WESTSIDE / VALLEY : Artist’s Work Has Its Roots in Childhood Interest in Model Planes

When San Francisco sculptor Fletcher Benton was a young boy growing up in Jackson, Ohio, he built model airplanes. His mother noticed he also had some drawing ability, and set him up with art supplies in a basement studio in the family home.

By the early ‘60s, Benton had established himself as an artist in New York, and then San Francisco. He was given the opportunity to show his motorized paintings at Gump’s department store’s art gallery, considered one of the best galleries in the city. After one day on exhibit, however, his stylized works of nude female circus performers were deemed obscene by the store’s management and taken down. Disappointed and disgusted by this chain of events, Benton removed himself from the art scene for some time, finding solace in building model airplanes.

Gradually, during the model building, kinetic artwork began to emerge. And he incorporated other early interests, such as sign lettering and geometric forms, in three-dimensional works. Benton has been creating his very personal and inventive sculpture ever since.

Today, at age 62, after 30 years of accolades and appreciation from the art world, he will tell you that these sculptures are “directly zeroed into the thrill” of building model airplanes. He still frequents a hobby shop near his home.

“There is a wonderful, immediate satisfaction in building models. You feel a beginning excitement, an enthusiasm of building, and the satisfaction at the end,” he said.

His works on view at Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, in the show “The Botanicals and Other Sculptures,” represent his most recent examples of “composing geometric shapes together in a way I feel good about,” Benton said. “I think of geometric forms like keys on the piano. I’m relating one shape to another as music.”

Although he has not made kinetic pieces since the ‘70s, Benton’s steel maquettes, or models, and large-scale steel sculptures derive a sense of movement from their dynamic configurations. Making maquettes first, Benton intuitively constructs his works of circles, squares, triangles, letters and linear forms.

“All geometry comes from the alphabet. To this moment, I am thrilled with the alphabet,” said Benton, who at age 14 started a sign-painting business with a friend. “There is great strength, power and romance in the alphabet.”

Benton pushes himself beyond the first, most obvious, point: where the composition pleases his eye. If he adds too many elements, then he subtracts them one by one. He said the real art and the fun come in this subtraction phase. “You test yourself. Then you’re sure you’ve done the best you can.”

“I think artists are builders. I do not believe that the fine arts are an intellectual process,” Benton said. “You start with a feeling and go at whatever. You have to be free. If it gets too intellectual, it should be written about or done in some other form.”

Without the aid of mechanical drawings, he and his assistants transform the maquettes into very large sculptures. The “One-Legged Table” pieces in the gallery stand from 11 to 14 feet high.

Though he strikes the balance that he wants to see in his works, Benton also likes to leave viewers with a sense that they might not see the same things in them as he does. He enjoys the “mystery of not being able to pin it down,” he said. “If they do like the work, I would hope that they would say to me, ‘I don’t know why I like your work.’ ” For him, that’s the biggest compliment of all.

“Fletcher Benton: The Botanicals and Other Sculptures,” is open 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays through Aug . 28 at Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, 1547 9th St., Santa Monica. Call (310) 395-0222.

SPANNING THE DECADES: Dorr Bothwell was born in San Francisco in 1902. Her paintings, drawings and screen prints on view at Tobey Moss Gallery span four decades, from the 1924 pastel vision of her “Pierce Street Studio” to her early 1950s highly abstract notions of the “Southwest” and the summer season.

In between, she takes viewers on a journey that reflects her experiences--to “Pensioners Row” and “The Mill” in Port Gamble, Wash., where she lived for a time when her father got a job there. To Samoa in the late 1920s, where she went after her father died. To her modern, at times mystical, views of the joys of life, which include a “Jour de Fete” and a “Skaters’ Waltz.” There is also the most elegant 1935 depiction of her “Siamese Cats” on a three-panel screen.

“I was more successful among the Samoans than Margaret Mead,” Bothwell once told gallery director Tobey Moss. “I danced.” At 91, Bothwell is still a “vital, vigorous, vibrant” individual, as independent as ever, Moss said. Now living in Arizona, she continues to make collages, drawings and watercolors.

“Dorr Bothwell: Screenprints, Paintings and Drawings, 1920s-1950s “ is open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays through Aug . 7 at Tobey Moss Gallery, 7321 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. Call (213) 933-5523.

‘DRAWINGS III’ It’s time again for the annual drawing show at Koplin Gallery in Santa Monica. “Drawings III” features 59 artists from all over the United States in work that ranges from figurative and landscape to abstract and conceptual. On Thursday from 7 to 8 p.m., James Doolin, an artist in the show, will lead a gallery discussion on drawing and the exhibit. To attend, please call the gallery at (310) 319-9956.*

“Drawings III” is open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturdays through Sept. 4 at Koplin Gallery, 1438 9th St., Santa Monica.