be better received than Scanga’s decision to become an artist, a choice his family didn’t wholeheartedly support.

“Are you kidding?” he asked, in amazement. “They wanted me to sell groceries.”