Moment of Friday: Gronk’s ‘Citizen Kane’ is 1957’s ‘The Giant Claw’

Whenever L.A. painter Glugio Nicandro — more commonly known as “Gronk” — employs a new studio assistant he says he likes to stage a session known as “Culture Hour.” For this educational episode, he screens “The Giant Claw,” a black-and-white sci-fi flick from 1957 about a group of scientists who do battle against a massive foam bird resistant to all human weaponry.

“My assistants have to watch this,” he chuckles. “It’s my ‘Citizen Kane.’” (You can find it here.)

Gronk says he loves everything about the picture. There’s the fact that it stars Jeff Morrow as a roguish engineer/pilot, and Mara Corday as mathematician Sally Caldwell, who is referred to as “Mademoiselle Mathematician.”

There is also the bird itself. “You don’t see it for like the first 20 minutes of the movie,” says Gronk. “All you are told is that it is bigger than a battleship over and over. And then it appears and it’s like a big, big turkey with a long neck and it’s after a plane and it eats all the people. Then all these scientists come along and try to figure out a way to kill it and one of them looks like he wandered in from another movie.”

And, of course, there’s the snappy 1950s dialogue, which delivers lines like, “What you’re saying in essence is that black is white and two and two make six.”

“There’s a scene where one of the scientists holds up a feather and says something to the effect of, ‘It appears to be a feather, that’s all we can say,’” laughs Gronk. “And you’re like, ‘What is this? Plato’s Cave?’ Those little things are poetry.”

“The Giant Claw” has been a large source of inspiration for the artist. The bird’s claw image regularly makes appearances in his paintings; he has crafted it as sculpture and he often draws it onto coffee cups (part of a series of illustrations he regularly features on his Instagram). In 2010, he published a collection of drawings and titled it “A Giant Claw.”

Beyond the camp, however, he says he is really intrigued by the movie’s low-budget feel. “The idea of doing things on the fly, on the cheap — that is very inspiring,” he says. “That’s something I try to incorporate into my work. I like that creakiness. It’s beautiful.”

It is an ethos he brings to his painting (he is a longtime muralist and painter), as well as to his set design. For a number of years, Gronk has painted the sets for a number of operas produced by award-winning L.A. theater director Peter Sellars. This includes a modern staging of Henry Purcell’s 17th century opera “The Indian Queen,” about the conquest of Mexico, which was produced at the Teatro Real in Madrid last year.

Gronk says he keeps his designs for these operas purposely low-tech. “Generally, it’s just me doing all of the painting,” he says. “‘Indian Queen’ was written in the 1600s, and theater technology was very flat. So I try to keep everything very flat. I tend not to make obstacle courses for the performers. It’s a stripped-down sensibility. Literally, it’s a very big painting for an opera. And Peter choreographs it so that the performers interact with it.”

Part of this creative process will go on view at Lora Schlesinger Gallery in Santa Monica this weekend, when a series of works related to his opera set designs go on view: expressionistic prints and canvases that serve as studies for the abstract backdrops that eventually wind up onstage.

“I make paintings that I use to register the color palette for the sets I do,” he says. “There’s a lot of information that goes into them and they are generally my presentation to Peter. These might register as fragments and bits for the set I did for ‘Indian Queen,’ but all of the works hold up as singular pieces of art.”

So far, however, he hasn’t been able to work “The Giant Claw” into one of his opera sets. “Peter generally shies away from pop references,” he says. “But maybe one day I will find the right opera for it.”

“Gronk: Ruins,” opens Saturday and runs through Oct. 18 at Lora Schlesinger Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., #T3, Santa Monica, loraschlesinger.com. On Sept. 13, an artist talk at the gallery will be held at 4:30 p.m. with a reception following at 5 p.m.

Twitter: @cmonstah