Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA)

While based in La Jolla, California, the master of contemporary enameling, Kay Whitcomb Keith achieved national recognition and regularly won awards for her work over the latter half of the twentieth century. Her designs featured fanciful figurative elements, strong geometric structure and, most distinctively, words, phrases, and quotations. Whitcomb's unique aesthetic, combined with technical innovations like her chemical crust, put her in a class by herself. She studied at RISD, the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Cambridge School of Art, apprenticed with Doris Hall in 1946, and began teaching at the Art Center in La Jolla in 1956. The first enamel teacher in San Diego, she remained in La Jolla until 1991 when she returned to Massachusetts. Whitcomb was a board member of the Southern California Designer-Craftsmen and the San Diego Art Guild (president 1968-69) and also a member of the Allied Craftsmen of San Diego. She was a founder of the Enamel Guild West and made many trips to Europe where she was guest artist at Gustavberg, Sweden, in 1969 and Crahait, Belgium, during the early 70s. These enamel factory residencies allowed her to create large panels using industrial screening pastes, applied with her own monoprint technique, which made possible the colorful double doors immortalized in the 1971 California Design 11 exhibition catalog.

Whitcomb sought to integrate her flat enamel panels within a series of larger, dramatically articulated steel sculptures. Between 1969 and 1979 she designed a handful of large steel sculptures, each one more ambitious...

Working in the studio of her Henry Hester-designed home in La Jolla, Whitcomb sought to integrate her flat enamel panels within a series of larger, dramatically articulated steel sculptures. Between 1969 and 1979 she designed a handful of large steel sculptures, each one more ambitious, culminating in her seven foot-tall model for a public sculpture commission for San Bernardino. Each sculpture was fabricated by a local metalworker to her careful specifications and featured her colorful and distinctive enamel panels set off by a spectacular black steel framework. This mid-1970s steel easel-sculpture is among the only examples from the series ever to be offered and it displays an enamel-on-steel panel bearing the quotation "THE ARROW THAT DOTH WOUND THE DOVE...DARTS NOT FROM THEM WHO WATCH AND LOVE" by MB Eddy, comprised of Whitcomb's signature geometric letter blocks in French and other shapes as well as stenciled letters in English.

LAMA is proud to present a special selection of design curated by Esoteric Survey, featuring more than 100 works that represent platform founder Steve Aldana's guiding fascination with mid-century design and design history in California. Drawing from Aldana's personal collection as well as from his design-minded community, this collection includes iconic works as well as deeper cuts that represent lesser-known, but nonetheless integral, achievements of postwar artists and designers. 

An urban planner by vocation, Aldana has nurtured his fascination with modern design, particularly the strains that emerged in mid-century Southern California, through Esoteric Survey for nearly 15 years. With a desire to share fascinating obscure design figures and document visits to architecture and design sites, he created the blog he named Esoteric Survey in 2009. What first served primarily as a private log for personal reference eventually blossomed into a valuable resource for like-minded design aficionados, and has since taken the form of an immensely popular Instagram account.

Explore Steve Aldana's Blog Esoteric Survey