Career
Norman began his professional career fashioning window displays for Bullocks Wilshire in Los Angeles and later Bergdorf Goodman, Bonwit Teller, and other New York department stores. He later designed plastic headdresses for the chorus girls in the 1946 Fred Astaire film Blue Skies."
In New York, Norman's work was featured in Vogue magazine – and he first displayed an affinity for working in plastic, having discovered the material, especially epoxy resins, during a trip to Europe in the late 1940s. Norman was featured in a November 22, 1944 New York Times article, Plastics Shown in Decorative Role, covering the opening of his exhibit at the Pendleton Gallery.
Norman's lifetime body of work includes sculpture, mosaic, jewelry, and other forms – and most prominently the 40- by-46-foot mosaic window for the Masonic Center in San Francisco along with an assemblage of exterior stone sculptures:
| “ | Fabricated with an endomosaic process, it incorporates thousands of bits of metal, parchment, felt, linen, silk, natural foliage, thinly sliced vegetable matter, shells and sea life, plus 180 colors of stained glass. The lower portion of the frieze is made up of actual gravels and soils of the 58 counties of California and the islands of Hawaii. The window depicts the history of the wayfarers and the seafarers that helped found California Freemasonry. | ” |
Norman often used an innovative technique bringing together his own admixture of epoxy-resin, crushed glass, plastic, or wood – creating an effect not dissimilar to cloisonne or stained glass. The effect is especially unusual when Norman crafted the layered effect over a wax form which, when later melted away, left behind a three-dimensional sculpture.
Read more about this topic: Emile Norman
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)