Unity Revolution by Diana Pumpelly Bates

Known for her bronze sculptures and metal public art visible throughout Northern California, Diana Pumpelly Bates, (MA 1987, MFA 1989) began her career as a painter and printmaker. In the 1960s, she explored themes of unity, beauty, and family in large-scale canvases and small prints. Bates’ curious forms express movement and energy. The unique, two-toned, chromatic pairing in each composition offers vibrations of color. From a distance, the silhouetted shapes appear as single forms. A closer look shows multiple elements united to make a whole. Based on her experiences of family formations and interpersonal relationships, Bates considers each painting a combination of codes and secrets, and nonsense and beauty that give her life.

As a student at SJSU in the 1980s, she discovered her love for sculpture and spent most of her time in the art foundry. There she distilled her interests in three-dimensional works inspired by natural forms. Several of these works have become part of our shared visual culture through public commissions for public parks, rails stations, buildings, and a bridge in San José, San Francisco, Pleasanton, Sacramento, and Sunnyvale. Other smaller scale bronze work was inspired by the Baháí faith, African American literature, and Bates’ everyday experiences. Diana Pumpelly Bates: Unity Revolution brings together the artist’s painting, prints, and sculptural works for the first time. It is a refreshing exhibition of rediscovered selections, some of which have not been exhibited for over fifty years.

This book was published on the occasion of Diana Pumpelly Bates: Unity Revolution, an exhibition curated by Bridget R. Cooks PhD at The Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery at San José State University.