Head with Bone Dolls

Sculpture

-

di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art

Photo Credit: Johansen Krause

Photo Credit: Johansen Krause

Name/Title

Head with Bone Dolls

Entry/Object ID

489

Description

White paper mask with feathers and three bone dolls at ears and forehead

Artwork Details

Medium

Paper pulp, feathers, bones

Category

Sculpture

Acquisition

Accession

AR489

Source or Donor

Janet Steinberg Gallery

Acquisition Method

Purchase

Made/Created

Artist

Carlos Villa

Date made

1982

Inscription/Signature/Marks

Type

Signature, Date

Location

Verso, proper left

Transcription

Carlos Villa / 82

Lexicon

LOC Thesaurus for Graphic Materials

Feathers

Dimensions

Dimension Description

Object

Height

9-1/2 in

Width

7 in

Depth

4 in

Dimension Description

Plexi Display Box

Height

14-1/2 in

Width

14-1/2 in

Depth

8 in

Relationships

Related Publications

Notes

Born in 1936 in San Francisco, Carlos Villa received his B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute and his M.F.A. from Mills College, Oakland. He was a professor at C.S.U. Sacramento and S.F.A.I.

Exhibitions

Exhibition

Together Again

Notes

August 2026 - August 2027, Jan Shrem or Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA

Exhibition

Carlos Villa: Worlds in Collision

Notes

February 8 - May 8, 2022, Newark Museum of Art, NJ; June 17 – October 24, 2022, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Exhibition

Building A Different Model: Selections from the di Rosa Collection

Notes

March 9 - December 30, 2019, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA,

Research Notes

Research Type

Curator

Date

2019

Notes

Carlos Villa trained alongside William T. Wiley, Joan Brown, William Allan, and Manuel Neri in aesthetic modes he would later bring into dialogue with Minimalist sculpture and his own Filipino heritage. Villa sometimes used his sculptures in performances in the 1980s. These works advance ideas of sculptural space, the artist as shaman, and the very notion of what art can do. But Villa was adamant that his heritage not be the only lens through which his work was viewed. He likened his approach in this sense to, say, Bruce Conner’s unheralded identity as an Irish American. It’s there if you are looking for it, but ultimately the work is a fulsome expression of complexly woven strains of cultural identity.